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thanateI have itty bitty caterpillars in three flavors, some of which have even deigned to eat maple leaves, which seems promising in terms of managing to keep them when I go off to Readercon. I also seem to be holding out at two naps a day ridiculously tired (which there may be a reasonable reason for, but it is still irritating) and spent much of the weekend actually finishing library books, which I've been really rather awful about recently, by which I mean the past six months or so.
But what I really want to know about is how other people handle the revision process. I mean, I know there are those of you out there who re-write whole chapters or books at a time, sometimes semi-compulsively, or make huge changes to character arcs or plotlines. What I mostly don't get is *how*? Maybe this is one of those rhetorical world-view questions to which the main answer is that that's just how some people's brains work, but if anyone is willing or interested in talking about either reasons or mechanics of re-drafting, I'd appreciate a variety of viewpoints. (I mean, up to and including whether you work with a previous draft in front of you, or work entirely from memory.)
I am a great tweaker of words & things, both while I'm writing and afterwards, but the only time I've re-written anything from scratch was the novel and a half that got thrown out with my old harddrive, where all I had was a few notes from the initial writing process to work from. And both endings came out pretty significantly different. I think. Not that I can go back and compare.
The thing I'm struggling with right now is actually not so much re-writing as a plot arc that didn't gel the first time, and doesn't want to do it now, either. I have enough "stuff" to cover to fill up most of the quarter book it's supposed to fill, but jig-sawing it all together and getting rid of the stupid bits without losing the useful parts of the stupid bits... anyway. I suspect the answer is just to set my timer and Do Something but I'm still trying to poke at my brain and find out what's likely to come out of it.
Anyway, thoughts on rewriting/revision, or even on why you don't revise much either, appreciated. (and you don't need to think if yourself as a "real" author to play.)
But what I really want to know about is how other people handle the revision process. I mean, I know there are those of you out there who re-write whole chapters or books at a time, sometimes semi-compulsively, or make huge changes to character arcs or plotlines. What I mostly don't get is *how*? Maybe this is one of those rhetorical world-view questions to which the main answer is that that's just how some people's brains work, but if anyone is willing or interested in talking about either reasons or mechanics of re-drafting, I'd appreciate a variety of viewpoints. (I mean, up to and including whether you work with a previous draft in front of you, or work entirely from memory.)
I am a great tweaker of words & things, both while I'm writing and afterwards, but the only time I've re-written anything from scratch was the novel and a half that got thrown out with my old harddrive, where all I had was a few notes from the initial writing process to work from. And both endings came out pretty significantly different. I think. Not that I can go back and compare.
The thing I'm struggling with right now is actually not so much re-writing as a plot arc that didn't gel the first time, and doesn't want to do it now, either. I have enough "stuff" to cover to fill up most of the quarter book it's supposed to fill, but jig-sawing it all together and getting rid of the stupid bits without losing the useful parts of the stupid bits... anyway. I suspect the answer is just to set my timer and Do Something but I'm still trying to poke at my brain and find out what's likely to come out of it.
Anyway, thoughts on rewriting/revision, or even on why you don't revise much either, appreciated. (and you don't need to think if yourself as a "real" author to play.)
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Date: 2012-06-25 04:21 pm (UTC)I've picked back up with revising now that I have a week where my kids are away from me. Blessed silence and whole hours to string thoughts together. It's strange to come back to this story that I'd left for so long.
I think one of the real struggles with this revision pass is that -- because it is my first novel -- the first-draft process that I went through isn't how I would now choose to write a first draft. It wasn't even really a process: I started with an idea, and I just wrote. I spent a lot of time fine-tuning stuff in the early chapters (so I could submit it for crit, or for Viable Paradise) before I understood where the entire story would end up. I had good reasons for doing it that way -- it got me to VP -- but it was not a good process, in the end.
It wasn't until I got deeply into the novel that I realized the reasons for some of the things that happened in the first couple of chapters. I carried on with pumping out words and just noted for myself that this thing in chapter 10 is because of something that existed but I didn't realize in chapter 2. It felt amazing and magical at the time -- words, words, words pouring onto the page -- and these massive realizations of how it fit together as a whole. It was beautiful.
But now? Making sure that it all ties together is driving me batty.
As for my process, it's very dependent on Scrivener's comments I made while reading earlier drafts. Then I go back and make the changes that I suggested in the comments. Then I power through and see what else needs to change because of those changes. It feels a lot like setting up dominoes to tip them all over.
BUT I WILL FINISH!
Then I'll do it differently next time, having become this much wiser.
I look forward to seeing what everyone else says.
Back to revision - kids come home on Friday. Enjoy the naps: sleep is precious. ;-)
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Date: 2012-06-29 09:14 pm (UTC)I almost always first draft as I go, which works ok if I keep at it and go at a reasonable pace, because my brain likes plot and tends to work most of the weird stuff I tossed in back at the beginning back into place later on and it all mostly comes out looking like a novel.
The problem I've run into is that I have suddenly got two books where I knew where they started and where they ended up, but sort of failed to put enough middle in. Sigh.