Which in this instance means I won't be spending too much time with the truth today ...
The grass has riz. Flowers have bloomed every which way, the sun is shining through clear skies, and it's gonna hit seventy-five degrees F. here today, maybe a tad warmer, which has resulted in spring fever.
Spring fever. Those of you unfamiliar with the term, it means that my desire to work is nil. Not so much that I want to go bask in the day, though walking the dogs is more fun when it's not raining and forty degrees; it's that the desire to play hooky permeates everything.
Didn't want to get up from the cozy bed, don't want to crank on the book that's due next. Don't want to think about responsibilities I slip into with my clothes each day. Kind of feel like playing the guitar or the ukulele and staring out the window at passers-by is overly ambitious ...
But, okay, a little work here, for the writers ...
Pursuant to the Stellar Rangers ebook coming out, which I happened to mention in the post immediately prior to this one, I picked up a yellowing copy of the novel last night and started to read it.
But before I get too far down that road ...
Writers, like actors, have different relationships with their work. Some never look at stuff they've done before. Once it is finished, they move on; that story is over, finished, no point in going back and noticing all the spots that weren't spackled and painted cleanly because you really can't fix it. (Yep, I could touch-up an ebook, it being a new edition, but some of the touch-ups go to things like fixing yesterday's future. Book was written nearly twenty years ago, and some of what was cool and futuristic tech looks a little dated. I could change the CD-ROM into a biomem or visual purple storage, but the tone would still be off without a major rewrite. I read a couple books of collected short stories by John D. MacDonald once upon a time, in which he had gone back and tried to update things like how much a new radio cost, or what a train ticket ran. It clunked–and that didn't happen much with Travis McGee's daddy. The reason was that a fresh coat of paint wasn't enough. Sure, he could make the radios and bus tickets more expensive than they'd been when he'd written the stories in the 1950's, but listening to radios instead of watching the tube, and taking the Greyhound instead of riding in one's car were part of the times-tone. Better he should have left them period pieces; didn't hurt Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler.)
In the course of a book's creation and going off to market, writers are apt to read it several times. There is the day-to-day re-reading of what's partially done. A read for errors once the draft is finished, and again after the rewrite. Once the editors go over it, there is the copy-edited manuscript. Then the galleys. And when it is published, a final read to check for typos. So five reads, which is enough for most of us. It goes onto the shelf. Slightly fewer reads with an ebook, since there isn't a copy-edited ms, nor a galley, but still.
Now and again, after a decade or two, I'll pick one of my books up and start into it. I find it interesting to see how I treated certain tropes and situations of which I am fond in earlier incarnations. Oh, yeah, that's where I came up with that the first time. Huh.
By and large, rereading the old stuff is not an unhappy experience. I was on a panel with Ursula once, and a fan asked her if going back and reading her early stuff was painful. Actually, no, she said. I'm usually surprised with how much better it was than I remembered.
Me, too.
So, there is something to be learned from revisiting stories from long ago.
So far, I'm enjoying the ranger as he moves through his adventure against the bad guys. There are some fun touches, nods to the Matadors, guns, martial arts, and one I had forgotten: The old rancher he's working with is named "Gus Kohl." If you are a fan of McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, and how can you not be? this is a pretty obvious pairing of names in a bow to the master.
Um. Okay. All done now. Let's go see how I can fritter away work time doing something else ...
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