Wednesday, August 06, 2003
I have a feeling that I'll spend at least part of today rewriting everything that I wrote yesterday. Reworking. Tweaking. Fine-tuning. Trying to change tin into gold. This is what I do. Nothing is ever good enough. Well, almost nothing. Every now and then, very rarely, I finish something and step back and I'm impressed, and very surprised that I'm impressed, because no one (well, no one who matters) has ever been as hard on my writing as I am every single day, every paragraph, every sentence, every word. Most recently, "The Dead and the Moonstruck" surprised me this way. Parts of Low Red Moon did, and the totality of its effect, which is surely greater than its parts. "The Road of Pins." Waycross. "Andromeda Among the Stones." Parts of "Riding the White Bull." It happens, just not as often as I wish it happened. Not half so often.
Perfection is, along with Obsession, another of The Writer's Virtues, which are the antithesis of The Nine Deadly Sins of Writing. Indeed, Obsession is often the route to Perfection. No one achieves Perfection, or almost no one (in "modern" dark fantasy, Angela Carter has, and Kathe Koja, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Thomas Ligotti, Neil Gaiman, and a handful of others), but it has to be the goal, regardless.
Actually, Neil (who has achieved Perfection on more than one occassion) once berated me for striving for it with such Determination (another Virtue). I think Neil worries because I don't have Fun writing, and he's a dear for doing so, but, you see, he's already achieved Perfection and I haven't. As near as I can tell, Fun is neither a Sin nor a Virtue. It's a Fortunate By-Product, at best, and, as far as writing is concerned, not one with which I am well acquainted.
But I know Obsession.
Obsession is one of my dark gods.
If I could write one perfect story, it might redeem all the life I have squandered sitting in this chair, at this desk, striking these damned keys. I'll settle for a perfect short story (almost no one has ever acheived Perfection at novel length; I could count those books on the toes of my left foot).
Anyway. You already know what I did yesterday. Murder of Angels moves forward by small degrees. I was spolied by the speed of the last novel. I thought maybe all subsequent books would come as readily, with only a minimum of stall-outs and brick walls and empty days. I can be such an idiot. Whatever. Was there anything else to yesterday? Not really. Spooky and I watched "Bringing Home the Beacon" and I marveled anew that the Sci-Fi Channel could have cancelled something as briliant and uncommon as Farscape and longed for the end of the story. It will come, because the Hensons have faith in the series and, more importantly, because Good and Important Stories are not allowed to go unfinished forever, no matter how many corporate liver flukes have to be bested to reach conclusion.
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