The Review Club Forum Revision

I was really curious how do y'all go about revising? Do you write out the entire piece (or novel) and then walk away from it for a few months and come back? Do you write out sections and revise as you go? And when do you give up on a story and file it away for some time far far in the future?

This could get long, but it meant a lot to me so I'm going to share.

Over the past 2.5 years I have been involved in a brutal custody battle with my ex over my two children. Throughout the process I have been subjected to over five mandatory psychological evaluations to determine certain aspects of the case for the judge (as has my ex-wife).

I started writing about a year ago and then quit altogether after only a few months of constant typing. I started different books and then deleted them entirely after 30-40K words in each. They weren't good enough. I would never finish them. Blah Blah Blah!

Three months ago my attorney suggested that I see an extremely expensive psychiatrist and be evaluated by her so that regardless of the outcome of the other evaluations -- we would have a highly respected opinion from someone of our choice.

One hour into a four hour interview with this lady, she stops and says "There's nothing wrong or pathological about you except your love for your children and your passion for life. Evaluation over, now let's talk about your writing."

I was completely taken aback as I had yet to say anything about writing to this woman. She told me that regardless of the outcome of anything I wrote, that I was meant to be a writer. After I told her about what happened last year regarding all the many starts ending in deletes, she simply told me that she figured as much.

She has published more than ten books, ranging from professional non-fiction to fictional and memoir. She told me something that meant a tremendous amount, which was "You have to finish every single book, no matter what. They are inside you and they must come out. If you have a great one or more inside you, it will come out when it's supposed to. But you have to finish everything you start."

She went on to talk about the psychological consistencies in writers and how (they) sabotage their own success by not finishing any given single work.

I made a commitment to her that I would finish one book at a time and that I wouldn't edit them until they were completely finished. It helped me a lot to have someone that I made such a commitment to and to understand that I don't have to sit down and write finished product the first type. I'm a little over 50K words into the current and only book I'm working on at the moment -- A year ago, If I were to begin reading it right now I would edit the s**t out of it and most likely delete the whole thing without remorse. Today I am completely okay with how flawed it may or may not be up until this point, but I must finish it. Regardless of how much of a crap piece of total hack writing it may or may not be.

I need to type "The End" and know that it's honest. Nothing has a chance until I can do that.

Norm. Good luck on finishing. There is nothing like writing 'the end.' I used to have the same problem with not finishing. It was something I did when I didn't take writing seriously. I have a few stories that I started many years ago. I didn't delete them, but they have disapeared because I had them saved on floppy disk and didn't label them, so now they are lost amoung all the other disks.

The books I have finished, I did after I started taking writing seriously. When I write, I start at the begining and don't even read what I have written until the whole thing is finished. When I'm done, I go through and read the whole thing and take notes on what parts need work. I'll fix what ever grammar problems I find along the way as I read. After that, I revise, revise some more and revise some more. I find taking a chapter and completely rewriting it works best for me, rather than trying to fix something sentence by sentence. I copy and paste a chapter into a new document and then just start rewriting with the old chapter as a guide that I can copy and paste the good stuff from.

I can relate to that norm. I haven't finnished a dang thing. Not even a short story. Well I finnished one very experimental one. I think I have 12 chapters of one novel written somewhere. I think I do a lot of starts and stops because I'm just beginning and as I learn new things I want to incorporate them into my stories. So I just end up starting from scratch rather than invest the time in a previous writing. I just want it to be right from the get-go. I usually reread a chapter like 20 times and still I get a ton of mishaps.

But maybe your quack has something. Simply to write without any inhibitions. See it to the end.

I have a goal of one chapter a week but that usually becomes one every 2 weeks. And really in all honesty, I mostly just crank out a chapter over a weekend. Sometimes I write at night but usually I don't.

OK, so I'll make two comments here.

First, and while you already know this Cameron, in fact, several of you know this, I have a specific revision formula. I finish the whole thing and let it sit for a while (indeterminate amount of time -- usually however long it takes me to draft another unrelated novel). And then I print it. And then I rewrite the whole thing, incorporating my changes, additions, etc. by hand. Every single word gets rewritten. I find it really makes me look at every word, every comma, every phrasing, because I have to put it down again. And then I take the handwritten manuscript and retype it into a fresh, new document which forces me to look at everything yet again and resolves any technical formatting issues. And then it's (hopefully) almost done. And then I edit until I can't stand it and then I query it, and if nothing comes back on the queries (haven't quite gotten through this stage) then it's editing and reconsidering. Sounds like a lot of hassle, but I think it's a way for me to convince my brain that revision is still creative and keep doing it (because otherwise I wouldn't because I hate it).

Now, enough of that. Norm, the psychologist was exactly right. Drafts were meant to be messy and that doesn't say anything about one's skill as a writer. I remember reading some of your first work and it was pretty good. Really. Also, finishing the novel is half the battle. Once you finish one, you realize that you can finish any one you start. I've learned more from writing bad novels and finishing them than from starting over and over and over (although I've done my share of that too). Good luck on finishing, and remember that 50k is probably at least halfway there. Once you've made it halfway, you can make it to the end.

(And see, Anthony, I'm not crazy.)

-cc

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Jury is still deliberating ::tongue::

Revising - arrgghhh. I could revise forever. I read somewhere on this forum many months ago that you don't ever perfect a story. You finally just quit. Ha ha.

I have to let the story 'rest' for a while before I can read it with fresh eyes. That's when I notice the weaker spots. However, I also have a professional editor go over the work I intend to publish. Between the two of us, we catch the big problems, continuity breaks, plot confusion, etc. After that, I tweak until the day I submit for publishing. Then, I take a huge leap of faith and hit the send button. Nothing will be perfect; I've come to accept that. So far, I haven't had anyone who's bought my books come back and say 'that didn't make any sense!" ::cool::

I imagine I should answer my own question. Okay, my big admission is that I don't have a whole lot of stuff to revise. And about half of it is sitting on a shelf somewhere until I get some new idea for it. Now granted everything except my novel is done. Well except for a few abortive attempts at some short stories.

But how do I go about revision? Okay so here's how it works for me and it's going to sound really flaky. Generally I'll write a story and then I'll submit it to a group like this. I'll get the group consensus and then I'll sit on it. Finally some spark of brilliance will hit me and I'll rewrite the thing. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Now granted if it's just an orginizational/structural thing I can fix that pretty easy. If it's a larger problem like theme or some really big character problem then yeah that ends up sitting around for a while.

Which I guess leads to another question. What do you guys find hardest to revise? And how do you decide if something just isn't working for the story, or if you're over thinking it?

Revision....

My favorite part. Does sarcasm come through as well in forum?

Good question cam, and great answers from the group. It amazes me how different we all are in terms of craft, but how we are all are writers, through and through. I believe Norm about the writers psychology, and one day hope to find what it is that drives our passion. But until then, I guess I revise this damn novel and stop procrastinating.

Julie

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Everything, of course? ::tongue:: No, really, I think I find the last round of editing the hardest thing to do -- usually because by then I want to throw the manuscript out the window. Also one of the things that seems most difficult to me is adding flavor and setting, something that I tend to skip on my first draft in the great race to get the story out. Maybe I just don't like writing narrative though.

Mostly, I wanted to bump this thread up to the top, see if we can get some perspectives from other group members. I also want to add a few questions:

1. How long do you let a novel sit before revision, if that's your style? And how long do you sit between revisions?

2. On average, how many revisions do you do before you feel like you're finished? How many "edits?"

3. How do you use feedback from readers in your revision? What is your method for synthesizing and making sense of sometimes divergent comments?

k, that's it.

-cc

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Okay... since I don't have a novel finished, mostly I'd have to talk about shorts. And most of them are still sitting waiting to be revised. Generally I let them sit until I feel like I can go back to them with a fresh perspective. Or if I want to play with familiar characters. Or if I feel like hitting my head against a wall until I can make stick figures with the blood. Okay not really. But it sounded funny in my head.

I don't ever feel finished with a story until I feel like there is nothing more I can do with it. And then I run it by a few people. And if they still say it sucks, well then it goes back in the drawer.

As far as using stuff from readers. Well honestly they really help in pointing out the major problems of what does and doesn't fly. Now here comes my sticky point of figuring out how to apply that. And to be honest it takes a while for me to wrap my head around a concept. But generally I work better when I see what someone's talking about. It's much easier to apply something I've seen rather than something someone's told me.

Now sometimes it just spontaneously clicks in my head. And I figure out what I've been doing wrong, or rather I figure out a new way to do something. Now that doesn't mean I necessarily understand it. Hell the more I learn about writing, the less I know.

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That's the best advice I ever heard anywhere.

Revision. Don't we all love that?

I often re-VISION, following Kaplan, before the first draft; in the belief that little sketches, tiny outlines, changing and interviewing characters, flipping view points tone, situation etc help me to find that mythical "story heart". Whatever that is.

In reality that pre-first draft revision often leads to procrastination.

Then I've often constructed the first draft, or revised scene by scene, . However I do find that leads to endless searching and analytical wheel spining. Tinkering. So there's a limit to that process.

Sometimes, I try the "one shot approach" and re-write the whole damn thing, without notes from scratch. Several times. Do-able for a short story. Overkill, perhaps, for a novel. once the story is set, the rest will probably follow. That empahsises flow over craft.

I tend to leave first drafts to cool - as many writers suggest - but its too easily forgotten and put in THE FOLDERS where they gather dust. But I will pull them out and fiddle with them now and again.

When I do grit my teeth enough to revise, and go beyond the first draft, I focus first on BIG things first, character, structure, view, tone etc. But that's normally where I get bogged down as the intellect gets dragged into too many decisions.

Perhaps Ueland's advice is good here. If only I took it. If you write a bad story, novel, write three more.