Okay, so the Old Salt Blogs. Cut and paste all these gorgeous little tales into a word file, convert it to some kind of design program, lay it out, find the cash to print it. Print it. Easy.
Not.
Printing these stories onto paper renders them unreadable. There is no continuity, no narrative, no theme. The whole lot needs to be rewritten and reworked. Bridges need to be built, stories wrought completely out of shape. That conversational style of chatting about where I went fishing last night and what Old Salt said just doesn't work on the page, yet in blog format it is, ahem, seductively brilliant. It is a working case of the media shaping the content. I worry that editing of the Old Salt Blogs will polish the roughness and shining existentialism of the blog post away, yet it is plain to anyone that the polishing must be done.
We are working for the Easter long weekend. It will be cutting that present tense rhetoric text real fine ...
Can't you keep the blog format and diarize your tales, adding a bit off fluff to connect the narrative?
ReplyDeleteIt would be great to read, I love the Old Salt Blogs.
Is diarize a word? My spell check didn't like it, suggested I might have meant to write diarrhoea, which is strange as I don't know how to spell diarrhoea.
Excellent. You just learnt how not to spell diarrhea!
ReplyDeleteOur Sunshine and spent hours last night going over them. It was quite a shock at first to see they read so badly on paper, but I think we are getting somewhere now. It's going to take a lot of work though, a few rewrites. It needs fluff, yes.
It's such an interesting problem, this switching genre or format. I think the whole conundrum would make a good paper or article.
The lit screen can do wonders, :)
ReplyDeleteDevelopment and an independent publishing house sounds like a good idea.
Good things sometimes take time...this is how I explain the years I've spent on my book anyway...it has to glow like a lit screen.
I think you may be right Sontag ...
ReplyDeleteI love your image of a story glowing like a lit screen. It is an odd feeling seeing those glowing stories lose their lustre on the page.
We are working it out
More time.