[SNIP]
> How did Chandler plot out his books?
He started, as I exepct people already know, by writing short
stories.
Well, re-writing to be precise: writing and re-writing
stories in order
to teach himself how to do it.
I read in the foreword to _Raymond Chandler's Phillip
Marlowe_ that
Chandler worked on half-sized sheets (not A5, but about A5
size) of
yellow paper, which he'd put in the typewriter and would aim
to put 'a
little meat' on each.
Because Chandler was a slow writer, it became apparent that
he wouldn't
make much of a living slowly hacking out stories which might
take him
several weeks. His novels are re-workings of pre-existing
stories which
have been bolted together (like a 'cut and shut' job in the
second-hand
car trade: take two write-offs, cut 'em in half and weld the
good front
and rear together to make a 'new' car).
Chandler referred to this process as 'cannibalization'.
Some of the Penguin editions of the short story collections
have
introductory essays which specify which short stories have
been reworked
into which novels.
ED
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