http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/omitted-scenes.html (the psychology of writer's block) Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:35:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/omitted-scenes.html/comment-page-1#comment-62 momo Sun, 03 Dec 2006 17:03:02 +0000 http://www.todayiwrite.com/omitted-scenes.html#comment-62 .. but how do you KNOW something was omitted in someone else's published work?? .. but how do you KNOW something was omitted in someone else’s published work??

]]> http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/omitted-scenes.html/comment-page-1#comment-60 Today I Write : Master and Commander, again Sat, 02 Dec 2006 23:48:06 +0000 http://www.todayiwrite.com/omitted-scenes.html#comment-60 [...] Now here’s a coincidence, even a synchronicity.  Just yesterday I was telling you about Patrick O’Brian, in a long aside to what I was really trying to say about whether authors can just omit troublesome scenes. It was so long and so half-relevant that I actually wondered if I should just omit it. And today, in a quiet moment between clients, I came across this thought, which I’m quite sure is O’Brian’s own, in the mouths of two of his regular characters: “Are endings really so very important? Sterne did quite well without one; and often an unfinished picture is all the more interesting for the bare canvas… The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and losses ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent.  Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.” [...] [...] Now here’s a coincidence, even a synchronicity.  Just yesterday I was telling you about Patrick O’Brian, in a long aside to what I was really trying to say about whether authors can just omit troublesome scenes. It was so long and so half-relevant that I actually wondered if I should just omit it. And today, in a quiet moment between clients, I came across this thought, which I’m quite sure is O’Brian’s own, in the mouths of two of his regular characters: “Are endings really so very important? Sterne did quite well without one; and often an unfinished picture is all the more interesting for the bare canvas… The conventional ending, with virtue rewarded and losses ends tied up is often sadly chilling; and its platitude and falsity tend to infect what has gone before, however excellent.  Many books would be far better without their last chapter: or at least with no more than a brief, cool, unemotional statement of the outcome.” [...]

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