Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Too clever for my own good...

Well, it seems a stylistic choice I made is falling flat, and I can understand why. In The Alice '65 I used ellipses to indicate pauses in the storytelling, and they're not going over well with anyone who's commented on it. The consensus is, it slows down the momentum and takes you out of the story. I thought it was clever, but it turns out to have been rude, crude and totally misconstrued.

It's not as if I'm wedded to it. I can take them out. Sometimes they're needed, but nowhere near to the extent I used. And reality is, I was already thinking they'd become overwhelming. This just backs up my inner critic.

This isn't a first, for me. I once got into the habit of putting a period after dashes at the end of a sentence and have no idea why, because nowhere can I find that as being justified. I will put a question mark, still, for clarity, but I'm getting rid of the nonsensical dot.

The latest comments also mirror those made earlier -- that the story's sluggish in the first two chapters. It doesn't really get going till Adam is on the plane. I need to address that, because it's one of my failings. I need the info in there but have to work harder to make it palatable and natural, and right now it isn't. It took me a lot of work to get that handled in The Vanishing of Owen Taylor; A65 is just as worthy of the focus.

On the positive side, they all like the story and seem to care about Adam. No real comments on Casey, yet, but it is much more his story than hers. And no one has come forth to say I've mucked up this or made no sense with that.

The latest job in San Francisco is done and ready to ship. Then Saturday I'm off to the UK. Looks like I'll miss all the fun of Hurricane Irma. I was going to do a job in the Florida Keys; it now looks entirely possible that will be blown away by a record-breaking storm. But the right wing says that climate change is a hoax.

Goddamned idiots.

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