Bloggus Interruptus

So--to the three or so people who may actually be reading this blog--I am back. For now.

I took about seven weeks to plow through another round of revisions on the novel. It was a somewhat traumatic experience, in that I really wanted to give the agent (or Asian, as everybody seems to think I say when I mention her) some substantive changes. There were a lot of parts of the book that I was really really really attached to, that I ended up cutting in the hopes of making it a better overall read. I also had to dramatically revise parts and throw away a lot of good writing because I was changing part of the book from a sort of first-person omniscient narration (a device that both the Asian and I had troubles with) to a first-person non-omniscient narration interspersed with other first-person narrators and sections that are written so as to appear to be historical documents. Anyway, I came to the conclusion that revising one's own manuscript is like being a doctor and performing surgery on one's own child: You know you have to do a lot of cutting, but you really really really don't want to. (At least, I imagine that's what it's like--I've never been a surgeon, or a parent, as far as I know.)

And so my revisions have been emailed away, and I know I need to take a break from the book for the sake of my own sanity, and so that I will be able to actually see it with fresh eyes when she comes back with more revisions. And, of course, I need to keep writing. So hopefully I can make some regular posts, and maybe write some reviews of the music and books I've been loving lately--Iggy Pop's Raw Power, a novel called The Drinker by a German author named Hans Fallada, and maybe something about Grizzly Bear's Veckamtimest, which I finally got around to listening to this month.