Infinimata Press: Projects: Second Round Draft Choice Dept.

By Serdar Yegulalp on 2014-09-23 10:00:00-04:00 No comments

I'm most of the way through mapping out the second draft of Welcome to the Fold, and I'm starting to feel like the guys who have been given the thankless task of tearing down the Javits Center and building something better in its place. The hard part is not getting rid of the old, although that's bad enough; it's bringing in the new without recapitulating the sins of the old.

This is not a long book, but it's a complex one, with a great many individual little details that have to function correctly for the whole thing to work. In some cases, I had the right idea for how something was meant to work, but the wrong embodiment of that idea; in other cases, I had the wrong idea entirely, but the embodiment would be worthy of re-use. Sometimes a bad idea would have a great expression, or the other way 'round. And so on.

What was heartening, though, was seeing the core ideas I'd meant to do justice to rearing their heads again and again throughout that first draft. Rough and problematic as it was, the whole reason I'd written the book in the first place was there — visible to my eyes, at least. The trick now is to make sure everyone else who's not me also sees it.

Less urgent but still fun is the compilation of a playlist to go with the book. As with previous books, I did compile a playlist of material that did seem thematically related, but it's difficult for me to actually listen to that music while writing, as it becomes deeply distracting. Instead, I find myself listening to it at other times, and accruing ideas for the book during that away time. But a scene-by-scene playlist for Fold, one along the lines of the playlist I created for Flight of the Vajra, is in order at some point.

Among the artists included — I don't think I'm spoiling anything by revealing this:

• Richard & Linda Thompson
• Talk Talk
• Lennie Tristano
• Dead Can Dance
• David Bowie
• The Prodigy
• Scorn
• Moby
• Albert Ayler
• Merzbow
• Melvins
• Don Cherry
• Ministry
• Coil
• Primal Scream
• Paul Haslinger
• Nina Simone
• Skinny Puppy
• and Filter (duh)