Either way, I think it goes a long way to improve the quality of my writing. Stuff like I mentioned in "Of Polyestre", that comes in the spur of the moment, but just has to go in the end. But my problem is that I can really only do as much as to put them in italics - having the guts to actually press delete is another story entirely, it seems. I wouldn't be surprised if those sentences in italics are still there if I ever send this to any of my internet peers for a look-over, and maybe even when I hand it in to some professor or whatever. Yet I'm making progress if I can find the errors altogether.
The short story is coming along nicely, though. Feels again like a lot of what I'm writing is turning up half-way through the story, but what the hell. I intended it first and foremost as a reflection and a discussion with myself, and I framed it much so in the story as well.
I had a long and winding discussion with a guy on an internet forum just recently. It was about the whole concept of "kill your darlings", and how I thought it, per his definition, was blatantly retarded, and even along my own perception of the idea, it was still a very silly thing to be going about. He held the opposite notion; removing everything that a writer himself thought highly of would somehow give the final work some quality (this being his thesis of the idea of "kill your darlings"). Don't quote me on the last bit however, it's just a rough essence of the debate at large.
I personally thought that a writer that held such distrust in his own ability to write, that certain things would be removed on such a condition regardless, shouldn't be writing in the first place. All the same, there is a certain logic to the idea, as one shouldn't always trust one's own rough writing, and almost certainly, some definitions and sentences will make more sense to the author and his mum than anyone else. And sometimes, it's really only those extreme ones, the ones that not even mum gets, that get's edited out.
But if you so doubt that you can get your point across, then yes, you have a problem. I personally do not think that the red thread is everything. Sure, it has to be readable, but a text is nothing else than plain when it consists of nothing but things adhering to the central point at hand. It's called poetic licence, my friends (No, it's not actually, poetic license is another thing entirely, but I've no idea what to call it). If the only thing that you can write sensibly are the things adhering to your topic at hand, then you're not a poet. Then you're not an author. Then you're a reporter.
If I'm writing a news article, on the other hand, we work in a different format. Then I want the essential questions answered first - when, who, where, what, why. Whatever adornishment you've got is second hand. If I need to know, right now, what exactly happened in Dubai two days ago, then you tell me just like that. But if I'm reading my bedside book, hell, mate, give it some space.
Yet, I cannot help but wonder of other people's attitude. Obviously, when it comes to my blog posts, I'm not your man for adhering to a red thread - I'm all over the place, most often. But how does it stand for someone who works making carpets out of red threads? How does the land lie, if you've had the opportunity to do some serious beta reading, some serious peer editing? This is obviously where I lack, by pure experience. And obviously where I want to redeem myself.
And I realize another funny thing - entirely coincidental, however. It's the old man, his son, and the holy Ghost. No, sorry, that wasn't particularly funny. But if you'd ever have to write an analysis of this thing - no idea why you would, but just if - then there you go, it's all a metaphor for god's troubles as Jesus is hanging on the cross.
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