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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Spinning Silk

"With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin. With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown." –Chinese Proverb

This month, you’re eating leaves. Or, er . . . spinning silk . . .

I could let myself get carried away with analogies because I do love a good analogy, but I’ll restrain myself.

While I harp on discipline and writing every day, consider it as spinning the cocoon from which the silk fiber comes. You can’t harvest the silk fibers until the cocoon is done being spun. So as you’re writing during NaNo, you’re spinning a cocoon. On December 1 you can start unwinding the silk filament and editing it into the silk thread and turning it into a. . . um . . . silk novel. Or possibly . . . uh . . .making a silk novel out of a sow’s ear.

(This analogy may bear some editing of its own before it’s silky enough to make sense.)

In any case, just keep writing. Save the editing for next month.

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