Byron Nelson Breeds Breastviewing

It’s my sister’s birthday today. She turned thirty this morning around soap opera time. Thirty. You know how old that makes me? Damn. Because if she’s getting older, that means I’m getting older. It’s slightly depressing that half my life ago she snuck me into my first Ten Hands concert. I was fifteen then. A whole lifetime has passed since then. And that’s just plain crazy.

We’ve got Stella the Star Seeking Student trapped in ice this week, which is why she has been idle. Not to fear though. She said something really disturbing occurred to her last night, and she will be writing about it. I’m excited about it, as it’s a pretty good story.

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Midnight’s Park is Written

I’m done.

I finished late last night (early this morning). Holy cow, that was a task. I can’t believe it took me that long. All that procrastinating just made me want to keep putting it off. Well, I’m going to try and do better with my next book. Maybe I’ll shoot for three months, so it’ll for sure be ready by winter of 2005.

Standard procedure dictates that I now read over it and make changes to any glaring critical grammatical errors. Strunk and White say to omit needless words, which I do during this phase, and Stephen King says I should end up with 90% of what I have now. Cut the fat. That would be some eighteen pages worth of material. It hurts to cut that much, but it’s good advice. I’ve never seen that much to cut personally – maybe because everything I write is worth keeping, or maybe because I think everything I write is worth keeping. We shall see what happens.

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Midnight’s Park Nears Completion

I’m perilously close to finishing. Aren’t you excited? You should be. I’ll be making the announcement either tonight or tomorrow, which will no doubt trigger a massive celebration. I’ve only about ten or fifteen more pages to write to get the story told. Of course, that’s what I said thirty pages ago. I’ve now written about 170 pages, and have finally covered everything I needed to cover. So it looks for real this time.

Tying up loose ends is possibly the hardest part of writing a book, but also the most enjoyable. You have to read and reread your work so many times to make sure that A) you’re familiar with your work, and B) you cover all your bases. For example, if you say someone did something, and then later in your book you say they didn’t, you’re obviously not familiar with your work. You haven’t read through it enough to check for stuff like that. Like if someone is a smoker, then quits, but later on in the book you say “he crushed out his cigarette with the heel of his black boot.” Well? Is he smoking again, or did you screw up?

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