ext_13245 ([identity profile] kelljones.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] aamcnamara 2010-07-01 05:42 am (UTC)

How is your revision process (for novels, particularly, but short stories as well) reflected in the material things and/or software structures that you use?

Like [livejournal.com profile] mrissa, I write skeleton drafts and tend to use different things to revise, everything from Scrivener to sticky notes to index cards to white boards to cut-up drafts. Oh, and sometimes spreadsheets. I think this is partly to see different things about whatever I'm working on (for instance, I can use different colors of index cards to categorize scenes), but mostly because I need the vision and particularly for me the motion of doing something differently to shake my brain into seeing it differently. It's all about getting perspective for me.

And now I'm being a pedant! But I put sick-making in a different category from the others -- it's 1930s-ish British slang, in my view.

(Ooh, and I even checked the OED -- apparently that's how I get my thrills -- and yes: "1930 E. WAUGH Vile Bodies i. 7 Sometimes the ship pitched and sometimes she rolled... ‘Too, too *sick~making,’ said Miss Runcible, with one of her rare flashes of accuracy." Also from the OED, just to torment you: "1938 DYLAN THOMAS Let. c 6 July (1966) 203 There will be speechmaking, drunkmaking, sickmaking and we must all dress up.")

That said, you are entirely free to hate the construction!

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