The Writing Moment
Revising my current novel-in-progress continues. I expected to be done by now. I was excited the other day because, hey, only thirty pages remain.
I am over page 400 now, so I have that going for me. But, as I read and revise, I encounter matters of continuity. Like eye or hair color, nicknames, and details relating to the characters’ personal histories.
I don’t know what the right thing to do is, but I always stop, go back, and resolve the issue for myself. It’s one of my personality quirks that if I know that’s still in the book, I become bogged down thinking about it. Better to just resolve it.
A danger to going back to research continuity is that rereading those passages entertains me. I get invested with enjoying the story. Which means that the revising timeline gets imperiled by reading my own stuff for entertainment. There’s also often a little more needs to edit and revise exposed. Like, I’ll encounter a sentence that’s slightly scrambled, just enough for me to question my writing skills and stop to fix those issues.
I also backtracked to a previous chapter. I’d been quite long, so I modified it and re-invented the one big chapter into four smaller ones. Then I did something to another long chapter, feeling that the move would enhance clarity and pacing – win-win.
The final note on this part of the revision is that it’s tying up the story, closing with a large battle, with some matters of other dimensions and time thrown in. I’m a sucker for other dimensions and time. My writer self is amused with our current theories and understanding of these things. Like the growing understanding of quantum entanglement and other quantum matters, I think we have more to understand about time and existence.
The passages in question were also written at high speed: think, write, and press on, with admonitions to myself, don’t slow down to analyze and question. Just get it done and fix it in revision.
And that’s what I’m doing. TBH, I’m a little surprised that it flows as well as it does.
Onward, right? Yeah, just give me a little more coffee. Pass it over; doesn’t matter if it’s cold.
The Writing Moment
Deeply into revision after letting the novel in progress simmer for a few days. Surprising early cuts come, which weirdly feel ‘natural’. Like the book is already out there, and I’m shaping the manuscript to fit it.
The process is much more involved and slower than the creative writing stage. With the entire story from beginning to end filled in before me, I know how I want to sharpen its focus. Ten pages have been sliced away from the beginning. What remained of that bird required extensive rewriting. It’s like that first draft was an exploration of the history of an event and the characters populating it. Now that I’m familiar with it, I can properly tell the story. From less comes more.
The Writing Moment
Into the fourth revision I go. The novel flows more smoothly and the story so far feels complete and true. That’s a big reach when only fifteen percent has been done in this round but I hold onto any sign of progress and completion that’s found.
Meanwhile, I’ve started writing another novel, of course, because stories stir restlessly in the mind’s wings, eager to for their moment to be explored and told.
The Writing Moment
The final hundred pages were attacked. He brooded. My god, this was boring writing, wasn’t it? Did it advance the story? Not to his mind today. Slash, cut.
After tough decisions on two chapters, the rest went with stunning, engrossing speed. Fifty pages were read and edited in the next two hours.
Just fifty pages remained, for this go-around. Then there’d be another. Because he needed to ensure the book made sense with the cuts made. That he hadn’t inadvertently destroyed continuity and coherence.
But for today and now, he felt pretty damn good about it.
The Writing Moment
Eighteen percent of The Light of Memories remains to be edited and revised in the third revision session. Small percentage but over a hundred pages. Once it’s done, another round of reading it through will begin. Figure I’ll read and edit until I reach the point that I’m not confused by anything I’m reading, that it reads smoothly and fully, that I’m not pausing to make corrections.
Then I’ll offer it to others. So, maybe this century. If not, the next.
The Writing Moment
He called it ‘a bad writing day’.
It was challenging and stressful. He didn’t like what he was editing, something he’d written months ago. It seemed good then but the need for deep revisions were obvious.
Disappointed, he struggled through as much as he could and broke it off to save his sanity. In truth, he was relegating the work to his subconscious. The next morning, returning to the manuscript, he understood how to fix that chapter. Coffee was poured. Revising was eagerly resumed.
The Writing Moment
He felt like a raiding barbarian as slashed his way through the manuscript. He’d overwritten so much in that first draft, trying to learn the story in all its elements, especially the characters. Now he cut, cut, cut.
Next draft, he would probably need to work on continuity and coherency after all this slashing. But that was for the next draft. He was committed to finishing this one.
Michael Seidel, writer 