My new book is FREE!
Just go to amazon.com and type, News To Die For.
Read it and let me know how you liked it.
I’m sure many of you are getting cabin fever because you are staying at home as much as possible during the coronavirus pandemic. What can you do to keep from going crazy?
What works for me is to read a good novel. I mean a novel with an intriguing plot, a novel with characters that I can root for, and yes, a novel with villains I can boo and hiss at. A novel that I get so involved in that I don’t put it down until the end. The problem for me and I’ll bet for you as well is such novels are hard to find.
Why do you suppose that is? There are thousands of new novels published each year. Surely some of them could meet your standards but the vast majority do not. One problem is that many new authors do not have their book proofed by an editor(s) prior to uploading it. In fact, some authors do not even have someone else read it before it is published.
The truth is according to Ernest Hemmingway, “Every first draft is shit.”
Why? Writing – all writing – is a multifaceted complex process. If you write in a stream of consciousness (meaning you just sit down and write whatever comes into your mind) what you get is a stream of shit. Shit is defined in this context as writing that is loaded with unnecessary words, writing that is unorganized, writing that even the author can’t make sense of.
If all first drafts are crap, why bother? Because a first draft is better than a blank screen. Although first drafts are nonsense, somewhere in all those words there may be a grain, a kernel maybe even a good sentence worth saving.
What you have just read took me two hours to write and self-edit. News To Die For” took seven years. What can I say? Not only am I a slow writer but even this post was rewritten several times.
Thanks for reading,
Robert E. Kimball
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