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 …