Paksworld

I like to think I write reasonably well even on the first draft.  Oh, sure, there are occasional glitches, but the logic should be sound and the prose should flow, even if more wordily than it will later.

Fat chance.  I was just looking at a chapter, written some time ago and now about to be folded in to the first third of the new new book.    And after a page of fairly ordinary stuff (stuff happens, yes, but it’s not earth-shaking, though it might be someday),  here’s this:

The next day, they reached the house in the evening.

Oh, no!   Surely I didn’t write that!   But yes, no one else gets on this computer but me, and yes, I wrote it, and yes, it’s as bad as it reads.   It’s not quite as bad as if I’d written “The next morning, they reached the house in the evening,” but it’s close.

Headdesk.

If ever you thought perfect sentences sprang from the writer’s mind/eye/hand/fingers-on-keyboard, now you know better.

“The next evening they reached the house.”   Simple, uncomplicated, obvious in the right way, and why the !**! didn’t I write it like that the first time?  This one gets changed before I ever reach the formal revision stage.  I cannot stand to see it again.