I find that I naturally cycle through head-work and hand-work. In college, when I was coming down from the rush of finals and term papers, I’d pick up a craft project or a musical instrument. Not that these things don’t require intelligence and concentration; they just don’t require the same kind of brain work as writing six pages on The Importance of Being Ernest.

So I handed in revisions on Wednesday, and promptly went into a round of nesting.

When I’m writing, I have a habit of letting things… accumulate. I did not do a precise inventory of my computer desk last week, but I can say I had two plates, a bowl, some glasses, a couple bottles of Coke and other snack-related trash, three partial manuscript printouts, hairbrush, hair conditioner, four or five books — there is probably more than that. When I’m ready to get down to work, the writing is more important. And when I’m not ready to get down to work, I’d rather play Pokemon or watch TV than clear off the huge piles on my desk.

But they’re clear now, and I’m all ambitious about putting shelves in my closet and hanging up some art. At some point, though, I really should figure out how to get into the habit of cleaning at times when I haven’t just finished some major project.

Today I had the great pleasure of seeing Sherman Alexie at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia. Incidentally, I am a bit delighted that I’ve now been to both the Leonard Nimoy Thalia and the William Shatner student center at McGill, where I went to college, though I’m not really an old-school Trek fan.

Alexie’s YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, is so funny and so real and so heartbreaking. There’s so much dark stuff in the book but it rarely feels depressing because you’re laughing too hard — and yet the humor never undermines the darkness. And if you like that aspect of Absolutely True Diary, it’s worth going to hear him speak; he’s funny, but also so passionate about books, about learning, about a way out of poverty and alcoholism.

He’s working on a sequel to Absolutely True Diary right now. Can’t wait to read it.

E.M. Forster said, “‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.”

I think I’d have to quibble on his definitions of ‘plot’ and ‘story,’ but if he’s trying to make the distinction between what works as fiction and what doesn’t, I can agree with that.

And it seems so obvious that things have to connect together in a way that makes sense; they have to connect on the level of plot, and the level of character, and hopefully on the level of theme and metaphor and symbolism. But sometimes I write something that seems like a good idea at the time but doesn’t connect up in a clear way to the rest of the story.

It’s important to be willing to cut out whatever doesn’t work. But I think it’s also important to preserve those moments of intuition if you have a hunch that they might connect up at a deeper level after all. For all that revision can be a pain sometimes, it’s sometimes surprising how you can start putting in the connections that were invisible before, perhaps floating a little below the surface, that just need to be fished out of there, strengthened and made more explicit. Some writers overwrite in their first drafts — I underwrite, blissfully convinced that whatever is clear to me is going to be clear to the reader, and whatever isn’t clear to me can be glossed over with no penalty. I’ve probably added 10,000 words to Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad during revisions, and it was only 45,000 to start out with. They always tell you to assume that your reader is smart, but I also need to be reminded that my reader doesn’t have telepathy.