Novel Diary
The
following notes form a diary I kept while I was
writing The Good
Lie. The working
title for the book was Slipstream,
but I abandoned that when I discovered Slipstream
had
been used elsewhere (for a sci-fi thriller). Furthermore,
the working title suggested nothing of the moral
tension—the real driving force—in the book.
In the early going I made entries routinely to serve as a
set of bench marks while I was writing. It offered a way of
guiding myself until the direction of the novel became
apparent. From then on I spent most of my free time writing
the book and less contributing to this journal.
I also found the diary became a good place to store chunks
of text that I decided to excise during the editing
process. As such, these pages form a sort of “out-takes”
section for the novel.
Some of the text may appear to be abstract, or even
impenetrable. When you are writing for yourself, this is
inevitable. As much as possible, I’ve tried to leave this
diary as I wrote it. The few edits I’ve applied are
intended to make the text accessible to the reader.
— DFB, 18
February, 2007