Remember me?

Ha! Surprise, Poppets! You probably thought I wasn't going to blog anymore. I kind of thought so, too. But it's nice to have this as an option, so I'll keep it going, even if I'm not here as often as I was. I sure won't give up the space, b/c otherwise it'll be scooped up by some dirtbag marketeers (who gobbled up Everydaibh and probably took Isonomia the minute I dumped them).

So, I'm nearly done with the first revision of the book I wrote at the end of last year, and I'm again in the High Hatred Mode for the piece, the usual love/hatred I feel for stuff I write -- love it when writing it initially, then hate it afterward. My biggest triumph with this book was writing it so quickly, which was entirely aided by writing it during my workday, on the sly. That let me get so much work done, it was great, and made my workday otherwise bearable, and was a resounding "F*CK YOU!" to my current employer.

It stands at 130,000 words; it was nearly 140,000 words, but I edited about 44 pages out of it. Right now, I'm making an outline for it (I never start an outline before writing a book; I do it afterward -- hey, I'm left-handed; we do everything backwards) -- just to see how the story flows, to see if there's any plot-tweaking I need to do.

I've got a second revision to do for it, and after that, it'll be ready for readers, to see what they think of it, and then to incorporate any comments they make into a third revision. THEN (pant pant) it'll be ready to be pimped to agents.

For somebody as historically off-the-cuff and improvisatory (is that even a word?) I'm doggedly meticulous in my revision of my work, what I call "deshittification."

One thing I wrestle with is my conception of horror -- horror is a reactionary genre, and I'm not a reactionary. I've realized while working on this piece how difficult it is to have a liberal conception of horror. There are things that horrify liberals, yes -- but the very nature of being progressive implies that you are able to think your way out of anything. There is nothing ineffable in liberalism (or is there? Muhahaha!) There's no door you shouldn't be willing to open, no place you shouldn't be willing to go. Part of liberalism's optimism is precisely what sabotages the idea of horror, in my view -- everything's supposed to be solvable in liberalism. There's no problem too tough for a good liberal. Whereas horror is invariably moralistic, and often the problems don't get solved, and things end up worse than before. Hence, the reactionary quality to it.

I've fought with that in the story, since the characters are all a group of bohemians (or fauxhemians), and are ill-equipped to face what's going after them. It's literally outside of their world, and only one of them is truly horrified by the encounter. The rest are largely uncomprehending of their peril. But that's kind of the point of the story. If evil's a virus, ignoring the symptoms won't make it go away, and there's no amount of wishful thinking that'll do the trick.

Anyway, onto the second revision, which should go quicker than the first revision, which I started in December.