Not necessarily in the right order

Andrew Preview with Eric and Ernie

The late great Eric Morecambe
In the celebrated sketch with Andrew Preview (André Previn), Morecambe and Wise trick the great composer and conductor into raising his baton to steer Eric Morecambe through a performance of Grieg’s Piano Concerto. Of course Ernie is insanely wound up trying to make things go smoothly and Eric is full of advice for the orchestra (“not too heavy on the banjos”!) But the line that is quoted most often (by me anyway) is when Mr Preview (as he is still addressed by taxi drivers apparently) roars at Eric that he is playing “all the wrong notes” and Eric grabs André Previn (the epitome of a good sport) by the frock coat lapels and exasperatedly growls at him “I am playing all the right notes – but not necessarily in the right order!”

Stephen King
In his superb On Writing Stephen King recounts the story of a friend of James Joyce who visited to find the genius Irish author sprawled in agony over his desk at the end of his writing day. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: James, what’s wrong? Is it the work?
James Joyce: (nods in despair)
Friend: How many words did you get today?
James Joyce: Seven.
Friend: But James…. that’s good, at least for you.
James Joyce: Yes, I suppose it is…. but I don’t know what order they go in!

60 to 36
I’m not equating myself with either Eric Morecambe or James Joyce, but I know how they feel…. sometimes I think I’ve got the right words in my writing but they’re not in the right order, and sometimes I think what's drafted and redrafted could be better. Oh, the agonies of composition. What I have realised (something I taught to teenagers but now I know it’s true in reality because of my experience as a retirement-hobby writer) is another insight from Stephen King:
To write is human, to edit is divine
One decision I’ve made (since I’ve now embarked on writing Book 2 (and editing Book 1) of my Rhenium Tales trilogy) is that to stand any chance of finishing my magnum opus, the frequency of my blog posts needs to reduce. So from next year, instead of 5 posts a month, I’m going to aim for 3 posts a month (36 a year instead of 60 a year.) I started my blog in August 2014 as way of disciplining myself to “publish” something regularly whether I wanted to or not and I’ve mostly managed that but I have to acknowledge that Raydan’s story is tugging at my mind more insistently than ever and I have to manage time more efficiently.

Omit needless words
In his second forward to On Writing Stephen King quotes from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (published in 1918.) King absolutely believes in the Rule 17 in the chapter entitled Principles of Composition. Rule 17 reads: “Omit needless words.” Therefore….