One Over X News

Perspective

Have you ever had a revelation that you feel is a most original thought and the exultation compels you to share your discovery with everyone else in the immediate area? Have you subsequently discovered that your original thought was not so original after all , that almost everyone else had thought of the same thing before and it was more a matter of you finally having arrived at the same way station as everyone else. Lately my life has been that way.

I have been editing my own writing for the last four months, a thankless and unenviable task that quickly transforms a simple edit into a major rewrite. NOTE: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER edit your own writing beyond the point that it can stand as a rough draft. ALWAYS, take notes from the comments of others and take the rough draft back and revise it ONCE. Walk away from it and let editors transform it. RESIST the urge to debate every change - even when you are right if others do not see it what is the point of the argument? Close your eyes and accept it even if the final product hardly resembles the rough draft. When and if you ever become famous enough to have a following, then and only then may you even begin to attempt something avant-garde - such as creating a new genre of literature or some unknown formatting for presentation. To follow any course but that stated above is to risk the art as well as posting self in the way of the message.

EVERYTHING you write makes sense to you at one time, and that is exactly when you write it. You return to it later, say a few days later and it is not quite so eloquent as you remember. The wit had definitely lost its edge and the metaphor that you were so proud of seems vague or even banal after all.

With all that in mind, I offered One Over X as a complete disregard for the aforementioned rules. I edited, revised, revised and then edited some more only to have others suggest. Upon addressing the suggestions editing turned into revision which turned into overhaul. It took me 20 years of living to develop the story and ten years to get it onto paper in a somewhat organized manner: five years to write it and five years to edit and revise it. I was completely finished with it two years ago. Ask my publisher. I had even moved on to other projects and even explored writing in other genres - imagine me doing a children's book.

By the way, that children's book turned into a prequel for the Wolf parts of One Over X (Spectre of Dammerwald) and as fate would have it that started a chain reaction of transformation that has resulted in the extraction of the Wolf Parts from not only Series One but also Series Two. The extraction was ostensibly for the purpose of ensuring concurrence with Spectre of Dammerwald (the prequel). Well, now the Wolf Parts of One Over X have been materially altered and hopefully improved. I have to reinsert the parts. And somewhere along the way I suppose I should read One Over X and Two The Power of X. Knowing me I will edit and then revise and as much as my publisher will cringe he will end up with revised and hopefully better versions of Books 3 through 6 of Series One and the entirety of Series Two.

As you will recall I just finished revised Books One and Two of One Over X for a second edition. Once something is in print and has a copyright files with the Library of Congress it needs to be treated with a bit more respect. It is no longer raw materials. It exists. If there are errors that made it through to final copy, it still is not the same sort of thing as finding a typo on page 143, second paragraph, third sentence of third draft.... well you get the point.

So as much as I hate to say it, what I have been working on since April has inadvertently pushed back Book 3 of One Over X, yet again. I promise the material is much better (at least the Wolf parts of it. As Book 3 has been revised to death previously, I honestly expect a quick read through with very minor edits and almost no revision. Much of Book Three used to belong to Book 2 so it has been edited extensively over the past five years. The greatest changes if any are necessary will occur in the later books of the series and the books of Series Two that were only completed last year and have not quite yet been worked to death.

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posted by Unknown @ 7:24 PM