Category: Blog

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

I’m still knee-deep in the edits, and you might be wondering what the hell I’m actually doing all this time. Basically at this stage in the book’s life (the end of draft 5), I’m looking for three things:

1) Checking that the edits I’ve put through actually make sense. These were additions to develop a theme that had been underexpressed in the earlier drafts. I was worried these would feel bolted on and not flow with the rest of it, so I’m smoothing them in a little more, and making sure I didn’t just repeat myself half a dozen times throughout the book and call that developing a theme.

2) Repetition edits. These are things that aren’t actually wrong, but just don’t sound so great when they keep coming up. Favourite adjectives (the bland ‘lovely’ in my case) and verbs (’slog’, ‘grump’) keep coming up, and you only really find them if you read the whole thing pretty quickly. Also here are phrases that you’ve used before – ‘the only restaurant in town’ ‘so wet I could feel the water sloshing in my shoes’.

3) General nips and tucks. There are still sentences that could sound better (and there always will be), so I’m polishing as I go along. Sometimes it’s something that I’ve never really liked, and now’s the time to fix it. Other times, I’ve suddenly had a brainwave on how it could be better. I’m also chopping – the book was around 85,000 words in the last draft. I’ve added a few bits here and there, but I reckon I can still get it down to around 81,000 without anyone noticing.

And that’s the thankless thing about editing – the better you do it, the less it looks like you’ve done anything at all. It should read like it always had to be that way, but it takes a ridiculous amount of work to make it seem like it was effortless.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

My dreams sometimes have a coherent plot to them, and last night’s was great, incorporating Busaras and the P45 site reworked as the submarine thing from The Matrix. Problems with the site were represented by leaking pipes on board the craft, and there was a guy there fixing them.

Also featuring was Irish Times tech journo Karlin Lillington, who turned up to tell me to read some articles she’d written for defunct web developers Nua (my ex-employers). The articles were interviews with twins who had pursued very different paths in life, some conservative, some more adventurous.

At the conclusion of the dream, people gathered round to see me interpret a simple bit of code on a piece of paper. The message was of great importance, somehow, and it said simply, ‘I MUST WRITE ME’.

Weird, and fruitful ground for some funky interpretation. I’m taking heart from it, seeing it as a bit of advice from my subconscious to be the twin who does the interesting work, and commit myself to the writing.

But Bus as Larry Fishburne was a image I’ll not forget, either.

Friday, October 10, 2003

I don’t need a psychologist, I’ve got an editor. I just met up with her there, to go over the transcript again. She’d spotted all the areas where I was being a bit mealy-mouthed, or trying to paint over certain things.

But basically it’s clear what I have to do for the final version before the copy edit. Put a bit more of me in there, play down some of the duller days when I’m not talking to anyone and everything’s going fine, and add a few more entertaining digressions. It’s a fair bit of work, but it will definitely improve the finished book.

For those of you who are counting, this will be draft 4 since I sent it to them, and you can add one full revision before that, plus the valuable input from a couple of trusted friends. That’s a lot of work, and you can really see where it’s gone, when I think of the earlier versions.

There’s one downside to all this improvement – it means printing out another 230 pages, so it’s not much fun if you’re a tree.

Saturday, October 04, 2003

Switched on the radio this morning to hear my friend Kevin Stevens on Radio 1, talking about his new book, The Rizzoli Contract.

I worked with Kevin in CBT Systems/Smartforce/Skillsoft/Whatever, and he always had a writing project on the go, in addition to whatever dull work we were being paid to do. How he found the time was impressive, with his family commitments too. He never complained about having to do the day job either. And now his book’s out.

It’s a useful lesson for me. After three days back at work, I’m feeling frustrated I’m not working on the Mississippi book, but too tired when I come in to get stuck in. And being newly married, it wouldn’t be great if I retreated up to the office for hours in the evening anyway.

Currently, I have to just keep positive about the day job, and disciplined enough to get some work done on book 2 (plus more Accidental Pilgrim edits coming soon). It’s an attitude thing, and right now, mine’s not the best.

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

I used to drop off articles for The Irish Times in the days before email (or rather, before they were accepting submissions via email), when they needed a floppy and a printout of the piece. The Features floor was as dull as every other office I’d ever been in, but I found it amazing that while most people’s work makes hardly a mark on the outside world, there were newspapers being loaded onto trucks downstairs.

Out in RTE, there was a similar mismatch between the setting for the work, and the reach it has.

Upstairs was all cube farms with walls just high enough for prairie-dogging. But walk down the stairs (past the rail of costumes – in the radio building?) and here are the studios. The host’s desk with flat panel monitor and all the gubbins, a semicircle of table with three mics and sets of cans for the guests. A big window out to the producer and engineer outside.

While the news is on, Marian Finucane walks in, says hello, puts on her headphones as her theme music is on, and times her cheery ‘Good morning’ to the nation in less time than it takes to describe it.

She ran the interviews (talking about blogging, of course) smoothly and with a view to getting good quotes out of us, and suddenly we were outside again, signing waivers and heading out to the cab.

It’s hard to imagine our words being broadcast around the country, but the taxi driver had obviously been listening: ‘So you’re the bloggers, then?’ he asked as we drove away.

Monday, September 15, 2003

Dublin looks fantastic from the balcony of a room in the Fitzwilliam Hotel.

The in-laws-to-be have arrived, and they must think that the whole city is full of sunshine, trendy restaurants and beautiful greenery. Much like the Queen of England thinks the whole world smells of fresh paint.

Almost ten years to the day since I moved to this most frustrating of cities, I’ve got the chance to see it through some new eyes.

I used to wonder what tourists did when they came here; lacking the killer attractions of capitals like Rome or Paris, or the mad diversity of London and New York, I imagined them huddled on tour buses staring balefully out over slightly decrepit Georgian terraces, still hungry from their meagre ham and cheese toasty at lunch.

Much better, I thought, to live here. The city’s strengths were the people, the craic, the miles of stories, ideas and jokes, the sneaky afternoon pints, the community.

Now I’m not so sure. Ten years on, and Dublin works even less well than it did back then. Those with (new) money have become obnoxious, and those without have become more bitter and sour. When nobody had much, we were all in the same boat.

But staring out over the Green from the elegantly understated rooms at the Fitzwilliam, you don’t see any of that. You see a ridiculously young city permanently on the tear, barrelling down handsome streets lined with cool restuarants and bars.

And with the sun shining as it did over the weekend, the Phoenix Park is gorgeous and even the murky Liffey looks OK. When you’re a tourist, you’re not worrying about a nightmare commute from out near Athlone, and if the prices seem high, well, you’re on vacation, what the hell?

Sad to say, I now think Dublin’s best experienced from the top of a sightseeing bus.