Chandlering Around

Between a whole lot of revising, thinking about revising, and a mess of home repairs and organizational stuff, spending much time updating the site has felt like a luxury. I hope to be a little more active here in the coming weeks, but I can’t guarantee it.

To wind down in the evenings I’ve continued dipping into various books and short story collections. Typically, while I’m revising, I re-read favorite authors to remind myself of great techniques, and so I’ve been reading some Raymond Chandler short stories. It’s not quite re-reading in some of the cases, because many of them are new to me. And I’ve discovered that the lyricism present in the novels and later stories isn’t as prevalent in his early work, as you’d probably figure. To really soak up the best of his style I’ll probably start re-reading Farewell, My Lovely over the weekend.

In the meantime, though, here’s a link to an interesting essay about Chandler’s revision process. If you haven’t read The Long Goodbye (or even if, like me, you haven’t read it recently) some of it might be too particular to be of use — but there are other details that should be of interest to any writer.

I find that I’m also curious about the work of writer Mike Coggins, who wrote the rather fascinating essay. My to-be-read pile is tottering already, but I like the essay well enough I’ll probably look into his books.