Story

The remix story is in bits, literally. This is the problem of writing at work, then on the train, then at home. No.1 on things-to-do-this-weekend list: shuffle it into some coherent whole. This is often a harder and longer task than writing it.

I used to think that the initial narrative flow of a story I'd written was something set in stone - that it had come out of me this way and therefore must be right, and that if I could pick up a paragraph and put it somewhere else and it would fit better, then that was a sign I was doing something wrong.  What a strange thing to think. Like I was putting my faith in the notion that creation was the most important thing, and that any change after that weakened the supposed pure form of what you'd done. Who was it who said writing without an editor is like mumbling to yourself in the dark? I can't remember, but I wish I did.  Writing, like painting or music or design, is a process of trial and error and the application of critical faculties to be able to tell if the original thing is lacking something and needs to be improved. In fact, in design, it's always assumed that the original thing is lacking, because it hasn't been exposed to use and testing. Hello, red pen of the editor. After time, and some experience, I've come to think it's okay to shuffle and to chop up and arrange stories, to make them, hopefully, better.