Robert Rosen

 

I've returned from Arizona to a snow-covered New York and I'm back at work on my book. I've spent the past week easing into my writing routine. 

 

If you're curious how I go about writing books (or writing most things, for that matter), I've reached the phase where, after reading the manuscript on-screen four or five times, I print it out and read it out loud as I pace back and forth across my apartment. I need to hear the words in my ear to make sure they sound right. Reading on paper allows me to catch mistakes and off-key phrasing that I didn't see on-screen. I don't know what the pacing does, but I find it helpful. 

 

Yesterday I read 26 pages out loud over the course of 7,827 steps (four miles), stopping only to make corrections. Then I ran out of gas. That's 6.5 pages per mile.

 

The above photo is the first page of the corrected manuscript. If you know my work, some of it might sound familiar. An adaptation of the first chapter ran in The Village Voice a couple of years ago. You can read it here.

 

The literary critics among you might have fun comparing the differences. One is a newspaper article about the connection between a radical college newspaper that I was involved with and a house in Greenwich Village that Weathermen bomb makers accidentally blew up in 1970. The other is a book that uses the events that took place in that house as a taking off point for a story about the crazy people on that college paper who were dedicated to probing the limits of free expression in America.

 

As I've explained in another post, I'm not yet revealing the book's title. I've stumbled upon a phrase—a play on the title of a classic novel—that doesn't appear on the internet. I don't want artificial intelligence to gobble it up and spread it around before the book is complete. 

______

All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.