It's been about three months, more-or-less, since I finished the first-draft of my Shakespeare adaption, and I suppose I really should get around to actually calling it by its new name in this here journal. All part of the service, right? If I don't actually refer to it by name, then it's less real, which doesn't entirely make sense unless I do a little more to explain.
I've been terribly, horribly paranoid about the whole process. Really, it's rather unlike me. I have absolutely no idea why I have been so completely and utterly convinced that somebody is going to steal my idea. The arrogance alone in simply just imagining such a thing really isn't worth getting into. My own little ego head and leave it at that.
Anyway, I've been paranoid, as I said. Been more than a little reluctant to describe what I've been up to. Mention the specific Shakespeare play that I've adapted or the kind-of things I've done to it as part of the adaptation. Been really very cagey. Reluctant to talk about. That kind-of thing. Silly, really.
Maybe, it's just the fact that I've been working on an adaptation. That alone is downright embarrassing. Well, it's not original, is it? Adaptation. Working off someone else's shit. Not an original idea at all. Okay, let's just stay away from the whole stupidity about how there are no new original ideas under the sun. Only one-hundred and one plots or whatever stupid/cool number somebody used to sound profound or the title or their book or whatnot. Yes, yes, nothing truly original. I get that. You know what I mean. I didn't sit around and think of something cool. I didn't dream up a wholly original to me sequence of known plot elements and character characteristics. I filched from Shakespeare. There's reasons for that, remember? Anyway, still find it embarrassing and humiliating or something. Probably why I don't like to talk about it. All that paranoia about coming in second just a smokescreen to my own sheepish little thoughts.
Who knows. Who cares. Moving on.
It's been about three months since I finished the first-draft of Pyrrhic Kingdom. That's hopefully long enough. Time to start editing. Hopefully long enough that I can read the text with just a hint of objectivity. A willingness to slash red ink through whole swatches of text. Burn it all. Rewrite at whim. Well, mostly just slash and burn. If there's one thing I hate, it's overwriting, and I don't mean the type of overwriting I dump here for what I imagine is humorous effect. I mean the kind-of kitchen sink writing that leaves me in such a bother with books and shit I read. Makes me want to hurl the works at the wall. Rip out whole pages. Skim paragraphs. I really can't stand it when I can read one sentence out of every three and still know exactly what's gong on. Oh, god, what did I read recently where I was able to do exactly that? Read one sentence out of every paragraph, and it simply didn't matter. Some book. Doesn't matter.
Anyway, I'm really curious to see how much fat I can cut away. I've gotten through the first fifty pages or so. There's one scene where I've done a bit of nipping and tucking. Overall, not so much. Well, really, it's because the text is already so spartan. I went with a seriously minimalist approach. There's reason for this having to do with tone that I'm not going to get into. See my egotism and paranoia referenced above.
Outside of an increased willingness to butcher one's own little darlings on a massive scale with a three to six month wait is also the fact that such a wait increases the chances I will spot those stupid little drive me completely bat-shit crazy typos. Nothing makes me want to gauge out my eyes more than reading back through a copy of one of my published books and stumbling across a real humdinger of a typo. I mean, god fuck your favorite puppy to death with a disease laden chocolate-coated spoon, I really hate overlooking typos. Just edit them in the head. Don't even notice they are there. I discovered one just recently in The Etymology of Fire. Made me want to spit fire. Find out if it's physically possible to break a Kindle in half. Oh, and the best part is that I can't even remember what the typo was. Seriously, I lost it. Which means it is still out there. Haunting me. Every copy of The Etymology of Fire still contains at least one more dastardly little typo just giggling away. Mocking me. Always mocking me.
Oh, well.
Hey, at least I've already found one typo in Pyrrhic Kingdom. Found a “shoe” where there should have been the word “show.” Yeah, I'm happy about that.
None of which is what I had been planning on writing about in this here journal entry today, of course. Don't know why I plan these things or think I'm planning these things. Of course, when I don't plan and just start typing, I usually wind-up with some completely self-serving idiotic little piece of doggerel about why I don't write more journal entries. Read it with me now. I just don't want to post something just to have something to post. Nor do I want to sound like a broken record having completed or not completed, as the case may be, so many more dozens of words or very occasionally musical notes. And, let us not get started on just how insanely fucking frustrated I am that I haven't gotten any music done lately. Yeah, let's stay away from that pleasant little shit-storm if we can manage it.
Three months and I didn't get any musical vignettes started. Nope. Not a note. Not even a sausage. I shall attempt to avoid spewing vitriol in the general direction of my freaking day job in this here space today, thank you very much. Makes me wonder what my co-workers must think of me if they ever stumble across this little magnetic gem of a godforsaken website. My boss was asking me how I was doing one day, and all I could wonder was if she had taken a gander at my most recent journal entry. Oops. Not much kindness directed at my day job in that last entry. Feel kind-of sheepish about that. Oh, well.
Did I mention that my day job tends to leave me exhausted? Did I? Yeah, probably, Hence, the adaptation rather than any particular story I actually happened to care about.
Not that I'm not enamored of Pyrrhic Kingdom but never mind.
I was going to write about the fact Pyrrhic Kingdom doesn't have chapter breaks and how this really doesn't exactly work in this transitional semi-post-paperback, dead-tree, book world we're currently living within. See, an ebook automatically breaks the text up into sub-files for easier rendering on the screen. Or, it's supposed to. Or, it really should. I mean my ebook reader can take a minute to start rendering when the file has too many freaking words in it. Break it down, you bastards. Make it easier on your poor, pathetic reading audience.
Anyway, I've broken my text into multiple files; even though, there are no chapter breaks. Leaves the issue of a table-of-contents. Ebooks loves a good table-of-contents, which kind-of defeats the purpose of a chapterless book if you've got to include chapters for the electric version.
Anyway, there's more I thought I could prattle on about chapters and the value or lack thereof, but this is long enough. Need an excuse to write another entry next week or month or six months or whatever.