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Monster Media 1993 #2
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S&M-01
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1993-06-20
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3KB
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52 lines
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
The Muse░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░The Working Muse░░░░░░░░░░░by David Holloway
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My preparations for writing are exact and invariable. I light
several sticks of incense, dim the lights, play some Gregorian
Chants and carefully set out bowls of wine in an ordered and
predesignated pattern, as dictated by the GREAT RED BOOK OF THOTH.
Then I drink the wine, turn up the lights, douse the incense and
flip on the word processor- I don't have time for much nonsense.
Actually my writing is terrible, awful, unreadable, and
largely incomprehensible. I try to do a lot of it, and then go
back and see if maybe there is a usable idea in it somewhere. I
subscribe to the Ross Perot school of writing- Ross said
"Washington is full of plans." and I say Holloway is full
of....ideas and most of my ideas are just about as good as the
aforementioned plans. But once in a great while if I write enough
of them down I can stumble across one that I find somewhat
interesting or amusing. That is when the writing comes into play,
and that is generally when the muse makes her/his/its appearance.
You see, I don't really believe in writing, I only believe in
rewriting. Vladimir Nabokov once said that reading doesn't give you
anything from a book, that you can only appreciate a writer's work
through re-reading, and I find that I don't really know much about
what I have written until I've written it several times in several
different ways.
It isn't odd for me to carry this process to extremes and
realize that what I wind up with isn't what I wanted in the first
place. When this happens I re-examine what I've done and try to
decide if it is better, worse, or merely different. I tinker
ceaselessly, and eventually find the style, voice, or draft that
seems best, not finished, just tuned to the point that if I try
anything else it is more likely to make it worse than better.
Sometimes I deliberately try to ruin the story, and see what
that tells me. The ending changes from tragic to comic, the main
character becomes a 75 year old Puerto Rican barber instead of a
14 year old white ballerina, or the voice switches from first
person to third. Thinking about what would make the story worse
sometimes tells me what is best about it. I think you get the
point, some people spend hours primping in front of a mirror,
worrying about a bad hair day. My equivalent would be a bad prose
day, one of those days when my sentences are all incomplete, the
setting is unrealistic, and my characters are mere stick figures
that won't dance for me no matter what tune I sing them.
I guess that gives you some idea of what I do when I write.
The rest of it involves the incantation that goes with the
preparations from the first paragrah, and I've sworn a blood oath
not to reveal THAT to anyone.
-end-
Copyright (c) 1993 David Holloway