Wednesday 18 November 2009

November Poems 17

A Novel Big Bang

Words explode
filling the page
in a frenzy of activity
lines of dialogue
collide with reams of descriptive passages,
settings, character portraits, plot
and is cut
edited
moved
clipped
until the whole thing
is almost
(but not quite)
entirely unlike a novel –

the characters
are drowning in purple
and sinking
under the weight of verbs.

I screw the whole thing up
an implosion
of plotting and writing
leaving just the premise
to survive

4 comments:

aims said...

Tear it down and build it again? Hmmm - seems like the story of life really doesn't it?

Rachel Green said...

It's called editing ;)

Unknown said...

Fantastic (and true) description of the process. It is a bit bloody, isn't it?

Rachel Green said...

Kill your darlings, they say ;)