So, Stephanie Meyer is re-releasing the Twilight series, but with all the names and genders changed? That’s a new way to milk a cash cow, I guess. I wonder if she’ll make Edwardine a creepy stalker in the image of her male precursor. (I don’t wonder enough to go out and read it. But if anyone else reads it, let me know, yeah?)
Breaker Morant is on television right now. This is a fantastic film. Get it. Watch it. Thank me later.
I’ve been reading a slew of conservative books. (So far, David Mamet is the clear winner in terms of artful language. Big shock, that is.) I suspect that they suffer from the same problem as left and right news outlets, not to mention every single person expressing political opinions on social media: The choir being preached to already knows what will be said and has no reason to listen; the opposition will sniff haughtily, slap a derogatory label on it, and ignore it completely. So why bother?
It struck me today at my job that 90 percent of bad writing isn’t really my biggest problem as an editor. It’s fairly easy to fix bad writing if you can figure out what’s bad about it. My biggest problem as an editor is a particular form of bad writing—I have a terrible time with sentences that wander around, stop for coffee, see shiny things and chase them, and end up in a place on the exact opposite side of the globe from where I thought they were going at the outset. Any advice on this particular issue is welcome.
I am waiting one more week to prod the agent about the book. I am a coward. Or maybe I’m just lazy. Or a lazy coward. Probably that one.