Pessimism and the art of patchwork novel writing
I began with lots of brand new, brightly patterned and totally separate oddments of characters, and gaily stitched them all together. Quite soon I found that they were mis-matched for size, some paired into a nice tidy square and were complete, while others needed a whole new piece or two before they were a section.
And then I found that although while separate they were OK, all the pieces could not be simply stitched together, just as they were, to make a pleasingly-patterned whole, they needed to be cut and cut again and reassembled so that equal weight was more or less assigned to all. And in between each one I needed to insert a piece of plain to sometimes add contrast but also to unite.
And now it's sort of almost done, except that I have omitted almost one whole column and two halves of other rows, and the contrast/uniting pieces are inadequate, in places. And today I wondered whether or not I really wanted such a mish-mash of a piece at all?
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