August 5, 2019, 1:19
So I got all ready to cut the home invasion scene and chickened out.  There’s stuff in there that I don’t know how to do elsewhere–the first horrified mention of Button, the entrance of Joyce the Cat, Nita taking the fall for Button and beginning their relationship, Frank as an important character–plus without this I have pages of Talk.  I like Talk.  I’ll spend my entire story just doing Talk if nobody stops me, but Talk Kills Story, so I need action, bodies in motion, Aristotle insists on it, so . . . 

Damn.  I know Faulkner said to kill your darlings, but have you read Faulkner?  Darlings all over the place.  

So today, I find something else to cut in that damn first act, so I can do the second act tomorrow.  Think of this as a live blog of the Reduction of Act One.  Not that that’s not what the whole blog has been about for weeks.  Argh.  But first I have to eat lunch and take the dogs for their Carl Moment. (Carl is the neighbor who lives two doors down who has a darling Yorkie named Jackson and who gives them cookies and pats and tells them they’re Good Dogs.  It’s the high point of their day.). But then, we’re cutting Act One. BRB.

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