Here we are at almost the end of January. First of all, Thank God. Granted, this year has been remarkably warm and snow free. And I'm sure the experience last year of having so many days well below zero and so much snow stacked upon more and more snow didn't help my impressions of January much -- to say nothing of spending the month on a daily watch to decide when it was time to put my dog down. January 2011? Seriously, screw it. If I could have the chance to travel back in time and relive a month of my life, that's not the one I'd choose.
But like I said, this one hasn't been as bad. I do have a couple of things to keep my head occupied, which has helped the time pass. In fact, one of them actually makes me wish I could slow down time a little bit: Taking the time to write this post means that I am momentarily stepping away from manuscript revisions. I think each writer approaches the revision process differently, so in case anyone who follows the blog and has been reading about this project for the past few months might be interested, I'm offering up a glimpse of what revisions are for me. This way, if you ever ask me how the "book" is coming and I say I'm doing revisions, you'll have an idea of the insanity and frustration I'm living through.
(And incidentally, I put "book" in quotes up there because I don't think of it as a book yet. In my goal-oriented head, it will not have earned the right to be called a book until it's published. A book is a product. A manuscript is a process. This is the same logic that makes me hesitant to refer to myself as a "writer," and never as an "author" because I have not yet achieved that benchmark of getting a toehold in the industry. But the fact that I used "yet" in that previous sentence without overthinking its inclusion must reflect a combination of ambition and uncharacteristic positive expectation.)
*The biggest thing I'm doing right now is editing. When I sent it out to my 5 beta readers I warned them all they were looking at a first draft, saying I was more concerned with their impressions of the overall story instead of the specific writing. And I'm glad I said that, because as I read through it all with a critical eye, I'm finding a lot of mess and lazy that happened due to the one-month sprint. But so far the fixes have been coming along well. Stephen King's revision formula is "First Draft Minus Ten Percent," which for me would be cutting about 6,600 words. I'm about halfway through it so far and have already cut about 5,000. I've always anticipated cutting 10,000-12,000 by the end, so I'm on track for that.
*As I reread, I leave electronic notes in the margins about things I want to fix: "too wordy," "didn't I say this three chapters ago?" "can't use that word three times in a paragraph," "too descriptive - pick up the action here," "more interiority here," "bad line, too contrived," "one word instead of two," "this only needs to be a paragraph, not a page," and so on. Whoever added the code for the comments feature in Pages - thank you.
*One thing that happens as you write a book is that your characters evolve. This means that I'm seeing some characters do or say things earlier in the book that are completely out of character for who they became in the end. It takes some reworking to fix that. For example, one character's dialogue is being almost completely rewritten as I go, because I didn't know him very well in the beginning, and as I read the earlier things he said, they don't fit the person he became. So, revise.
*I have no idea how many prepositional phrases I've disposed of so far. A lot.
"I've got a few powerful writing crutches -- these are favorite words or modifiers or pet phrases I overuse. An example: If you read Stephen King, you've probably noticed the way he will shoehorn a song quote into his story to emphasize a point, saying something like "What was it that Bruce Springsteen song said?" and then he'll use the quote. I'm personally not a fan of that because it's such an identifiable device that it pulls me out of the story when he does it. For me, I have a list of words I overuse to death, such as: really, that, sort of, a little, had, and just, to name a few. This means running a search for each of those words, looking for every time they appear and deciding case by case how necessary it is to keep them. If not, they're gone.
*Some changes can be made on the fly as I just read. If I see a quick way to fix something, I can just snip, snip, and save, and move on. Those are the fixes I like more.
*And there is a healthy amount of procrastinating going on sometimes as well. "I'll be able to focus more if I straighten up the desk first." "I need better music. What's the tone I need? I should play with iTunes awhile and figure that out." "I'll get the juices flowing if I read for awhile instead." (That one usually is true, by the way.) "I've gotten quite a bit done tonight -- maybe it's time for a podcast / iPhone gaming break."
The problem with the procrastinating is that I do have a deadline now. To stay on schedule for what I want to accomplish by the summer and to have a first revision pass finished for my own reason, I'm making myself be done by February 5th. There will still be at least another revision or two following that later in the spring, but at that point I should be comfortable enough with the manuscript to feel it represents what I'm trying to achieve. And at that point, I will make it available for anyone interested in reading it. It's a thing for me to ask people to read my writing -- I really feel uncomfortable doing anything that wedges me into someone else's life in any way unless I'm sure they want me there, so I don't like making anyone feel obligated to read what I've written unless they really want to. I've done that many times in the past and it rarely works out well. So I'm letting you know now: I'm going to be done by Feb. 5th. At that point, I'm going to ask if anyone would like to read this. But I'm only asking once.
Okay. There's your progress update. Now back to chapter fifteen.....
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