Vladimir Nabokov's index cards
Submitted by jpohl on Mon, 2009-10-19 22:23.
from: http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2009/books/58476/
"The legendarily meticulous Nabokov spent a couple of fertile decades filling index cards with careful paragraphs, which he then revised and shuffled into complete novels. When he died, he left one last batch: 138 cards, a partial draft. After some Pale Fire–worthy jockeying (a request that they be destroyed after his death, popular calls to publish them, 30 years in a Swiss vault), those cards will now be published. It’s a unique chance to see the perfectionist in imperfection."
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Fascinating
I wonder if the publication will include an introduction explaining how they decided what order to put them in.
~Cath
publication after death
And there's a good lesson in that story - if you want something to be destroyed after your death and never seen, don't count on that wish being carried out. Destroy it before you die or it may just end up published and read by millions.
Reminds me of Tribbles
In a nonfiction book, "The Trouble with Tribbles", David Gerrold describes a similar method for intertwining the multiple plots in the ST:TOS episode of the same name where he plots out scenes on index cards and then shuffles them together to get the appropriate order of scenes to move both plot lines along.
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"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)