It's a strange thing, going back to revisit a work one has completed rather a long time ago. Maybe it's the nature of this particular manuscript, but once I had written this one, I very much put it away in my mind. It could have been because of how cathartic this one was, or maybe because I got to work on many other projects. Hell, I'd written FOUR other books since my publisher got to Silent Manifest, so it's possible those other stories crowded this one out.
Anyway, the editor my publisher assigned to me was a very assiduous worker, going over the manuscript with extraordinary care. The edits were both large-scale and small, covering story problems as well as style weaknesses. I can see how a person would regard this process as insulting or off-putting, but it was a necessary one. Going back and revisiting relationships, characterizations...it was a homecoming.
Still, I don't think I want to revisit this one again. Not because I don't like the story or think it's not one of my good works. I'm proud of it, and I think it's good.
But the emotions it awakened in me were ones I don't care to experience again. I always thought I wrote this at least in part as therapy. as a way of taking control of something in my past that I had very little control over. The strange thing is--I wrote about a man who found that the answers he sought were worse than the questions.
So in what sense was this therapy?
The idea of catharsis (or katharsis) is a complex one--the purging of emotion, especially pity and fear, by the process of watching something awful happen to someone else is not an easy concept to grasp. Did I accomplish that with Silent Manifest?
I don't know.
Maybe I never will know.
The incident that happened didn't happen to me--I was an observer. A helpless observer. As all helpless people do, I tried to help. Did what I could, which was nothing. A lot of nothing. In the end, events unfolded as they were going to, with all our actions meaningless.
I guess it's a kind of nihilistic therapy. If there is such a thing.
I have to be honest--I'm not really looking forward to the publicity tour on this, insignificant and inconsequential though it will be. Don't kid yourself--a few Facebook posts, some blurbs here and there which almost no one will read--the publicity stuff will be meaningless. But even so, I don't relish the thought of revisiting this work.
Be seeing you!
Anyway, the editor my publisher assigned to me was a very assiduous worker, going over the manuscript with extraordinary care. The edits were both large-scale and small, covering story problems as well as style weaknesses. I can see how a person would regard this process as insulting or off-putting, but it was a necessary one. Going back and revisiting relationships, characterizations...it was a homecoming.
Still, I don't think I want to revisit this one again. Not because I don't like the story or think it's not one of my good works. I'm proud of it, and I think it's good.
But the emotions it awakened in me were ones I don't care to experience again. I always thought I wrote this at least in part as therapy. as a way of taking control of something in my past that I had very little control over. The strange thing is--I wrote about a man who found that the answers he sought were worse than the questions.
So in what sense was this therapy?
The idea of catharsis (or katharsis) is a complex one--the purging of emotion, especially pity and fear, by the process of watching something awful happen to someone else is not an easy concept to grasp. Did I accomplish that with Silent Manifest?
I don't know.
Maybe I never will know.
The incident that happened didn't happen to me--I was an observer. A helpless observer. As all helpless people do, I tried to help. Did what I could, which was nothing. A lot of nothing. In the end, events unfolded as they were going to, with all our actions meaningless.
I guess it's a kind of nihilistic therapy. If there is such a thing.
I have to be honest--I'm not really looking forward to the publicity tour on this, insignificant and inconsequential though it will be. Don't kid yourself--a few Facebook posts, some blurbs here and there which almost no one will read--the publicity stuff will be meaningless. But even so, I don't relish the thought of revisiting this work.
Be seeing you!
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