Editing and revising modes are vastly different than conceiving, creating, writing and polishing modes. Every writer ends up with a different approach, which is one of the hardest points to grasp. You have to find your own batting stance, your own formula, your own look. Part of that for me was learning to love editing mode, but it remains a trying relationship.
Yesterday, I finished a first draft of a novel I’ve been working on for something like a year and about the ‘Sixties. Okay, I’ll quote David Crosby on that subject again.
“If you remember the ‘Sixties, you weren’t there.”
That quote sometimes confuses me; I often feel I remember too much of that era.
So I had done something in preparing to write that novel I rarely do: I’d outlined it in great detail. Usually I scratch out a few ideas and characters on a pad of paper, just to keep from going too far afield as I write. But a more formal outline for this one seemed necessary because I planned a number of characters and over a span of time, 1968-1970. It’s important in semi-historical writing to at least keep the chronological sequences right. Not that I stick religiously to an outline. As I write and the story comes…
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Michael Seidel, writer 