Whew. I’ve cut a little over 4,350 words from my Korean superheroes story. Since I started out with 20,500, that’s roughly 20% of the text cut. And yes, the text is bleeding a little, even though I’ve sewn up the wounds carefully, meticulously. I wasn’t as merciless as some of my friends suggested. One friend suggested I should do the story in 10,000 words or less, but that would have been too drastic. I’m finding I tend to overwrite my supposedly final drafts of things by about 20%, so I’m happy I managed to cut that much from it without …
Month: April 2007
The Shoopah Assault
I’ve got about 20 pages left to re-edit on “Jjangguk” (out of approximately 90) and so far, I’m not quite halfway towards my goal of cutting it to 15000 words. It’s hovering at just about 18000 words, from a previous total of 20,500 words. However, I think I’m getting it about as tight as it’s going to be, so I think I’m soon going to have to simply concede to the fact this story wants to be this long, and send it out to find its way through the world. I’m at the climactic part where a bunch of heroes …
Reach!
If only my students would do something this crazy once in a while:
They Didn’t React As Expected
In this fascinating piece titled Pearls Before Breakfast is discussed an experiment conducted by the Washington post regarding how people perceive music in public spaces. What happens when one of the best classical musicians in America puts on a baseball cap and goes busking in Washington, D.C.? The article raises some really interesting questions about American culture, about art, about contexts for art. It brings to mind a question that’s been bugging me: is the blog a good context for writing to be presented? I’m beginning to think it isn’t.
The Lady Down the Hall
A lady was in the building the other day, and one of the Housing guys was showing her around, apparently to give her a choice of rooms. He actually opened my door to let her look around, and then realized we’ve occupied this room, and then hurriedly apologized — to her, not to us — and showed her the place next door. I popped my head out into the hallway, and looked around. What I saw was a middle-aged Korean woman in somewhat formal, classy attire talking to this guy as he let her into the room next door to …
Now I know why…
I was wondering why my students were all so aware of those shootings in Virginia. Turns out the susopect is Cho Seung-Hui, whom they describe as a “Korean national”. I had to wonder whether he did his military service in the recent past, since the reports said that he was a Korean citizen, and since I also read that he was apparently a pretty good shooter (though he’d only recently bought the gun). I’ve seen guys come back from military service, shall we say, not quite “right.” But it seems this Koreanness is more of a label. Nobody seems to …
Should Study a Little More
Today I had a conversation with Lime’s mother, on the phone. Here’s a rendering of it, in English, though the original conversation was in Korean: Lime’s Mom: “Hello?” Me: “Hello?” Lime’s Mom: “Hi, Gord? This is Lime’s mother calling.” Me: “Hi. Yes. I’m knowing… er, I know.” Lime’s Mom: “How have you been?” Me: “Fine. How going it?” Lime’s Mom: “Fine, fine. But listen, I have some things to send to you. I wanted to confirm your address and get a phone number to put onto the package…” Me: “Um… phone number?” Lime’s Mom: “Yes. For the delivery guy, you …
Two More Scenes
… to go. I’ve gotten through almost 14,500 words of revision on Jjangguk, which is encouraging, since it’s only a 20,500 word story as it is. Of course, I still have an overall goal of getting it down to 15,000. This means reconciling myself to cutting things that I absolutely love. Mind you, a very well-regarded Canadian writer, Guy Vanderhaeghe, once said to us in class, “Whatever you are most proud of in your story? Cut it. Anything you love and think is great… cut it.” That’s not always the best thing to do, but it’s true that often, the …
The Spike
The writing tracker in the sidebar might suggest a sudden surge in productivity today, but in fact, that’s partly illusory. Part of the illusion is that I’m tracking “revised” words, now, which means any text that doesn’t need to be rewritten gets included. Still, I’m approximately a third of the way through my revision of “Jjangguk and the Madman of Pyongyang,” and and my pace is holding. I should note exactly what this means. I am about 35% of the way through the first complete revision of draft number 7 of the story. This doesn’t mean I’ve drafted it seven …
All in a Day
I finished reading a really good book today. Happy happy.But you need to wait for my end-of-April reviews to hear more. I am finally deep into reworking my Korean superheroes story. So far, it’s just small edits and collating the comments from my crit group — the comments I happen to agree with, anyway — but much of tomorrow and Sunday will be taken up with shoulder/digital-grindstone interfacing. After that, we’ll see. I spent an hour this evening with a tiny class of mine, discussing the first page-and-a-half of the graphic novel V for Vendetta with my students, kind of …