Thursday, July 30, 2026

cue the endless edits & amendments & revisions

This phase of things shouldn't be too bad.  Usually, after completely scripting a book (Painless, Denizen, Azure Pantry), I'll go into reread & edit line by line; testing the rhythms of dialogue, the pace of exchange, and fix all the Real Obvious Fuckups.  Chop.  Fill in.  Until the thing has defined itself satisfactorily, when I really Hear the words spoken, without reading them aloud.  The persistent problem with this stage, I've found, is the abundance of really obvious mistakes spellcheck doesn't get-- where there's an automatic linefill, some kind of substitution situation where you didn't mangle the word, you just mistyped so the processor can't hang any red lace on it...  A completely nonsensical sentence will sit there for weeks of revision with a Bad Error which I can't see because my brain's glazed over with all the other work that must be attended to.  It's embarrassing and a real argument for having an independent editorial voice, a reader who isn't the author, but at this phase in my professional personality as an Artist I'm no longer interested in sharing unfinished work with others, and I certainly don't want to hear "I'm going to read it, I swear" used as an excuse by ANYone, let along a friend, so why put people through it?  I'm not using fucking AI to read my scripts, so it's down to me and my OCD to find all the goofs and fine-tune the troofs I wrote while wearing my SmArt Faggot hat.  I don't think this one's gonna be too much of a problem because if I fuck up continuity between chapters it's only going to enhance the final effect THE KILL HOUSE is going for.  Art house is where it's at, and aggressive unconcern with a reader's comfort only becomes more attractive to me as I grow ever further estranged from John & Karen Q. Public.  I like Refn movies with no dialogue, and 800-plus page books about imaginary cities written with the structural conceit of a geometrical puzzle, whose primary Plot is fucking and who does who where.  So this book shouldn't be any surprise to anyone familiar with my psyche.  It's more cluttered & up its own ass with theory than this blog.

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