Wholesale Razing

In part to remind myself what I’d written regarding the Chronicaller thread and in part out of curiosity for what someone else recently read on 1000 Days I just read back through about ten of my entries.  I suspect my positive opinion of what I’ve written is a shortcoming of an inexperienced writer.  If I knew better I would have been scandalized by the terrible things I’d written and the terrible ways I’d written them.

I wasn’t.  Or at least not universally.

Enjoying reading your own writing is a good feeling.  I’m left somewhat more heartened about what I might write in the future than I have been in the past months.

Screenwriter John August edits dull or bad passages from scripts in videos on his blog.  His near complete replacement of the original words reminds me of these house remodeling shows.  The episodes where the photogenic carpenter opens with a house situated on a particular parcel of land, then brings in a bulldozer to raze the house, then closes with a shiny new home.  Sure there is a home where another home once stood, but not exactly what I’d define as a remodel.

This analogy is unfair because words and walls aren’t exactly equal, but still technically correct in that John’s edits aren’t tweaks of grammar or upgrades on non-visual words.  He starts with a boy stealing a car and he ends with a boy stealing a car, but much better.  Either the result is more efficiently lined or more compellingly visual.

I hope I’m not overlooking portions of my own writing in need of wholesale razing.