Re: What thrills you?

["Arlen P. Walker" <Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- COM>]

      Rewriting, oddly enough, excites me.  After wrestling with a piece of
      turgid text (possibly written by an SME, but more often written by me,
      yesterday, when I was in a hurry), I love that magic moment when the
      light breaks through.  Suddenly I can't work fast enough, crossing out
      the crud and writing prose that's *inspired*.

Very similar to my biggest thrill. I was writing a piece on THRUSH for one of
the gaming magazines (this was back when I wrote and edited everything longhand
and typed it out on a Smith-Corona portable for submission). I was struggling at
the beginning, intending to just freewrite my way into some rough ideas and go
from there. Then suddenly everything was crystal clear and I scribbled like mad
for a couple of hours. It was almost like taking dictation! The words were
there, whenever I reached for them. And they didn't fight me, they didn't
resist, but instead fell almost unbidden into line on the page before me!

The longhand draft was in ink, and there weren't more than a dozen changes
between that session and the published copy!

I recalled that feeling when I saw Amadeus, and heard Solieri comment with
amazement on the fact that there were *no* corrections on Mozart's "draft"
score. How it must have felt to be Mozart! To do that sort of thing all the
time! I've spent the decade or so between then and now trying to recover that
magic feeling, with limited success.

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 124

Arlen -dot- P -dot- Walker -at- JCI -dot- Com
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