Saturday, October 18, 2008

Professional secrets ...

... Writing reviews of novels. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

As for me, I try to read them over a period of two or three days, so I have some time to live with them. I take note of passages that particularly catch my attention, but otherwise don't take notes. I am very interested in reporting the book accurately and concisely and my opinion tends to derive from that. As for the actual writing, I tend to do that in stages. I get a few hundred words down as a start, take a break and ponder where I've got to and where I'm going, then return in an hour or so and proceed. After it's done, I let it sit for a while, then read it through and smooth out any rough edges. Then I send it off and pretty much forget about it.

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