Category Archives: editing
Small, green plastic frogs
Due to recent advances, I can now reveal the first and last line of The Last Monk. It begins with 'The house is suddenly filled with music', and ends with the words 'small, green plastic frogs'.
It's a philosophical piece, obviously.
Also posted in The Last Monk, writing Comments closed
Tempting hats, kinky chairs and reverse-somersaulting climaxes
I've spent much of the last three weeks informing the reader (also the spouse, the neighbour and the teen-aged sales assistant at J.B. HiFi) of my revelation that before I could type a single word of the grand climax of The Last Monk, time would be required to percolate, to mull, and generally to walk around parks scowling at ducks in the vain hope that someone would ask me what I was looking so thoughtful about.
Quite a bit of time, I thought. About a fortnight.
As it happens, it took about six hours.
Also posted in LaTrobe Reading Room, photos, writing Comments closed
The consultant in the fruit box
I did some quick sums a couple of days ago and realised that my final act is now seventy pages long, and I haven't even got to the really exciting bit yet.
This gave me an excuse to do something I've always enjoyed, which is editing in widescreen. Because there's a lot of material, and the changes I anticipated would most likely involve shuffling big chunks of text around, the best way to do it is to print the whole thing out, spread it out on the floor and scan it from a distance to let the large-scale structures reveal themselves.
Here then is what my living room floor looked like this morning:
Also posted in editorial consultant, photos, writing Comments closed
scissors and paste