Once More With Feeling

Writers out there know the feeling of finishing the first draft. A sense of exhilaration. You did a thing! A pretty remarkable thing at that. From flash to thousand page epics, finishing a piece is an achievement.

Until it isn't.

You know what's next. Revision. Revision. Revision. All the work that turns a jagged piece of metal into a blade.

But what happens if the blade still isn't quite right?

What happens when the revision's shitty big brother shows up? The dreaded rewrite.

I've found myself in that pit a handful of times since being published and each time has been equally difficult and exhilarating. Here's a few things that have not only kept my sanity, but made the process just a little easier.

1) Darlings? What darlings? 

It's all fair game, my friend. ALL OF IT. I don't care if you're in love with Supporting Character C or with your A plot. It can all go and you need to make peace with that. You're building a new story from the ground up using ELEMENTS of what came before. Now, can those elements be entire chapters or passages? Sure. You still need to remember that a rewrite means this should be a whole new book. Changing POV, tense, themes, etc are all in play. The good news is the book you're tearing apart is effectively the best working outline you've ever written. Lean into that and you'll write an entirely new book in just a little over a month (fueled entirely by alcohol, self-loathing, crippling imposter syndrome, an a chip on your back the size of Tallahassee, but I digress...)

2) This is still a first draft. Act like it.

An extension of the themes from above. You're not beholden to anything, not even yourself. If you have wild, new ideas, go for it. Entirely new characters? Now is the time. Discover a theme you never saw before? Sprint head first into it. Don't treat this as another revision. You're doing something new and it can be used to draw that enthusiasm out of you that the revision would normally crush into a fine powder.

3) Learn how to take editing notes and turn them into collaborative opportunities.

I LOVE notes. Seriously, whether it's from a friend, my agent, or an editor, notes are not knocks. Every single one is an opportunity for me to talk about my story and my perspective with others willing to provide me with their precious time and perspective. In my mind, a note means there's something that needs to be addressed in the story. Even if it's simply a clarifying sentence, it's important to remember notes aren't negative. Get past your ego and talk things through. I've taken notes, bypassed them, and come up with entirely new ideas with the note giver in minutes simply because I've recognized the value of collaboration and taking criticism in stride.

4) Know your limits.

The bad news: sometimes the rewrite doesn't work either. The good news: you did not waste your time. Take the lessons you can into your next project or next rewrite. You've learned so much from the work whether you realize it or not. Use those lessons to key into opportunities for improvement. Did the project suffer because of multiple shifts in perspective? Were the story beats not quite working right? Try to see where you faltered and work the weaker muscles in other ways. Write a short story to help improve word economy. Write monologues to help with dialogue rhythm. A rewrite is a massive chance to really improve your craft, even if it only leaves you with a clearer perception of your weaknesses.

So, as I move into revising this entire novel rewrite I started back in April, I keep these things in mind. We're never quite done, but it doesn't mean we have to let the hard parts beat us up. 

Get back to writing.

The Devil, The Details, and Me

By Claire Booth

They’re coming back to haunt me. All the little things I skipped over while writing my current book. They’re details I didn’t want to stop for – street names; what kind of guitar an aging country star would own; what time the sun sets in October in Branson, Missouri.

But now the book is done. I just need to insert these particulars to have it ready for my first round of readers. It’s not considered good form to hand someone a manuscript scattered with sentences like, “and he pulled into INSERT NEIGHBORHOOD NAME HERE, slammed the car in park and ran toward the house,” or “the kid had been enrolled since school started INSERT SCHOOL DISTRICT START DATE.”

I do it this way because I don’t want to stop the actual writing. It’s a good method to keep me cranking away at the actual plot without getting bogged down in research side trips that add to the book’s authenticity, but not to the plot itself. Because these side trips take time. A lot of it. I try for two verifications of every fact. And if it’s a judgement call between two things, well, that takes even longer. Who knows how long it will take me to decide on that country music star’s guitar.

Revising an Older Story

By
Scott D. Parker

How do you know when you are learning how to write better? When you read something you wrote in the past and know with no doubt you can do better today.

My August novel is a revision of an old western I wrote last year, maybe two years ago. I honestly cannot remember when I first drafted the story. I like the story and always had it pegged for publication this year.

In my mind’s eye, the story was pretty decent coming in around 16,000 words long. I thought it a tad too short to call it a novel, so I knew I wanted to revise it, expand it in places, and thicken up the prose.

I read through the draft as it was, making notes along the way, but did little in the way of refining the prose. I wanted to get a good pass through it, see how the story played, and remind myself of how my past self wrote the story. I saw the holes in the story quite clearly, and, most importantly, I knew how to shore them up.

My technique for re-reading an old story might be unique. I have a paper copy in front of me. I have a notepad and a pencil. I mark up the draft along the way and make notes of things to do. But I also am hooked up to my dictation software. Every time I finished a chapter, I would dictate the action of the chapter. By the end of the draft, I not only have a marked-up hardcopy but I also have a new outline of the tale complete with extra notes. All with little effort on my part (because talking is much easier than writing it all out).

Finally, it came time to start to go through the draft and add in the things the story needed. And here is the crucial lesson I learned in this process: I ended up rewriting each chapter from scratch.

I had two screens up: one was my current Scrivener file and the other was the original chapter in a separate window. Instead of reading and adding words here or there, I ended up typing the content over again. In this manner, if my 2017 brain started going off on a tangent, adding more detail or different bits of dialogue, I would just go with the flow.

I found it incredibly liberating. I had my original, but I was creating something almost completely new, albeit with some words I had previously written. All chapters were edited and revised, some more than others. I’ve already written three brand-new chapter. The story was only seventeen chapters to begin with. I’m halfway done and and I’m already up to twenty-one.

But what made me feel good as a growing and learning writer was to recognize how my old prose didn’t cut it in 2017. I frowned at a few passages and winced at others. Why? Because I am a more seasoned writer.

Now, I fully expect Future Scott, in 2027, to read this book as it will be published this year and find a few passages in which he will wince. But he’ll be a more seasoned writer than I am right now.

Because writing is an ever evolving profession.


When y’all revise an old story, do y’all rewrite from scratch, rewrite using the old words, or merely hunt and peck certain passages, adding words here and there?

The Joy of Tinkering

By Claire Booth

I am at my favorite point in writing – the tinkering. My manuscript is done, and now I get to go back and fiddle with it. That sounds pretty lackadaisical, but it's not. There are very specific things I look at when I’m at this stage in writing a novel.

Chapter breaks. I make sure that the word counts of all of my chapters are consistent. I have a tendency to stick them wherever, and sometimes I don’t realize that although my scene breaks are pretty rhythmic and well paced, my actual chapter numbering is horrendous. For me, consistent means relatively similar lengths, but that’s not the only way to do it. Some books work best with chapters that become shorter as you near the end. Or short-long-short-long. It doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as you know the pacing that you’re going for and stick to it.

Particular words. You know which ones I’m talking about. The ones that catch on the surface of your brain and tug incessantly. This is the time in my writing where I give in to the little bastards. My reptilian writer brain is telling me they aren’t right. I have to find new ones. Get out a thesaurus, go for a walk, do anything but pass over them. Your sentences will thank you.

Pesky little details. Yes, these are your responsibility. Check to make sure your main character’s eye color doesn’t change halfway through the book. Google to make sure that it’s Hollywood Boulevard and not Avenue. I love checking the facts and I do a lot of that as I write, but continuity mistakes like eye color are things you’ll catch only at this tinkering stage of the game.

And if you’re lucky enough to have a copy editor, don’t take it for granted. Their job is to save you from making horrible mistakes you don’t even realize you’re making (“hanger” and “hangar” mean two very different things – I was saved from myself on that one once). Their job is not to spend all of their time correcting stuff you could have gotten right with ten seconds of effort. And if you don’t have a copy editor, I know you’ll be doing this step several times over.

Read aloud. I know. This is the one tinker I don’t like. It’s tedious and horrible (unless you were a theater major, in which case, could you come read mine, too?). If you can’t bring yourself to read the entire novel out loud, at least do important passages or plot points. Get your pet to listen if that helps you get through it. Then reward yourself with some TV. After all, you’re almost an actor now after all those soliloquies.  

Do you have other tinkering skills that you use on a completed manuscript? I’d love to hear them – they’ll help me put off reading my manuscript to the dog.

Making it better

By: Joelle Charbonneau

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again – I love revising.  The process of taking something and making it better.  Writing the story is enjoyable.  Since I don’t write with an outline, I learn where the story is going along side the characters.  Writing the first draft is like riding a roller coaster.  Sometimes the story turns out the way I think it’s headed.  More often than not it takes a turn for the unexpected and I am both entertained and panicked as I hope it all makes sense in the end.  There are lots of loop-da-loops and sharp dives along the way.  Some make me scream with joy others…um…not so much. 

But once the book is finished I get to rewrite and tweak and polish.  To me, that is where the real fun begins.  I examine my characters’ story arcs, the plot points and the word choices I’ve made.  Then, when I’m done, I say a small prayer that the book isn’t crap and send it off to my agent.  Once the manuscript hits her inbox, I try to pretend I’m not nervous as I wait to hear her verdict.

Some authors don’t want their agent to weigh in on the quality of a book that has already sold.  They are more than happy to ship it directly to their editor and wait to see what the editor thinks.  Not me.  I want my agent’s feedback.  In fact, I can’t imagine doing without it.  Each person that reads the book with a fresh, knowledgeable eye is instrumental in making the story stronger.  And I want to make the story as strong as possible.  Will it be the best book I’ll ever write?  Who knows.  But if I really consider each point my early readers and editors make and look at the story in new ways, I ‘m doing my utmost to make it the best book that I can write at that moment.

Last week, I received editorial notes from my agent on Independent Study.  My gut instinct is always to dive right into the comments and begin to make changes.  However, I have learned that, for  me, it is best to read all the comments in the manuscript, reread the editorial letter, then let the commentary bop around in my head for a few days.  Giving the comments time to simmer means giving me a chance to really think about the way the story pieces need to fit together to strengthen the elements that are working and eliminate those that are not. 

Today, I embark on that process.  I always think it will take me a few days.  Sometimes I’m right.  Other times it takes far longer.  I always have to tell myself that the process can’t be rushed.  I mean, the book took more than a couple days to write.  Cutting corners now is just silly.

When I’m done layering in more depth and tweaking some scenes, I’ll reread the whole book then send it off to my fabulous agent again in the hope I’ve done the right work.  Trust me, she’ll let me know if I went astray.  If so, we’ll do another round of revisions until we agree it is as strong as we can make it.  When that moment comes, we’ll ship it off to my editor who will pick and prod and poke at the story some more all the while pushing me to make it better.

I can’t wait.

Am I crazy?  Maybe.  But I wouldn’t change this part of the process for anything. 

Revisions, here I come!

How Do You Know If You're a Writer?

by
Scott D. Parker

Am you a writer or merely a reader?

Do you ever have doubts about your writing? I have them all the time, and those doubts hinder my process as a writer. In fact, they get to looming so large that the doubts themselves begin to overshadow the actual produced-writing output. That's where I have been for some time, unfortunately. It's gotten so bad that I missed a great opportunity, two, in fact, and am regretting it.

Writers and how-to books all pretty much say the same thing: the only way to overcome doubts on your writing is to write. No matter how small or how bad, the mere act of writing will win out. I don't know about y'all, but when I'm in this doubt valley, nothing seems to go right. To use the old analogy, even one candle can make some of the darkness disappear. And, a few years ago, when I was blogging on a near daily basis and writing prose every day, I had a virtual bonfire going. The darkness was blasted by the bright light of my constant output. But, as time wore on, as life intruded and I didn't give my writing life its due, the fire started to ebb. More and more, each day I didn't write, the fire dwindled until I was left, frankly, with only a small candle, barely keeping me from total darkness. And, in the writing world, what amounts to a little candle more often than not for me proves futile.

I've been reading a lot, so I'm never far away from books, but my writing life has suffered. I'll readily admit that the perfectionist streak in me is a huge culprit. I've had writing sessions in the past where the tale I produced in one sitting went on to publication or won awards. I say that not to boast, but to indicate where I'm coming from. If I can do that, the doubting part of my brain says to me, then all material in one sitting should be that way. Right?

Wrong.

I've been working on a collaborative story for awhile now with a fellow author. We've gone back and forth, draft after draft, honing and fine tuning. When I had delivered my last comments, I thought the story good enough. I considered the story publishable and thought it should be submitted. My co-author thought otherwise, and enlisted the help of an outside reviewer. A week or so ago, I received the marked-up draft of the story from the outside reviewer as well as the four-page list of additional comments. Four pages of additional comments, mind you, on a story I considered okay, ready to be let loose on the world.

Man, was I wrong. Again.

In reviewing the comments and suggestions, things that I took for granted were exposed. Turns of phrase that I thought pretty clever were proven to be corny and deleted. Logic flow, something I considered, um, logical, proved illogical. In short, the story that I had considered good enough (key phrase there) to be submitted was, in fact, not.

And the doubts, those black-shadowed things that ooze and creep upon you, got that much closer to extinguishing the small candle I was barely keep alight. Had the story been one where only I was the author, I might have just chalked it up to another reason why I should just stick to reading and not bother writing.

But I wasn't the sole author of the tale. I had a co-author who needed my help to complete our joint venture. And he assigned it to me. So, like it or not, I had to make the corrections. So, I started to do so, and I made an on-the-spot decision that has, so far, proved crucial. Instead of merely accepting the changes and adding/subtracting new material, I opened a blank file and started re-typing the entire story. In this way, much like when I used to write longhand and keyed in the words to the computer, I was able to accomplish two things. One, make easier the decisions suggested by the outside reviewer. And, truth be told, I've not accepted them all, but their mere presence has given me room to think and to expand the paragraphs where the reviewer indicated. More importantly, however, for me, is the process of typing in the words. The rhythm of typing, the clickedy-clack of the keys being struck is hypnotic, and it's been too long since I've heard those sounds. Now, granted, I am learning to dictate my material, but nothing beats the sounds of a keyboard being struck. When I'm going and my fingers are flying, I can make those storytelling decisions much easier than were I merely accepting the changes. It's a little like reading a story aloud, which I do for every tale I write. By retyping the words or reading them aloud, I'm able to pick up the flow better, and the story is better as a result.

This thing I'm doing now--I'm working through the entire draft and I'm not yet finished--is working. It is reminding me of the *process* of writing that, frankly, I let slide and fall by the wayside. This comes not as a revelation to most of y'all--and I've known it all along, I've just ignored it. Not everything I write in one sitting is good enough to be put out there. Not everything I spend seven drafts on is good enough for publication. Like it or not, there's a lot of stuff I write that will only have an audience of one…and I've already read it.

But the action of this particular revision and this particular style of revision has reminded me of something. I am a writer, and not merely a reader. I am a creator of stories, be they fiction or non-fiction. I am made that way, and it's been a real pleasure to be reminded of that fact.

That sound you hear? It's the sound of a match being struck on the matchbox and the flame igniting. Now, there are two candles, and the darkness ebbed just a little bit more.

The devil is in the details

by: Joelle Charbonneau

When you talk to non-writers they all express amazement at ability of an author to sit down at a keyboard and write enough words to create an entire book. I have to admit at one time I felt the same way. However, I would argue that as hard as it is to write a novel, it is even harder to go back with a critical eye and revise it.

Revising is a skill set separate from creating a story. I’m not talking about fixing typos and punctuation, although these are important things to do. True revising is the ability to look at your work with an eye for what works best – not for what you like best. Sometimes the sentences we love the most and the characters that pull at our personal heart strings are not the ones that belong in the story. Sometimes the scene that was written to give a fabulous “the reader really needs to know this” look at the past of the protagonist is totally unnecessary. Learning how to judge which scene, line, word is necessary to drive the story forward and which is just slowing things down is hard.

Really hard.

When revising you have to ask yourself:

1) Does this scene drive the plot?
2) Are my sentence structures varied?
3) Does every sentence (or every other sentence) start with the same words?
4) Does the chapter/scene end with a page-turning hook?
5) Does the dialogue read naturally? (Tip - read this stuff out loud. It will really make a difference.)
6) Do I really need every word in this sentence?
7) Are there large paragraphs of backstory? If so, do they slow down the pace? (Chances are they might!)
8) Is the Point Of View clear?
9) Is the scene in the correct character’s Point of View?
10) Etc…Etc…Etc…

The revising questions go on and on.

Each author has their own reaction to revisions which can range from loving them to hating them. Many who hate them feel that once they hit THE END the story is over. They would much rather be working on a new story than to be dragged kicking and screaming back to the keyboard and open the document again. Then there is the other end of the spectrum where the author revises the same manuscript over and over and over again always thinking there is a better way to tell the story. These writers often get bogged down in the revisions to the point that they can’t let go and start something new.

And just like writing the story itself, every author has their own process to revisions. Some authors need to take weeks or months away from their work before they can go back and revise. Others jump in the very day they type the last page. Neither is wrong. The most important thing is for an author to find what is right for them.

Regardless of which category you fall into, I can promise you one thing – learning to critically look at your own writing is one of the most important skills you can have as a writer. Yes, your editor is there to make sure your work is the best it can be, but sometimes they don’t have the time to put into your work or are having personal problems and aren’t doing their job as well as they otherwise might. And let’s face it, even when your editor is at the top of his or her game, you want their edits to make your really good book an excellent one. You don’t want them worrying about whether your sentence structure needs work when they could be working on finding the final touches that will make your book really shine.

There is only so much an editor (or an agent for that matter) can do. You have to do the rest.

Does that sound preachy? Probably. But I don’t think it makes it any less true. So tell me – do you love or hate revisions? And what is your revision process? Do you jump right in or you need distance from the story before you can start playing with it again?

The Myth of 1,000 Words

One of the things you see a lot of, when you read author interviews, is how they all write 1,000 words every day.

That's true.

Sort of.

I believe most authors, when drafting, strive for 1,000 words per day. I know I do. Sometimes I get there, sometimes I fall well short, sometimes I go over. But the average is 1,000 words. And that's a success.

But when I get to revision, that's where it gets interesting. Maybe other writers can enlighten me, but I doubt most authors write 1,000 words a day when revising. For me, revising is scattershot.

Write a character sketch here. Outline a scene here. Cut 3,000 words here. Add 50. That's four days of successful revising for me, sometimes. I don't ever have a word goal when I'm revising.

I just want to move forward. Sometimes I get 2 steps forward only to go 3 back the next day.

So, yeah, writing 1,000 words a day is key--when you're drafting. But when you're revising, all bets are off.

What do you think?