Monday, 23 December 2002

Well, I finally finished the re-write of "Snare." I'm printing a copy. I'll get Jackie to read it, and her mom (who's visiting this week). There's a guy at work who's read a few stories and has provided some useful critiques. This story has already gotten two rounds of critiques, though, so I don't expect it to change a lot. I'll start sending it out to editors early in the new year.

I spent just a few minutes working on the analysis/critique that I'd started a few weeks ago of the next story I want to rewrite. It's an interesting process. I can see what ought to be the high points, buried in and amongst the other stuff. I need to finish my analysis, but I see the beginnings of a plan.

I've been reading Plowing the Dark by Richard Powers, which I picked up off the remainder table. Powers is a local author, here at the University of Illinois, I guess. I hadn't really been aware of his work, except that I'd glanced at Galatea 2.2 when it was new. I'm less than 100 pages into Plowing the Dark, and it's off too a good start, except that it's got certain stylistic elements that I find really distracting. It doesn't use quote marks, instead the dialog is rendered in italics, usually without speech tags. Sections with one particular character are done in second person. Perhaps there's some good reason why he chose to do these things--maybe it will become clear as I read more--but so far they don't seem to accomplish anything except to make the story harder to read.