Tag: editing

Surprise!

A moment ambushed today that I really wasn’t expecting. I finished writing, editing, and revising draft number ten of April Showers 1921. 

I’d finished writing the novel, and it ‘felt’ correct, a coherent and complete tapestry of time, characters, settings, events, and story.

I was pretty damn astonished. Just like reading an entertaining book, writing a book that entertains me leaves me breathless and lost, wanting more while processing, it’s over. It’s good. It’s done.

Draft number ten is a hefty boy, let me tell you, six hundred ten pages in MS Word, one hundred eighty thousand plus words. It’d required eight months, my gosh, almost to the date I’d officially started it after a dream in early January. I’d first mentioned it in a January 27, 2019 post. Eight months of thinking about it, writing, revising, researching, editing, processing, and editing, revising, and re-writing again and again. It’s odd and startling to realize that I’ve written all those pages in that time, and doesn’t count all those pages that’ve been removed during the revising process. It was just such a short spurt of time, and just a few hours each day of typing.

Now, I’m contemplating, what do I do with myself? This is my writing time, but I’ve finished writing the novel. It’s like getting out of school early. Such possibilities! Should I go eat? Well, I’m not hungry; this is my writing time. Tell someone? Well, of course, I posted this, to share with my online friends. Many of you are writers and appreciate the satisfaction of writing and finishing. I think you, of all, will most understand, and have been quite supportive.

I suppose I’ll take a break today, and then return tomorrow, and start going through my notes to confirm that I’m not leaving something out there hanging. Then…well, we’ll see.

But, um, yeah, I guess I’m done writing like crazy for today.

Yeah.

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A Writing Update

Short, simple, and sweet.

My writing progress on the novel in process, April Showers 1921, has been going well. It hasn’t been easy; I sweat over details, sentence placement, sentence length, descriptions, verbs…argh. I sweat over paragraphs, pages, and chapters, and the three Cs: clarity, coherence, and continuity.

It’s not easy, but it’s satisfying and rewarding. Going back over the work the next day in preparation to begin another writing session, I’m happy with what I’ve written and the shape that the story has assumed.

I sometimes speculate on when it’ll be done. I began writing it in January, 2019. I’m on my tenth draft. That means most days are spent editing and rewriting, with new bridge material, verisimilitude added, or scenes more carefully addressed. While I hold true to the original concept, I love the expansion of thought and understanding that accompanied the writing process.

So when will I be done? Well, I often shrug and say, who knows? Who cares? It’ll be done when it’s done. I’m surprised, too, that I don’t want to explain anything to anyone. I’m happy with what I have, and that’s good enough for me.

Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Draft Ten

Here’s a casual writing update, since I was thinking about it.

I thought I was on draft number seven of my latest WIP, April Showers 1921. After yesterday’s writing session, though, I was going through old docs while closing down – browsing the past, if you will – when I realized, wow, this is actually the tenth draft, if you include three false starts.

As I walked yesterday, I looked back on the process of writing this novel. I’d say that the first five or six drafts were about exploring and gasping the concept, characters, and story. A sprawling story, grasping all of its elements and ramifications was difficult. It reminded me of attempting to tell about World War II. So much happened and impacted on other areas, but things needed to be sorted and put into some order that could be followed.

I’d been free-flowing, writing like crazy, with those early drafts, leaping into different aspects of the story, exploring and expanding scenes and anecdotes, hunting for the handle on the characters and relationships. From that came the sense of the story arc, the concept’s fullness, the characters’ complexities, and the beginning and ending.

Each draft was being organized around what had been previously written. The chapters would be cut and slashed, re-written and re-arranged as needed to fit my evolving understanding. Then more was written to expand scenes. Everything was shifted as required to address pacing and coherency.

With the next draft, number seven (or ten, as I see it now) which is the current draft, it finally felt that I was fully in tune with what’s going on. I’ve been rocketing through it. Most of the writing sessions are not long, but intense and explosive. Progress has been strong. As with most of my writing process, regardless of their purpose, my mind continues working on it no matter what I’m doing. It’s not unusual to have an epiphany in a grocery store or while driving the car. Most often, though, as I walk away from the writing day, the muses carry inertia forward, delivering more material for the next day.

It’s fun writing like this, learning the story, telling the story, and feeling it opening up, expanding to include more while contracting to deliver more impact.

Okay, got my coffee, and ass in chair. Time to write like crazy again, at least one more time.

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Take That, World

A friend’s daughter recently published a short story. I ended up with it in hand to read. It wasn’t her first. She’s been published about a dozen times.

Oh, how the urge to edit pulsed through me as I read it. My inner writer was shaking his head. The story was wooden, with passive verbs, a weak concept, and slow pacing. There was much telling, then showing what’d been told, and then sometimes told again.

I was dismayed and baffled. This was my take, but this was a recently published short story. This must be what editors like.

Novels that were recently published that I’d read were recalled. With many designated as bestsellers, I often thought the writing was clumsy, particularly in the early chapters, but they knew how to tell a story, and that came through in the end. Of course, there were a few where the writing was sublime. Those tend to be the award winners.

Yes, I know, every reader brings their a unique set of expectations, and finds their own story from what the writer offered. My take will be different from what others find and enjoy. Yet, something like the things I found that I wanted to edit seem like the basics of strong writing.

I concluded, I’m out of step with what’s wanted and desired in the writing and publishing world — and the reading world — and probably destined to be so forever. Accepting that, I’ll resign myself, again, to writing for myself and trying to improve my writing.

Take that, world.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

7

The Fourth Time

Finished the novel-in-progress’ first draft back in June. Turned out to be a hot mess. So, after a few days of sulking and withering under the glares I gave myself in the mirror, I tried again.

Yeah, finished that draft and choked on it. I went into a hard work & focus mode that I’d discovered in myself about forty years back. Went to work on number three. Number three was a third of the way through when I realized, no; not working. Still not finding the root issue.

Damn it. My frustration levels were rising and hadn’t peaked. But with each draft, I narrowed down issues, and fixed problems. Come number four, and damn it, I remained dissatisfied. I kept thinking about what the problem was. Then, once I realized and admitted what it was, I began addressing how to fix it. The challenge haunted me through everything I was doing.

A possible answer was found this morning. Warning myself not to overthink it, I resumed work with draft number three as the basis, but designated as draft number four. I warned myself not to get my hopes up; I thought I could fix it twice before.

I did end up satisfied with the changes today. Need to sustain the effort, though, focus and keep the pressure up until I finish a draft that satisfies me. This might well take all summer. I could be writing about draft number twenty by autumn’s first day.

Done with writing like crazy for the day. Cheers

6

Contracting and Expanding

The mid-year cusp finds me contracting and expanding among multiple spectrums, like my psyche is inhaling and exhaling, troubling and calming itself, encouraging and discouraging. All’s well, it’s not looking good, but it’s looking better even if it looks like crap.

July is beginning. I’ve completed the first draft of the novel begun in January (April Showers 1921). The first draft strikes me as abysmal. The things that I thought I needed to write and I thought were so perfect make me want to hurl now. Wading through them is like walking naked through a chest-high pool of liquified feces.

It’s wonderful.

This is writing’s essence for me. It’s the matter of thinking on topics and characters, needling the imagination into pulling concepts out of my ass, and then tinkering with it all, hunting the story, wrestling with understanding, and coping with how to tell it, and what I’m telling.

I began a new draft and reorganized the structure. That’s another phase in progress. I’ve edited and revised the first twelve chapters in the past week. Several of the chapters required five or more passes. One chapter remained unsatisfying after six or seven hacks at it. I marked it for more work and continued, remembering that the story being told is the sum of all the separate pieces, and only come together for me when they’re all known and understood. Then, working on another chapter, I went back to the troubling chapter. Eureka! I saw the issues troubling me, clear as a full moon on a cloudless night. Slash, slash, slash, slice, slice, slice, cut and delete, cut and delete, rework, rework. Ah; better. More passes are needed, but it now works.

Others have noticed my focus and intensity. They only see the outer panel. Inside me, it’s as intense as a hot, bubbling cauldron. I noticed the impact on other aspects of my life. Phone calls and emails that are promised are postponed to keep from interfering with my progress. My focus on this novel causes me to forget to do things that I’ve planned, errands to run, et cetera. I know this is the case, but my wife thinks I’m being forgetful because I’m getting old or something. I don’t bother to attempt to correct her, because there’s no value in wasting that energy.

Above and beyond, after reading interviews with authors, I’ve ended up with a long list of books to read. The ideas found and presented are spectacular. I want to go read those stories. It’s far from an altruistic plan. While it’s born in the enjoyment I find in reading and the admiration I have for their success in going the path that I follow, there are more books for me to write. Reading these others will help unleash these book ideas. That excites me.

That thought reminds me of the danger of tastes and preferences. I tend to read science fiction, thrillers, historic fiction, a few ‘literary’ books, mysteries, some non-fiction about science, economics, and politics, but I need to expand that circle. It’s a decent size, but it’s too small for the size of our existence. I’m hungry to find more, learn more, imagine more, and write more.

One thing that I learned while working in the military, startups, and Fortune 500 corporations is the value of pacing. There will be ups and downs, but to finish, I have to manage my intellectual, emotional, and physical energies so that I can be there at the end. That requires introspection and meditation, but my dreams help me.

It’s a different path for each of us. I’m jealous of being who stumble onto their path early and who manage to navigate it to their satisfaction, but I can’t deny that I’m happy to be on this path.

We’re cresting mid-year. I hope you’re all doing well on your paths. Press on.

Cheers

 

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