Went through Furious Lullaby again. Probably the sixth time through the entire manuscript, though I've revised poems here and there. I filled in some holes by writing four new poems and revising the first third of the manuscript. I need to live with the new order for a little while . . . see how I feel about it.
This time around I'm looking at consistency and I was pretty hard on myself. Personal mission: cut or reduce the "to be" verbs as well as causality words and temporality words. I use causality and temporality words a lot.
I also need to shore up my syntax. It's muddled. It's always been muddled. It sounds like my father's thought patterns which are episodic.
Anyway, I've been having fun. I actually don't mind revision as much as I used to. Boy, when I was in grad school, I struggled with the process. Now it's a game. Sort of like the puzzles in those Highlights magazines I paged through in doctor and dentist offices.
10 hours ago
1 comment:
Some of us are so obsessive that ordering a ms. is easy because we cannot help but have arcs/themes. For some, there is a narrative thread. For some, there is no thread just a persistence of style or voice. For others still, what remains is a range of difficulty. With my first book, I went through 6 different orders. even after the book was accepted, my editor, Susan Hahn, changed the order. She was right, of course. But you are right to think of it as a game. Much less painful that way.
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