“It is like reconstructing the whole of Paris from Lego bricks. It’s about three-quarters-of-a-million small decisions. It’s not about who will live and who will die and who will go to bed with whom. Those are the easy ones. It’s about choosing adjectives and adverbs and punctuation. These are molecular decisions that you have to take and nobody will appreciate, for the same reason that nobody ever pays attention to a single note in a symphony in a concert hall, except when the note is false. So you have to work very hard in order for your readers not to note a single false note. That is the business of three-quarters-of-a-million decisions.”
…Amos Oz
Advertisements
A truthful undertaking that i would not attempt!
Yes, if we think about it too long, it can be utterly daunting. Still, we press on…one decision at a time.
What about hard decision..
Those we tackle with pick and ax and sharpened quill.
That’s how it’s done.
😉
Precise message. No one wants to hear or write those false notes.
True enough. That’s where a good ear and a good editor make a world of difference.
Having an Editor is always an excellent idea.
The false note – that’s a mouthful. I might construct a beautiful sentence, but if there is one wrong word, it blown.
It’s blown. Editing my comment…..
😉