 
 The MuseThe Working Museby David Holloway
 
     
          My preparations for writing are exact and invariable.  I light
     several sticks of incense, dim the lights, play some Gregorian
     Chants and carefully set out bowls of wine in an ordered and
     predesignated pattern, as dictated by the GREAT RED BOOK OF THOTH. 
     Then I drink the wine, turn up the lights, douse the incense and
     flip on the word processor- I don't have time for much nonsense.
          Actually my writing is terrible, awful, unreadable, and
     largely incomprehensible.  I try to do a lot of it, and then go
     back and see if maybe there is a usable idea in it somewhere.  I
     subscribe to the Ross Perot school of writing-  Ross said
     "Washington is full of plans."  and I say Holloway is full
     of....ideas and most of my ideas are just about as good as the
     aforementioned plans.  But once in a great while if I write enough
     of them down I can stumble across one that I find somewhat
     interesting or amusing.  That is when the writing comes into play,
     and that is generally when the muse makes her/his/its appearance. 
     You see, I don't really believe in writing, I only believe in
     rewriting. Vladimir Nabokov once said that reading doesn't give you
     anything from a book, that you can only appreciate a writer's work
     through re-reading, and I find that I don't really know much about
     what I have written until I've written it several times in several
     different ways.
          It isn't odd for me to carry this process to extremes and
     realize that what I wind up with isn't what I wanted in the first
     place.  When this happens I re-examine what I've done and try to
     decide if it is better, worse, or merely different.  I tinker
     ceaselessly, and eventually find the style, voice, or draft that
     seems best, not finished, just tuned to the point that if I try
     anything else it is more likely to make it worse than better.  
          Sometimes I deliberately try to ruin the story, and see what
     that tells me.  The ending changes from tragic to comic, the main
     character becomes a 75 year old Puerto Rican barber instead of a
     14 year old white ballerina, or the voice switches from first
     person to third.  Thinking about what would make the story worse
     sometimes tells me what is best about it.  I think you get the
     point, some people spend hours primping in front of a mirror,
     worrying about a bad hair day.  My equivalent would be a bad prose
     day, one of those days when my sentences are all incomplete, the
     setting is unrealistic, and my characters are mere stick figures
     that won't dance for me no matter what tune I sing them.  
          I guess that gives you some idea of what I do when I write. 
     The rest of it involves the incantation that goes with the
     preparations from the first paragrah, and I've sworn a blood oath
     not to reveal THAT to anyone. 
     
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				   Copyright (c) 1993 David Holloway
