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My niece does it too. And publishes one wildly successful book after another on yoga for athletes. And has run marathons and iron-man competitions even though she's very svelte. And has coached the UNC football team and the Junior Olympic Team in Colorado (in yoga). And was named top student at Wake Forest University even though her father was a dean there. One time I saw a blue book she wrote for a final college exam. Not a single cross-through in the entire thing. And she became a full professor in English before she ever did sports. And is married and has two excellent daughters-- she does it all.
Still, have you ever seen a James Joyce manuscript? More squiggles than the most elaborate mandala ever. Cross-throughs, hash, inserts, addendums. Even the Nabokov originals I saw showed all sorts of signs of messy editing. Both Joyce and Nabokov could write clear script that was so small that they could insert it everywhere. Nabokov would have his wife Vera do the typing later.
So which way does the human mind work best? I would suggest that one may make the big bucks if one is relentlessly facile and coherent, but personally, I'd rather steer closer toward the Stymplades (probably misspelled). And between them if possible. They are the rocks that Jason steered through as they wanted to come together to turn him into bug splat.
"Bug splat" is what the worst people in the Military, apparently, call the collateral killing of innocents by drones. (Of course in this country it's getting so you can't say anything bad about anybody in the Military, and I blame the last two presidents for that-- a dumber Jim and a far dumber Huck. There's much I like about Obama but not the vapid, harebrained, non-critical way he and Joe Biden talk about the Military-- not at all.)
I'm with you on messing with individual words maybe to find out what they really mean. And on re-doing, and re-thinking, and re-looking. The only way writing can work at the highest level is if one never gets there. I'm sure tennis or anything else worth doing is exactly the same way. You're a very good writer, by the way, you certainly always are looking.
Oh, I just was a bit glibly cynical about excessively coherent people. Mozart is said to have been able to get things right in one take. But Beethoven re-worked all the time and is great, too. And Fred Astaire is said to have gotten things right in one take but I heard a lot recently about all the takes that he and Ginger took to achieve a certain famous scene in the movies.
My older sister was top student at her school but used to hide all her books and papers under the bed when someone knocked on her door. With image-control like that so rampant in the world, how can one ever know exactly what to think?
Still, have you ever seen a James Joyce manuscript? More squiggles than the most elaborate mandala ever. Cross-throughs, hash, inserts, addendums. Even the Nabokov originals I saw showed all sorts of signs of messy editing. Both Joyce and Nabokov could write clear script that was so small that they could insert it everywhere. Nabokov would have his wife Vera do the typing later.
So which way does the human mind work best? I would suggest that one may make the big bucks if one is relentlessly facile and coherent, but personally, I'd rather steer closer toward the Stymplades (probably misspelled). And between them if possible. They are the rocks that Jason steered through as they wanted to come together to turn him into bug splat.
"Bug splat" is what the worst people in the Military, apparently, call the collateral killing of innocents by drones. (Of course in this country it's getting so you can't say anything bad about anybody in the Military, and I blame the last two presidents for that-- a dumber Jim and a far dumber Huck. There's much I like about Obama but not the vapid, harebrained, non-critical way he and Joe Biden talk about the Military-- not at all.)
I'm with you on messing with individual words maybe to find out what they really mean. And on re-doing, and re-thinking, and re-looking. The only way writing can work at the highest level is if one never gets there. I'm sure tennis or anything else worth doing is exactly the same way. You're a very good writer, by the way, you certainly always are looking.
Oh, I just was a bit glibly cynical about excessively coherent people. Mozart is said to have been able to get things right in one take. But Beethoven re-worked all the time and is great, too. And Fred Astaire is said to have gotten things right in one take but I heard a lot recently about all the takes that he and Ginger took to achieve a certain famous scene in the movies.
My older sister was top student at her school but used to hide all her books and papers under the bed when someone knocked on her door. With image-control like that so rampant in the world, how can one ever know exactly what to think?
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