Foundation and Firmament

Shifting sands beneath the story

Hey! When do you consider a job done?

Although the real question might be the difference between a job well done and simply terminating a task.

Perfection is ever the enemy of completion.

Instead, I want to evoke an idea that’s been drifting through my thoughts as I edit Significatorius.

I want to examine the illusion that comes with finishing a first rough draft. While the story may indeed exist, what the words then become can often be unrecognizable.

That is to say, with editing and revisions it sometimes feels like a new story is born.

Slight Exaggeration

Now, it is certainly true a narrative can completely transform as the dust settles into a coalesced final draft.

However, some changes are small. A quick snip or a slight shift that ends up altering everything down the line.

I will add that in my experience, minor edits drastically alter the pacing and the structure, but they often don’t fundamentally rewrite the whole story.

As a vague example — I wouldn’t want to spoil things just yet — I knew there were some pacing issues I needed to work out in Significatorius. A few scenes that I felt like would greatly benefit from moving up in time.

However, that relatively simple shift causes a ripple effect across the story. Characters need to be reconsidered — not just in who can even be present, but in how they should act at that point in the story!

What I find particularly magical about those effects though, is how it really does result in something that’s much closer to the emotions I wanted to convey.

Highest Stage

I sat at my unstable desk for the fourth night in a row. Everything made sense, but it was all wrong.

What I lacked in confidence, I thought I would make up in conviction.

I was wrong.

I’m so tired of having to care.

It’s not that I’m unaffected, it’s that my energy is used. A waste of space for those who can still fight further.

Even if everything makes sense, I am not the one who made manifest that which was inevitable. I cannot. For even with inaction, to where I point, we must go.

“Last call! Gather your shit and get off the train!”

They were rude in the later years. Everyone knew it was going to fall and yet no one wanted to say it. I was seen as courageous for writing down what everyone already knew.

And even in that twilight empire, it is seen as folly.

Frightened by the absence of an invisible hand, we pray to a god who does not listen.

And even though I once believed the path was clear—

No.

I struggle to finish the clause.

All around me, I see nothing but fear.

Fear of being the first to move.

That will all soon change.

If not for the better, then for what must come next.

Wants and Needs

It’s hard to describe exactly how it works. The whole process of writing is not a fully fleshed out method for me and more akin to courting a muse.

It’s a game of emotions and feeling out what feels right.

That then comes with accepting the idea of a draft being more of a map than a finished product. It quickly gets confusing though because both the map and the directions can be wrong, leading you nowhere fast.

The challenge is thus less about following that map and more about realizing it may need to be entirely redrawn from fragmented pieces.

Editing is clearing a path, charting the route, and rewriting the road itself.

At least for me.

And if nothing else, that’s an idea worth sharing.

Until next time.

—JMB