of over-cooked pasta and ideas that won't hold shape

Hey, Dave, good to see you back!

oh, it's you...

Yeah, I was just sitting in here wondering why you changed your blog description from 'These are the thoughts and musings...' to 'ideas and musings'?

really?

Uh, huh.

well, i wanted to make it closer to what i intended in the first place. see, thoughts and musings are a little too close in a literal definition but i had wanted to make a distinction between idle thought and actual method and i think the combination of ideas and musings gets that across better.

So you were editing your blog. I thought you'd only do that to your book?

only to my book? i wish. you see writing is about editing as much as creating the story. well, it is for me. ideas come to me easily enough, i don't have to look too far inside to get whole swags of things to write about, but they come to me in a very soft and pliable form. perhaps pliable is not even right; it's still probably too firm a word. my ideas come to me like over-cooked pasta. they squirm like worms within a bowl as i pick them up to taste their usefulness and drip and run from my fingers like watery sauce spread too thin over the same pasta. so i edit and edit again. some of my ideas hold their shape and succeed and others fall back into the bowl to remain simply as pasta. make sense?

I think so, yes. You edit your work and have a thing about pasta and pasta bowls.

*sighs* what are you doing in here, anyway?

I've been waiting for you to tell me more about this story of yours, The Shadow Without.

like what?

Like how this character, this Jetta Coorain, how he saves the new President's life.

you want to know all that without reading the book?

Go on, Dave. It's not too much to ask.

all right, but just this once. Jetta's grandfather is alerted to the presidents' danger and being an old man, has to enlist Jetta's help to save the Pres. and the bad guy finds out that Jetta's grandfather has found out and sets out to have both he and Jetta killed. so, of courses at some stage, Jetta will be faced with having to save either his grandfather or the president, perhaps the most powerful man in the free world...

Cool! Who's he choose?

remember what i said about reading the book?

Oh, come on, Dave! What if you edit that bit out of the story? Then I'll never know!

true. it could happen that way, then you'd have to make the decision yourself...

Myself? Who's writing this thing? Me or you?

me, hopefully. if i edit it out in this book, then i'll put it in the next book for you.

Thanks, you're a great help. At least I know the hero survives!

true, again. and that is the nature of heroes, but at what personal cost?

Personal cost? How much is this book going to cost me?

not you. the hero.

Oh, yeah. I get it. Who else dies?

no more. i'm just passing through on my way to my edits...

On your way to kill off someone, I bet!