The Danger Zone - When You Go Insane With Editing

I have a dear friend whom I've never met in person. She's pretty much made of Pure Awesome, like all of my friends are. I must admit, though, that I wanted to smack her upside the head the other day. We were talking on Skype and she started telling me about the final personal edits she's doing on a book of hers before sending it in to her editor.

So, Michelle, I'm doing all these searches for to-be verbs and the word "was" and "that" and adverbs, and all that crap. What about this paragraph? I've written "was" in this paragraph EIGHT times. I've got to get rid of some!

I read through the paragraph. There was nothing wrong with it. I would have written it differently according to my own style, but it was beautiful writing. I didn't want to change a word. It got her point across just fine. I proceeded to glare at her over the camera. Sorry, Dear Friend. You know I love you. I think she'd crossed that line - you know, the one where you go kind of INSANE with editing your own work?

There's a point where we need to let go. I know I've whipped out the huge magnifying glass and started looking at my work like it's something to be completely dissected and ripped apart. Like you're ever going to get it back together into something recognizable...hah!

Danger Zone: When you start looking at the number of specific words in every single paragraph in your book. Too many "thats!" you cry, and start hitting the delete button like a crazy person. You start fixing things everywhere, and out of order. Then you realize that you've changed something back there that will affect something up here that will affect something over there. Crap.You've created a mess. So you do more editing, and before you know it three months have passed and you should have just rewritten the book from scratch.

Yes, I drew that picture with my limited drawing skills. Don't make fun of it.

I'm just saying there is a point where we step over the line. If you're serious about traditional publication, an editor will take your manuscript and make it all shiny and pretty. (If you want to publish your own work, hire an editor if you can.) If there's an ugly WAS glaring somewhere, they'll nix it. Some things are just too small to spend three months stressing over.

Use your common sense and be aware that if you're entering Danger Zone territory, maybe you should call up a good friend and have them talk you down from that delete-frenzy ledge. You know, when you start to go cross-eyed and think every sentence you write is utter crap? Yeah, I know you've been there. I have, too.

Rearranging and Shuffling Scenes

Over the years, the elements of writing that I've had to focus on during revisions has changed. When I first started writing, clarity was a problem for me. I had to learn to see my stories from an outsider's point of view. Then, I remember a time where I had to focus on endings that felt satisfying.

Lately, much of my revision energy has been focused on rearranging the pieces in a scene and shuffling those scenes around in a story. The fact that this simple thing has occupied so much of my time is funny to me. It feels like such an easy thing, and yet I'm finding that it's having a big effect on how engaging my prose can be (in my opinion).

Today, for example, I was working on Cyberlama, and I wrote a chapter that discussed a news story in which one man murdered another man. I wrote on the topic from start to finish, including events before the murder, the actual murder, and then some people's speculations on why the murder had occurred. But, when I was done, I asked myself what would happen if I didn't get into the speculations right away. Instead, I took that chunk out of the chapter and pasted it in several pages later, after I had already written about a couple of other, unrelated topics in between.

For me, shuffling the scenes this way gives my story more tension and also makes the speculations more powerful somehow. There's more tension because the murder story doesn't quite feel complete. It's like a subtle form of a cliffhanger. There are some questions left unanswered. I think breaking up the scene also makes the scene more powerful because when the speculations are farther away from the actual murder events, they resonate more...like they resonate beyond all of the material I inserted between the murder and speculation. By bringing it back at a later time, it feels like something important that keeps re-emerging in my narrator's mind.

I find that I also rearranging things to keep similar elements closer together. I had, for example, a scene where a woman brought her violin in to play for a group of people. When I originally wrote the scene, the violin performance was broken up by the thoughts of some of the audience members. While I was revising, though, I ended up putting all of the audience members' thoughts at the end, so that the the performance was told in one continuous passage. I felt like that made the concert experience more vivid.

Has anyone else focused on moving elements around like this? Like I say, I'm not sure why it's taking up so much of my attention at the moment. But, I'm realizing that it's a powerful revision tool, one that I hadn't taken advantage of as much in the past.

Friday Filler! History of a Sentence

First draft of sentence:

"Back in Joppa," Hope whispered, "I saw that look."

and then

"Back in Joppa," Hope whispered, "I saw that look." A snake, a rabid dog, a madman.

and then I

"I saw that look back in Joppa," Hope whispered., "I saw that look." A snake, a rabid dog, a madman.

but

"I saw that look back in Joppa," Hope whispered. The unfeeling eye of a snake, a rabid dog, a madman.

however

"I saw that look back in Joppa," Hope whispered. The unfeeling eye pitiless gaze of a snake, a rabid dog, a madman.

and let's just

"I saw that look back in Joppa," Hope whispered. The pitiless gaze of a snake, a rabid feral dog, a madman.

while we're at it

"I saw that look back in Joppa," Hope whispered. The pitiless gaze of a feral dog, a snake, a feral dog, a madman.

which takes us from our original

"Back in Joppa," Hope whispered, "I saw that look."

to

"I saw that look back in Joppa," Hope whispered. The pitiless gaze of a feral dog, a snake, a madman.

and I think that's much better.

Anyway, happy Friday one and all. Tonight Mighty Reader and I are going to go see the fabulous Picasso exhibit at the SAM (150 works of art shipped all the way from the Paris Picasso Museum just for us)! I hope to make it downtown in time for a cocktail before the viewing. I have no idea what we'll have for dinner afterwards, only that dinner will be had at a very late hour indeed. Elevenish, likely. Pagliacci's might be getting some of my money.

You? Fabulous plans for Friday night?

Getting Defensive Over Your Work Isn't Always Bad

I've been revising my work. I haven't written anything "new" in weeks, and I've noticed my brain switching from one kind of thinking to another. I like this switch because it's a break from drafting. As I've said before, drafting exhausts me. On the other hand, revising, for me, always means I'm dealing with some sort of feedback from others, and feedback always means shifting into defensive mode. I'm sure my betas would tell you I don't actually get defensive with them, but I do get defensive in my head. This can occur even without feedback. That familiar battle:

Oh my gosh, this book sucks. Everything I've ever written sucks. No, it doesn't suck! Have a little self-respect, would you?

How did I miss these plot holes! I'm so stupid. You are not stupid. If you say that one more time I'll break your arm. And both your legs.

I can't possibly revise this beast one more time. It's good enough now. No it's not. No work is ever done until you turn the final edits into your editor. You know this. Duh.

So the battle rages on and I revise page after page after page. This can, sadly, go on for years. Defensive mode can be a comfortable battle, one in which I feel empty without its presence. Being always happy with my work is boring. Being too confident is egotistical. I've got to keep pushing myself down to be a real writer. Right?

Tell Yourself You Suck
As much as I think it's wrong to dog on your work all the time, I do think it's a necessary step to grow. No completely 100% confident person has always been completely 100% confident. Allow the doubt to creep in. Wage a war. Let yourself land into a deep dark pit of doubt and despair and see the light up above.

And Then Get Out Of There
Yep, climb out. Fight your way out. Grow. Learn. And don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up.

Nick made it clear in the comments that there's a difference between beating ourselves up and beating up our work. I agree. What I'm mostly talking about here is being critical of your own work. Mostly, I'm saying give yourself permission to suck and get upset about it. A lot of what I write is never seen by any alpha or beta reader. A lot of it gets deleted into the abyss because I'm learning faster how to recognize what sucks. Still, it's the recognition that counts, and that almost always includes waging a little battle. Celebrate the fight. Let it happen, and march on to victory where there will likely be another battle in a few days. Opposition is, after all, how we grow, and I suppose if you keep losing the battles you probably aren't cut out to be a writer. I'm convinced it's a violent career, no matter what anyone else says.

Revisions and the Writerly Eye

Every novel is in part the result of decisions the author has made and most of the time, I am sure, those authors have made different decisions than I would have made had I been writing their book. Sometimes this results in my surprise and delight as a writer comes up with something much more cool than I ever would have stumbled into. Most of the time these decisions are invisible to me and I'm just caught up in the narrative.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking along the lines of, "Gosh, I wish he hadn't done that. I hope there isn't going to be a lot more of that as we go along." This is what I think when, for example, the author telegraphs a punch or gives a clumsy explanation for character action or lays out a slab of prose that doesn't flow well with the surrounding prose or just uses a word I dislike (for not all words are created equal, and some words are just ugly in the ear and invoking them destroys the poetry of the passage).

Anyway, this is what I think of as reading with my writerly eye: remaining vigilant to lapses of craft in whatever prose is before me. It's an irritating way to read and frankly it's caused me to read much more slowly than I did in the past. This writerly eye is, I am sure, a by-product of my own writing and revising, because it is the way I read my own works.

This doesn't mean that my inner editor is my primary reader, though. I read first and foremost for pleasure, like any other sane person. Reading just feels good in my head, and I love the simple process of converting graphics into concepts and stories and gosh, but whoever invented the alphabet and writing is my best friend forever. I also read for surprise, for the delight of character and plot and theme and all the other values I have learned to appreciate in fine writing. The writerly eye is more like a separate and parallel process that goes on in the background while I read. Sometimes I think of a narrative as a river through which I am wading upstream and my inner editor is like a hand trailing in the water and sometimes things that don't belong in the river get caught by the fingers of that hand. If it's my own narrative, I pull the seaweed or tin cans or other junk out of the river and throw it to shore and then admire the clean sparkling water flowing around me. If it's someone else's book, the junk remains caught in my hand until--if it's not a well-written book--too much of it collects and I decide to shake all the crap off my fingers and go find a different river to wade.

What I'm doing here, of course, is searching for the proper metaphor for the process of revisions. Some of it is like trailing your hand in a moving river, but some of it is like untangling a knot of string, and some of it is like taking in the waist of a pair of pants and some of it is like patching a hole in a wall and some of it is like planting bulbs in the fall and hoping they'll all bloom beautiful flowers in the spring and some of it, of course, is like trying to decipher Linear B when you have no knowledge of ancient Minoan.

Subjectivity Centered?

Last week in my post about me I mentioned that I had written a new short story, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to give it to people for feedback or not. Well, my curiosity got the best of me, and this past weekend I did share it with a few people. I got some compliments, and I got some criticisms. Not surprising, right? After all, it's all subjective.

I admit I never was a great believer in the idea that "it's all subjective." I think in many respects criticism can be quite objective, and the better the critic, the better the objectivity.

So, why does saying about subjectivity come up so often?

In thinking more about the criticism I got back today, I wonder if the reason criticism seems subjective is because most critics differ in what they think writing should be.

We see this among ourselves and our different goals. Some of us are striving to make high art. Some of us are looking to write a book that agents will approve of. Some of us want to see our books on a bookstore shelf. Some of us want to make a living through writing.

If we were to start with the same story, and each of us wanted to accomplish different goals with it, I'd argue that the direction each one of us revised in would also differ. Chances are, someone who is trying to write the type of book that has never been written before won't succeed very well in getting an agent in today's publishing world. That doesn't mean that what she or he wrote is bad.

So, I wonder if having the unity of vision is absolutely essential before a writer and reviewer can seek to exchange ideas that are actually helpful in the revision process.

Thoughts?

And...Happy Birthday to Michelle!!! Da da da-ta da-ta da da dah!

From the Ground Up

I am working with an agent to get a novel in shape to submit to publishers. I've been working with this agent for almost a year now (in fact, I just realized that tomorrow is the anniversary of our face-to-face meeting wherein we became engaged--I mean, when he became my agent and I became his client), and I've done two major revisions to the work so far. Neither of those revisions managed to fix the problem with the second half of the book, and it was only during a phone call with my agent about a month and a half ago that I realized what the actual problem was. Some back and forth with Mr. Agent ensued at that point, and I told him that I know what the problem actually is, and that I can fix it, but it will take some time and work. (Now, you might be wondering what the agent actually liked about the novel since it's not submission ready and I'm doing major revisions to it, but honestly that's the way it works a lot of the time and when you get your own agent, be prepared to do more work on the novel; sometimes a lot of work.)

Anyway, here are the details. My protagonist is involved in a familiar story and is telling his own story as it relates to the famous story. The first half of the book explains my protagonist's growing involvement with the famous story (which is "Hamlet," by the way), and the second half of the book tells the story of "Hamlet," sort of, and my protagonist's role in those events. Or at least, that's the premise. In reality, during the second half of the book my protagonist often fades into the background and is merely a narrator of my version of Shakespeare's story. My version is significantly different from Shakespeare's (because I lean heavily on not only the sources Shakespeare stole from, but I also take the characters in new directions), but still I end up focusing not on my protagonist's tale, but on him telling the tale of "Hamlet." Which was interesting, but in the end confusing and a problem.

So I've figured out that the way to deal with this (or the way I'm going to deal with this) is to use my version of "Hamlet" as the framing story instead of the actual story, and I've come up with an original dramatic arc for my protagonist that overlays and intertwines with my version of "Hamlet" and keeps the focus on the protagonist. So cool for me and Big Win, right? Almost.

The problem for me now is that almost none of my prose is going to be salvagable. If I can keep 20% of what I've written, I'll be very lucky. I began writing the new first chapter this week, which I had planned to create out of the existing Chapter 4, but I think that I want to essentially rewrite the whole book from the ground up. I'll keep some of the work, but I learned a huge amount while writing a different new novel this winter and my now-much-smarter-writer-brain wants to use my newfound writer smarts and not try to retread the old stuff. It looks, frankly, easier to start from scratch. I have a sort of bet with myself that I can come up with a complete draft of the new version by July. We'll see how well I do with that.

I know that Michelle has rewritten her most recent book (Monarch) from scratch, and I know that Davin is thinking about rewriting (or writing a whole new version of) his novel Rooster. I also know that the latest novel I've written, Cocke & Bull, is in some ways based on my very first (and very bad) novel from about 15 years ago. There must be other people who have scrapped entire novels and rewritten them from the ground up. I'm betting some of you have done that, and I'd like it a lot if you could share your experiences with that, and pass along any advice you might have. Also, please tell me the work was worthwhile!

Also: Happy Friday, and about time!

You Don't Always Need Your Eyes

I've been experiencing a strange thing with my latest revision of Rooster. But, to really explain it, I need to step back a bit.

I started this novel because I wanted to understand a man that was very important in my life. This man had always confused me as I was growing up. I didn't understand why he was so angry and reclusive. I didn't get why he had such a tough shell. So, I wrote about him, starting with the facts, and generously filling in the cracks with details that I made up. I liked the story because it allowed me to explain this man whom I had never been able to explain before.

But, while the protagonist of my book, Bao Phamduong, was sympathetic, he was far from being likable. Just because people understood WHY he was the way he was didn't make readers want to invite him over for brunch. I heard many readers tell me this, but I didn't change Bao. I figured he was who he was, and I was content with the idea that he at least evoked sympathy. And, readers seemed to be impressed by the book, even if they weren't necessarily excited about it.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I decided to make Bao less of a grump. It was an experiment to see what would happen to my book. I started revising, taking away many of the places where Bao was being a jerk. That was when the strange thing happened. In the process of making Bao nicer, I noticed that I was physically feeling much less tense. Particular in my shoulders, I was noticing myself relaxing. I felt like I was in my yoga class even though I was actually in front of my computer.

Was this what my readers were experiencing? Is this why they could say that the book was well-written even if they didn't enjoy reading it? I really don't know. I'm letting this play out. I'm going through the entire book, making Bao more likable. I'm not sure if the book will still work for me when all is said and done. After all, my original source of inspiration, the man I set out to explain will be mostly gone from this latest draft. But, I feel like it's important for me to try and understand this new connection I have with my story.

What do you all think? Should one trust these physical reactions as much as anything emotional or intellectual? Have you had this sort of experience yourself? And...is it worth going through the revision if I lose the character I had originally wanted to write about?

Forward and Backward Revisions

A couple of weeks ago, my friend/writer/teacher, Ellen Slezak, met with me for lunch. She had read the latest draft of my book, and she was kind enough to give me a few tips to finish it off. One of the things she suggested I do was to read through the book one more time and make sure that all of the sentences were flowing. This seems like common sense, right? But, I realized that this was a step in my revision process that I had neglected until now.

I thought about how I had been revising my book. For the most part, my last few drafts involved me reading through sections, identifying problems and then going back to fix those problems. Sometimes, I'd also scan through random sections and cut out words or details that weren't really contributing to the story I was trying to tell.

To me, this revision strategy is a backward movement. I don't mean backward in a bad way, but this revision involves hindsight--reading a section, and then going back into it to fix the problems. There is nothing wrong with backward revision. In fact, I'd argue that much of the time it is essential. But, something that I had been ignoring was the opposite strategy: forward revisions.

Forward revisions involves starting from the beginning of the story, or at the beginning of a long section of the story, and moving through it forwards, fixing things on the fly as you go along. This is what I did in my latest draft, and it really helped me fix the problem Ellen had identified. I started from page 1, and I read through the book quickly, all the way to the end. If something caught me--and awkward sentence or strange grammar--I fixed it quickly, backstepped a good ways, and then continued to race through the book forwards again.

My book was about 65,000 words long when I gave it to Ellen. I felt that it was focused, coherent, and told the story I wanted to tell. I thought is was pretty much done. However, after my forward revision, which did little aside from adding extra words here and there to make transitions work, my book ended up being over 67,000 words. As a result of these extra words, I find that my prose flows much more smoothly from one scene to the next. I also think my voice comes through more clearly.

The key to forward revisions is to go through the book quickly. I think this is an effective way to get natural sentence rhythms flowing again, and it allows you to see the book more as a whole than when you move slowly and dissect each scene. In a similar way that an outline gives you a quick overview of the structure of your story, racing through the prose quickly gives you an overview of the prose style of your story. It's an important last step, one that I had neglected because I was focusing so much on bigger elements of my book. AND, for those of us who fear that we may have lost the original spontaneity of the story by overworking it, I think this forward revision can bring some of that back.

Questions: Do all of you do this sort of fast, forward revision? Do you think it's important? If you don't do this, is there another approach you use for getting those final touches done on your manuscript?

Additional Question: Why didn't I get a MacArthur Genius Grant?