Arguments about checks on power often elicit the claim that the checks are unnecessary because whoever is in power is clearly trustworthy and would never exercise the power without some compelling reason. This naturally makes almost no sense, because if they have a compelling reason, the people in charge of the checks will recognize this and go along with it. The claim is then made that those in charge of the checks will “play politics” and/or “move too slowly”—establishing a conflict between a leader who needs to act quickly and decisively in a crisis and some faceless committee of bureaucrats who don’t care about resolving the crisis.
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Halfway through chapter two, Lee escorting Lawrenceson. Lots of trimming sentences and paragraphs down, and removing pieces that seem extraneous. The worry is always that something valuable will be lost, but I think first of the fact that I can add things back if they’re completely critical, and second of the dictum that a work is finished not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.
Word count: 8036.

I’m still in the comparatively easy part. I’ve worked on the beginning of the novel the most, since I’ve started the editing process many times. So the first few chapters, just over the first week of this process, involve working on material that’s already got some good structure and that’s been edited down from the sprawling first draft. And now the first chapter is done.
Word count: 5334.

After reading Bruce Schneier’s post on overblown security responses, I was quite amazed. Some of the incidents he lists are truly ridiculous. However, I think that he’s missing the point if he believes that these results, which cost staggering amounts in terms of time and money for the security forces and the various people caught up in the overreactions, are bugs in the security processes that the authorities have set up. These results are either intentional, or are viewed as beneficial once they are recognized.
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November is NaNoWriMo. I already have a novel, or at least somewhere between 180,000 and 200,000 words of something that could be a novel if you looked at it funny. Last year I wrote a microversion of it in September. That did spur me to work on it more, but I never managed to find a rhythm that would let me finish it. So, given that the approach of a target every day seems to work for me, I’ve decided that this will be Tadhg Novel Editing Month.
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