Editing

...is not the sexiest of topics.

I enjoy editing, which at its best is a process not so much of re-writing, but of cutting away the fat...but that means, recognizing the difference between good and bad fat.  And sometimes what looks like bad fat is actually vital connective tissue.

At any rate, spent most of the day editing the short-shorts.

One surprising aspect of the writing process:  sometimes you toss something off in fifteen minutes, and ten years later, it still resonates.  Sometimes you labor intensively for a couple months, and all you have in the end is an overwritten, useless, smelly piece of @#$#@#$.

But it's also true that without a lot of "useless" laboring, it's almost impossible to get to the point where you can toss something off, something pretty good.  It's like the famous story of the zen priest who stared at a wall for seven years, then picked up a brush and in three seconds, drew a perfect crab.

Of course the punch line of that joke would be: "Then another priest comes along and says, 'After seven years, you couldn't come up with something more useful than that?  You better go back to meditating!'"