On the evidence of several pieces of mine published in several obscure print quarterlies, I was once asked by the editor of a non-trivial print media daily whether I would consider joining the staff of his publication's arts desk as a classical music reviewer. Flattering as the invitation was, I turned it down — most graciously, of course — on the inarguably disqualifying ground that my interests in and knowledge of the field were far too narrow to qualify me for such a position.
While an entirely honest, sufficient, and noble-sounding demur, there were other, less noble and unspoken reasons for my declining the invitation, not the least of which is my neurotic objection to anyone changing even so much as a comma of my copy without my express permission, and my peculiar method of preparing copy for print publication; a method I've tried an uncountable number of times to alter, and each time failed — abjectly.
For a typical 1000-word piece, the method goes like this:
1: Bang out a first draft using a word processor.
2: Print out a hardcopy and correct obvious errors and missteps which nevertheless escaped my notice on-screen which they do with alarming frequency.
3: Print out a hardcopy of the edited ms, and place in a desk drawer to stew unseen and unthought of for a full day.
4: Remove the ms from the desk drawer, reread, and correct and refine further.
5: Repeat steps 2-4 as many times as necessary until a finished, fully polished ms finally emerges; a point not always immediately recognized and requiring enormous discipline to accept once recognized, that point being the point at which any further tweaking of the ms will result in diminishment rather than refinement.
The inescapable consequence of the above process is that a simple 1000-word piece, fully polished and ready for print, requires an absolute minimum of one full week (usually longer) to emerge to my satisfaction — needless to say, hardly a process that fulfills the needs and requirements of a print media daily.
Or of a blog that pretends to anything more than a mere diary-type journal as does Sounds & Fury. I've, of course, been forced to abandon this process in writing entries for Sounds & Fury with the result that there's not a single entry on this blog — be it 100 words or 1000 in length — that has not been edited, typically several times, subsequent to its posting. Such edits are never noted unless they change matters of substance or correct factual errors, but they've been done nevertheless.
And so, if you read a newly posted entry on Sounds & Fury and discover questionable syntax, lame or infelicitous language or phrasing or clear typos, read the entry again some 48 hours later. Chances are that the clear typos will all have been corrected, and what you found questionable or lame or infelicitous first time round is questionable or lame or infelicitous no longer.
And that goes for this entry as well.
Acting In Opera
Hillary
