Friday, February 24, 2012

Friday Filler: The Lameness Edition

I got nothing for you today! That's right: nothing. I'm really busy at work and busy at home and oh so tired most of the time.

We're moving forward into the production phase of the Variations on a Theme anthology, and we still plan to have it available on March 15th. That's a very aggressive schedule and if it doesn't show up for sale until, say, March 16th or 17th, I don't want to hear any complaints. Don't make me turn this car around. Don't.

Also, though I have nothing for you today, I might have something exciting and self-aggrandizing to tell you next week. We'll see. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I have written a whole paragraph of my work-in-progress's Chapter 9. I read it back and realized it was in the style of Charles Dickens. Right now I'm reading Dickens' final novel, Our Mutual Friend. Should I worry that the style of my Chapter 9 is that of Dickens? No, I don't think I should. It's just a rough draft and doubtless there are passages in the styles of Nabokov, Chekhov, O'Connor and who knows who else right now. I'm a writer of inclusion, you know. And it all gets shaken and ironed out in the revisions. Still, I was very amused. Though I doubt Dickens ever wrote, "His mind was smeared with painkillers."

Happy Friday and happy weekend, kids!

4 comments:

  1. Happy Friday, Scott! I am reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. It's not spilling into my writing yet, but in my head I am making all of these comparisons: Why don't I have perfumed crows in my book? Why aren't I using this flowery language? Why don't I juxtapose such beautiful imagery with such horrific yuck? (Okay, I do try to often do the last thing.)

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  2. Oh, this post is far from lame, hah. :)

    I don't know if I ever start sounding like what I'm reading...I should pay more attention. The problem is that I rarely read while I'm drafting a book, which means I go months without reading anything. These are not good things...

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  3. I do start to imitate the style of the novels I'm reading, and I'm in a burst of Sherlock Holmes at the moment, so it seems a tad (see, I said 'tad') strange when my Aussie kid characters are shouting 'egads!'

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  4. Read? Who has time to read? There's my entry in "Variations", my WIP, and, oh yes, that contest over at Poisoned Pen. And the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and better not forget the wife. Read, you say? I laugh in your face. Hah!

    You have a lovely weekend, Mr. Bailey. It amuses me that you call me kid.

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