A Little Optimism

Swamped, I tell you! So many tasks undone that when I'm alone, I slip into a slightly catatonic trance while the to-dos whirl, and yes, maybe I'm dreaming of poppies, what's it to ya?
But anyway, I've no time today, so I thought I'd just send you over to a very cool post by Robin Sloan at the 3six5 project. If you aren't already following, it's a year's worth of "what's happening today in the/my world" posts by 365 bloggers. (Yes, I wanted to be one of them, I can handle one assignment a year, but I didn't get picked.)

And Spring will come again. Meanwhile, it's exactly ZERO outside.

Happy Lupercalia

No time to do much more than share a link to a great blog post: a debut writer's experience of the rapidly evolving publishing world. It starts out frankly depressing, and ends up powerfully hopeful.
And evolution is really an apt concept here-- the climate is changing fast, and those who can't adapt. . .

So my Valentine to you: Love the life you lead, and vice versa.

Chopping Up My Darlings

We writers have heard it (and repeated it) many times, that old line about murdering your darlings. I'd never seen it in context before, so I went a-lookin'. Here's a bit, courtesy of Bartleby:

Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

The latest version I've heard, and much more gently put, has been in several rejections: "beautiful writing, too quiet." I've been at this long enough to translate this agent speak: boring, boring, yawn. The last rejection used the word "beautiful" twice, ouchy.

But the good news is, the rejecting agent added, "Perhaps if you started with. . ." and here is where I get a little confused. She mentions events that occur in chapter 22 (out of 30 total chapters.) I vacillate between thinking she meant I should dump the first 21 chapters, or else simply tweak chronology, reshape, chop off a few fingers and toes, maybe a chemical peel, definitely some liposuction.

The second option seems too simple, so that is what I'm doing. Baby steps.

I am also coming around to the knowledge that my beautiful, beautiful prologue is a vain bit of ornamentation that may not survive the slaughter. I still harbor some hope that it might slip in somewhere later, when presumably my reader has learned to accept me, warts and all. But after having this funny feeling (like, wow, I love it, that can't be good) for way too long, reading this Pub Rant pretty much strapped my prologue to the chopping block.