Writing and life

Yesterday, I completed the revision of the Rwanda section of my upcoming book. I had to cut it from three chapters to one (!) … I was also trying to make the narrative flow more smoothly; eliminate redundancies (though I only found a few); update all facts presented as much as possible– oh, and along the way there, reduce the total word-count for this section by around 5,000 words.
I did it. I now have one single, extremely long chapter on Rwanda. It has a single (I would say, rather compelling) narrative and is divided into sections and subsections in a way I find rational and helpful. Plus, I managed to cut the word-count by 5,200 words. It was really, really difficult to cut and revise my own immortal, perfectly composed, and intricately balanced prose in this way. At one point I felt like ‘true mother’ in the story about King Solomon and the contested baby, but then I remembered that the true mother was the one who rushed to prevent the cutting of the baby. Also, a chunk of prose is not a human person, however attached to it one might feel. (And I did.) But anyway, now I feel even more attached to the resulting chunk of prose.
And exhausted.
Tomorrow I’ll gird up my loins and start engaging with thre South Africa portion of the book. Then there’s Mozambique… And finally, the “whole” encapsulating framework of the book, particularly the last two chapters that pull together all the analysis.
Why in God’s name do I do this? It hurts!
… Anyway, for my own sanity, I decided to take a break from the book today. I went to Quaker meeting. (Actually, I rode there on my snappy new eco-friendly personal vehicle, which is a Piaggio 150-cc scooter. Talk about fun! So now I’ve liberated myself from car-ownership… I confess the two other members of the household– spouse and son– each has a car, and they’re promising to provide me with as much of a safety-net as I need on this.) And for the rest of today, as a treat to myself, I get to blog as much as I want…
Of course, scores of must-blog things have been happening in the world over the past week. Just as well, then, that I always knew I could never aspire to have this be a “blog of record”. But big thanks to all JWN readers who’ve hung in here, checking out the blog over these past few days in case anything new should occur here. (And for reading this far in this particular meandering little post, come to think of it.) I hope you all found Reidar Visser’s recent piece on the intra-UIA politics really interesting.
Today, I also really need to post some new things over at the Transitional Justice Forum blog. I need to do a few other things over there, too. And I have bills, laundry, and a few rather boring things to do in what some people might call “real life.”
Ooh, plus go through the many pages of my contract with Paradigm Publishers, who’ll be publishing the Africa book this Fall, and sign ’em where required. That just dropped into my mail-box on Friday.
I have quite a few writings coming out in interesting dead-wood publications these days, too. Oh, look here: all of the current issue of Boston Review— the one that has a Forum on the US exit strategy from Iraq to which I contributed– is now available online, as well as in a dead-wood edition. So you can read my contribution there, or read the whole Forum, as you want.
A friend told me he’d just received his copy of the latest issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, in which I have my essay on “Religion and violence.” I haven’t received any paper copies of my own yet. Grrr. But anyway, I’ve posted a link to that text onto my sidebar here, quite a while back, so you can read it there.
Also, I have a piece on international war-crimes courts coming out in the next (March-April) issue of the Carnegie Endowment’s posh journal, Foreign Policy. That one will, I imagine, be extremely controversial. Good! Let the discussion on the real value of these institutions be opened in earnest, I say.
Gotta run. Laundry calls. Later today I want to do a post here that pulls together some of the things that have been happening in the (big) “real world” over the past week.