Tuesday 18 September 2007

How do you like these apples?

The never-ending process of revising a book…

I’m not a gardener, but this fact interests me: when you have a fruit tree that starts to bud with fruit, it’s good practice to pluck off all the smaller ones before they are ripe, so that the most promising ones can grow even bigger and better.

That’s what I’m trying to do with the draft of my latest book. It’s a fruit tree. Ergo: leave only the most promising apples and prune off all the lesser ones that would sap their strength.

5 comments:

The Ginger Darlings said...

So hard though when you have gathered together precious words and then you have to strike them off. I hate reading things that I have written, find my eyes falling over words, tangled up in the spaces in between.

Nick Green said...

I think an imp comes in the night and changes beautifully crafted prose into clunky nonsense. Many is the time I have returned, after a few weeks, to a 'favourite' passage only to find that the little b- beggar has rewritten it as rubbish.

Either that or new writing is like wet paint, or better still a wet pebble. Beautiful and glossy, then it dries and it's drab and dull.

Lee said...

You're good with metaphors!

And stop sending that **!*! imp over to Germany, will you? He paid my desk a visit last night.

Nick Green said...

Lee, you should check out a song by The Sparks: "A metaphor is a glorious thing, a diamond ring, the first day of summer. A metaphor is a breath of fresh air, A turn-on, An aphrodisiac. Chicks dig metaphors!"

Hilarious.

Lee said...

Only chicks? What a shame - there goes my chance with Johnny Depp!