... You Edit Nightmare Down, You Edit Nightmare Up, You Edit Nightmare Down, Then You Shake It All About ...

For those who'd like to attend my panel, please consult the official program.  Or show up in Garden Room I of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Newport Beach at 2:00 PM this Saturday.  Either will work. 

As for what you'll be treated to should you choose to come, well, remember what I wrote yesterday about condensing forty-five pages into fifteen?  Remember the hubris implicit in my declaration that it'd be easy to whittle those fifteen pages down to eight? 

The Gods certainly did, as today I received my comeuppance: over the course of six hours, I managed to edit fifteen pages "down" to sixteen ... but only after casting aside of the rules of evidence, the laws of logic, and the integrity of my argument.  Just as you can only fold a sheet of paper so many times, there's only so much you can nstrip from an argument before it resembles Ann Althouse.  (In seriousness, not literally.)  I'd hit that point around 14 pages.  No matter how many times I took out this bit about Lamarck necessary to understanding Spencer or this bit about Spencer necessary to understanding London, I found myself confronting the same thing:

Utter nonsense.  Without A there could be no B.  Without B, C and D make no sense.  Since C subtends E and D's foundational for F, I could no more remove C or D than A or B and ... then, like an Angel from Heaven, a heavenly angelic email descended upon my inbox informing me that one of the participants will not be able to make my panel, leaving the remaining two panelists an hour and twenty minutes to work with. 

Life is good.  See you Saturday. 

(Or not.)

Comments

[uncomplicatedly]

Technically, if you are editing "up" and "down," you should perhaps be shaking it "around." (I learned it as "in," "out," and "about," however.)

I suffer from a similar malady. When I was applying to graduate school, some schools wanted a 20-page writing sample and some schools wanted a 10-page one. So for the latter group, I painstakingly and awkwardly edited down my 20-page chapter to 10 pages. Do you know how many of those 10-page schools I got into? Zero. Zip. Goose egg.

(I've got my quals in 2 weeks, so I won't be able to make it to your panel; I hope it goes well!)

[Flowbear]

Sir, I am a first year english PhD student.

And you scare the hell out of me.

I just thought you should know.