Posted a short story earlier on tumblr. Have now edited it a good half-dozen times. Some of that is because it's a reworking of an older story, most that I've written it in two chunks (and switched tenses while doing so). Most is that I do weird things with tenses when writing. I'll switch from 'said' to 'says' within paragraphs, to make something more immediate, and have to fix it later, shove present and past together into a hodge-podge blender.
When I write magical realism (to the extent that I do at all) it seems to be somewhat an attempt TO justify this and try and make whatever flow the story has fit with that. It seldom works and I am always and often torn between writing a first-person story in says and said, bandying both back and forth until I find out which one fits the story best.
The end result is often an editing nightmare, mind. I suspect a better story comes from it, mostly because I hope it does.
Sometimes optimism is the only thing keeping me going when I'm mired up in a first draft ;)
ReplyDelete