Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:02:48 -0700 (PDT)
From: Cathy Green <dalek_cag at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Could use some editing, was So Many Universes, So Little Time
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

It's not SF, butI would put the woman who wrote
flowers in the Attic in this category, especially
since she's written more books since her demise than
before.

--cathy
--- Erica VD Ginter <eginter at klgai.com> wrote:
>
> Anne McCaffrey. Marion Zimmer Bradley. Who else gets
> away with it now that
> they're a Big Name?
>
> Eric
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ted White [mailto:tedwhite at compusnet.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 16, 2002 3:47 PM
> To: WSFA members
> Subject: [WSFA] Re: So Many Universes, So Little
> Time
>
> Steve Smith wrote:
>
> > [...]
> >
> > In all of RAH's later work (TNotB and after), I
> get a strong feeling
> > that he really, really needed a good editor.
> Lotta good stuff, mixed in
> > with a lot of crap that a less exalted author
> wouldn't be allowed to get
> > away with.
>
> And for good reason:  by then Heinlein could write
> his own contracts.
>
> Heinlein's original writing scheme (for novels at
> least) was to overwrite --
> by
> maybe 50%.  That is, he wrote *everything* -- all
> the connective tissues,
> all the
> conversations, etc.   Then he *edited* -- in the
> process discarding the
> chaff and
> saving the wheat, and shortening his novel by as
> much as one-third.   This
> resulted in a number of good books.
>
> Supposedly he stopped doing this with STRANGER --
> which he had begun in the
> late
> '40s and then set aside, using the same Martian
> setup for his juvenile, RED
> PLANET, and which he completed about ten years
> later.  (But when the
> "unexpurgated" version of STRANGER was released we
> discovered that he had in
> fact
> chopped some of the more embarrassing parts of that
> book as well.)  In any
> event,
> Heinlein became increasingly self-indulgent after
> STRANGER, and increasingly
> he
> went unedited as well.
>
> Too bad.
>
> --Ted White
>

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