To Never Be Finished
April 30, 2000
9:02 a.m.
I've managed to work a deal out for you guys with Rob Stephenson at Altair. Anyone who comes from this site and orders a copy of issue 5 (that includes my collaboration with Lyn Nichols), will receive a 10% discount on the issue price.  Click on the cover to get to the order form. You may note that checkboxes for this issue aren't ready yet, but you can put your desire into the comments box, and go from there. Worse comes to worse, you can always e-mail Rob to make the deal direct. You have to mention you came from my site in order to get the discount, understand? Now for the hardboiled testimonial. I've read the issue in question. It's a fine piece of work, with lots of really nice stuff in it. My own work is a piece I'm very pleased with. I think it's a nice blending of my talents with Lyn's and was one of those collaborations where everything she did made me go "wow" that's great (and from what she's told me, it was visa versa). So, for those of you who take avdvantage of Altair's offer, let me know what you thought.   Enough commercialism, eh? Yesterday's mail brought a manila envelop from Dell magazines. It was the galley proofs of "The Taranth Stone," which will appear in the October issue of Analog. For those of you who remember me moaning and whining during the process of writing that story, I sweated blood over it. I wrote umpteen (stress on the teen) drafts and went over the microwriting a gazillion times. So, when I sat down on the couch and started reading over the piece again, you would expect that I would be pleased with it, right? Well... Kind of. The story is good -- I hadn't read it in a long time, and the distance made me feel pretty good about it. I found myself getting caught up in it the way I had when I finally hit the right stride. I'm very proud of it. Yet, still ... I think a writer, when given the chance, would generally jump to make a "few little changes" to about everything he has done. I know there are bits of stories I would do differently now than I did when they were published. And I think that's fine. I'm a different writer now than I was then. By definition, I would put things different ways, present them differently. It is a human being's lot to never be finished. I restrained myself yesterday, though. The galley stage is not for rewriting. The galley stage is for minor typographical corrections and gentle tweaking. When I was done, I had marked only one real change, and two suggestions to be incorporated only if they didn't affect the spacing of the piece. Then I went downstairs and got back to work on the rest of life. The rest of life is swarming these days. Literally. But I won't go there. Brigid is signed up for horse camp (for those of you who asked after this entry, there's your answer) for a week, then a two week girl scout camp. We're planning Worldcon but haven't figured the specifics because we weren't sure when Brigid's school would be in session. We've now found out, so we needed to get this put together. We've been planning to plan a vacation for some time. I'm still embroiled in generation of the "Taranth Stone" sequel idea, and there's farm work to do -- for new folks, I'm trustee of farmland in northern Indiana that takes some doing right now. I'm sure I've forgotten something. Beside all that, the grass continues to grow.  Astroturf -- the only solution Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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