Excess
Monday, August 31, 2009
The hardest thing, I think, is to identify excess in your own work.
The best sort of editor helps you see it.
I move through the revisions of this Centennial novel, trusting the instincts of my editor, Laura Geringer, learning from them. I move through it considering this third season of Mad Men, which seems in some ways thwarted by too many competing story lines. Something about the rhythm feels slightly off to me. Something about the places and things on which the directors choose to dwell. Mad Men remains my favorite show on TV. But I am watching it as a writer, measuring its rhythms, standing back, even as I try to think and work harder against my own story-telling obsessions.
