Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Getting back to work

The holiday seems to be over. It's Kauto's last day home before the kindergarten opens again. It's only appropriate that it's raining like hell. Well, we got to swim last Thursday when it was still beautiful and warm, and Kauto liked it so much that it was hard to get him out of the pool.

But it's not very nice to try to start working when you get criticized for the quality of your work. I shouldn't be so hard on myself, since the piece of text I'm referring to was written for another venue and not for the book itself, but still I got angry and frustrated. This has happened before. I remember very well when I got the first referee reviews from the manuscript that was later to become The White Heat. I was angry for three days and couldn't do much. (Now that I look at the book, I think the response from the referees should've been much harder - or better structured and argumented so that I would've better known what to fix.)

Ah well. This goes by. It's always gone. What I'd really like to know is that is there a writer, non-fiction or fiction, who likes to be criticized? Is there someone who really likes the editing process, with someone trying to get in and change the text that is so dear to the writer? Of course the text usually (and I believe that in this case this will happen) gets better, but the actual process?

Since I haven't been blogging for weeks, there are lots of books that I've read and should be blogging about (and over on Mystery*File's blog I made a promise to write about the two John Marshall Tanner books by Stephen Greenleaf I recently read), but we'll see what I'm really going to do about that. I'll be having a hell of Fall ahead of me, with too many deadlines, and I'm afraid I'll have to cut down my blogging. Or at least something needs to be done in order to get the jobs finished.

Ah well. Now I'm gonna go and have the rest of my holiday.

PS. I heard a rumour someone's circulating my interview from a small newspaper in e-mail. Is this true? Please, let me see myself!

3 comments:

Allan Guthrie said...

"Is there someone who really likes the editing process, with someone trying to get in and change the text that is so dear to the writer?"

Absolutely. My writing can always be improved but I don't always know how, no matter how objective I try to be. If someone can show me how to do that before the book goes to print, I'm indebted to them.

Al

Juri said...

Yes, you're absolutely right, but do you enjoy the process - or the outcome? (Must get your book by the way, the reviews have been great.)

Allan Guthrie said...

If the editorial notes come from a trusted source, then I enjoy acting on them, yes.

And thanks for reading the right reviews.

Al