hack! i am a hack!
Jan. 27th, 2005 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7God, that's freeing.
I'm a hack.
I'm not writing the Great American Novel.
I'm just writing a novel, any novel, to finish it.
Hack! Hack! I am a hack!
I like it. I think I need a t-shirt that reads "hack", except people wouldn't know what I meant by that.
And Talentless Hack is a bit more harsh than I can stand to be to myself. I won't say I don't have talent, because if I say that, then I have no motivation anymore. I have to believe I am some sort of Unique Fucking Snowflake that is Gifted by some sort of benevolent deity, or I can't do this.
But "Talentless Hack" does make a far better t-shirt than just "hack", which sounds like an anti-smoking slogan or something about computer crime.
Ahh....
Anyhow. Chapter 5 is 75% complete and consists of Dialogue-Heavy Info Dumps. Whee!!
And tomorrow is both Payday and Sit For Six Hours In The Club With No Customers. Don't you see? I'll have money, AND be able to write Ch. 6 whilst earning slightly under minimum wage. I'm so excited. Or not. But if I say I am, I'll feel better.
I think we can afford to keep the car on the road. Why not? It'll need to be on the road by March and y'know, I won't have that much more money then.
Yeah. This novel is fun and I believe after this draft it will probably need only minor rewrites. (she says ambitiously.)
Dave was incredulous that it still needed that much work. "But didn't you already write it?"
"Well, yes," I answered. "But parts of it... see, the structure is fine, and the plot works great, but parts of it simply don't convey all the information they have to. Parts of it just need to be rewritten. Which is faster and less risky than original composition. It's all right. The novel's still done. It just needs to be improved."
"But I thought you already wrote it."
"I did. It's just not good enough yet. But it will be. Soon."
Methinks, ok, mewonders whether, the boy is losing faith. But no! It is all valuable experience, all this writing, and this is not the same as my endless formless rewrites of last April. No! This novel is actually truly done and is just being *cough*entirelyrewritten*cough*... No, I lie. I'm probably composing about 70% of the actual sentences anew, but am not actually removing or adding events. The framework stands as written. It's just retooled dialogue, refinished description, and entirely retrofitted character motives. (Erm, the first draft was missing them entirely. Sorry. I forgot. It wasn't up to code. Now it is!) So, 80% of the material is being recycled, some by cutting and pasting but most by having one document open while I type into the other one, reusing some phrases and some sentences but mostly re-creating it so it's different and better.
I wish I could do it faster, though. The original composition is more interesting. I don't know if this will wind up being my usual compositional method. I do know that regardless of what happens, this isn't going to be my last novel.
But yes. I am a hack! I have no real literary pretensions. I've been doing this fifteen years now (Holy shit. No, fourteen: I lied. It was December 1990 that I started.) and I've given up on the Literary Pretensions shit. That doesn't mean I don't want to be solidly competent. I am a craftsman. I take pride. So there. In the meantime, fuck the art shit because it takes too long and leaves me with things that aren't ... I'd say commercially viable but I'm not at that stage. Not interesting to anyone but me, is the brutal summation of my artistic pretensions. So fuck them, and I'm not really that interested in them either anymore. I am going to finish this fucking novel like a craftsman and then I am going to sell it, so there.
And that means I'm going to shut up for now and go and fucking write it, because otherwise I am all mouth and no action and that's sort of not very craftsmanly.
I'm a hack.
I'm not writing the Great American Novel.
I'm just writing a novel, any novel, to finish it.
Hack! Hack! I am a hack!
I like it. I think I need a t-shirt that reads "hack", except people wouldn't know what I meant by that.
And Talentless Hack is a bit more harsh than I can stand to be to myself. I won't say I don't have talent, because if I say that, then I have no motivation anymore. I have to believe I am some sort of Unique Fucking Snowflake that is Gifted by some sort of benevolent deity, or I can't do this.
But "Talentless Hack" does make a far better t-shirt than just "hack", which sounds like an anti-smoking slogan or something about computer crime.
Ahh....
Anyhow. Chapter 5 is 75% complete and consists of Dialogue-Heavy Info Dumps. Whee!!
And tomorrow is both Payday and Sit For Six Hours In The Club With No Customers. Don't you see? I'll have money, AND be able to write Ch. 6 whilst earning slightly under minimum wage. I'm so excited. Or not. But if I say I am, I'll feel better.
I think we can afford to keep the car on the road. Why not? It'll need to be on the road by March and y'know, I won't have that much more money then.
Yeah. This novel is fun and I believe after this draft it will probably need only minor rewrites. (she says ambitiously.)
Dave was incredulous that it still needed that much work. "But didn't you already write it?"
"Well, yes," I answered. "But parts of it... see, the structure is fine, and the plot works great, but parts of it simply don't convey all the information they have to. Parts of it just need to be rewritten. Which is faster and less risky than original composition. It's all right. The novel's still done. It just needs to be improved."
"But I thought you already wrote it."
"I did. It's just not good enough yet. But it will be. Soon."
Methinks, ok, mewonders whether, the boy is losing faith. But no! It is all valuable experience, all this writing, and this is not the same as my endless formless rewrites of last April. No! This novel is actually truly done and is just being *cough*entirelyrewritten*cough*... No, I lie. I'm probably composing about 70% of the actual sentences anew, but am not actually removing or adding events. The framework stands as written. It's just retooled dialogue, refinished description, and entirely retrofitted character motives. (Erm, the first draft was missing them entirely. Sorry. I forgot. It wasn't up to code. Now it is!) So, 80% of the material is being recycled, some by cutting and pasting but most by having one document open while I type into the other one, reusing some phrases and some sentences but mostly re-creating it so it's different and better.
I wish I could do it faster, though. The original composition is more interesting. I don't know if this will wind up being my usual compositional method. I do know that regardless of what happens, this isn't going to be my last novel.
But yes. I am a hack! I have no real literary pretensions. I've been doing this fifteen years now (Holy shit. No, fourteen: I lied. It was December 1990 that I started.) and I've given up on the Literary Pretensions shit. That doesn't mean I don't want to be solidly competent. I am a craftsman. I take pride. So there. In the meantime, fuck the art shit because it takes too long and leaves me with things that aren't ... I'd say commercially viable but I'm not at that stage. Not interesting to anyone but me, is the brutal summation of my artistic pretensions. So fuck them, and I'm not really that interested in them either anymore. I am going to finish this fucking novel like a craftsman and then I am going to sell it, so there.
And that means I'm going to shut up for now and go and fucking write it, because otherwise I am all mouth and no action and that's sort of not very craftsmanly.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-28 06:24 am (UTC)Anyway, yes, the whole "art vs craft" or "art vs entertainment" debate.
And I tend to rewrite most of my sentences at least slightly every time I redraft. Also I redraft many times. Admittedly I have never finished anything original, or longer than about 40,000 words, so what do I know?