The Writing Moment
Another revision has been completed. This novel has kept growing*, but in a comfortable way, like I’m allowing it to breathe more deeply. I think I understand the story now, and grasp characters’ arcs and histories more completely, along with more nuances of the concept the relevant history informing the tale, things which I’d never thought about, simply inserting the pieces as needed, vowing, worry about it later, just get it written.
Even while I call this rev done, I have a small list of issues that need investigation so they can be vetted against the books’ revised story, so I’ll begin again. It’s been challenging but fun, and very, very satisfying. Makes me smile as I think, done again, even as I prepare to begin again.
That’s the nature of the process.
* The novel is now 482 Word pages and 146K.
The Writing Moment
I picked up my laptop bag and headed to the door. “Off to write,” I told my wife. “I’m pretty excited. Just fifteen pages left of this draft to revise.”
“How long will fifteen pages take?”
Pausing, I broke out in a broad grin. “Well, that depends on how it’s written.” As I laughed, she joined me. I went on, “I mean, it really depends on how it reads and if it still fits with the story after the revisions I’ve made.”
“I see,” she answered.
Shrugging, I turned back to the door. “And then I begin again.”
The Writing Moment
24 pages.
I’ve had about twenty-four pages left to edit and revise in the novel in progress for about a month. Reason exists for that number: I keep re-writing and revising the first ten pages of one chapter. I’ve done so six times. After the sixth time — I’m a slow thinker — I realized that I didn’t know enough about the two characters and their relationship.
He was the main character and I’d been writing about him for months. His actions, thinking, and talking filled most of the 420 pages already revised. The other character had never shown up but was obliquely referenced. He was her son, but she wasn’t really his mother. He didn’t know that when he was young, only learning much later in life. He knew she resented him but didn’t know why. He thought he’d murdered her, but it turned out that she hadn’t been killed. Yes, it’s complicated.
After fleshing these things out more, I suddenly realized, oh, they hate each other.
It surprised me. I thought they were hostile and contemptuous toward one another but hadn’t respected the true depths of despise between them. She was secretive and using him, and he didn’t know why, but he didn’t like her and didn’t trust her. After leaving home, he’d researched his ‘mother’ and discovered little of the truth about her, except he hadn’t murdered her, that she’d framed him and she wasn’t dead at all, but had abandoned him and his sister, hiding her existence from them. All this traumatized his sister when she was a child, who responded by ostracizing her brother and becoming a cat. (I told you, it’s complicated.)
Now that I feel better about my understanding of the two, I tore out the chapter to rewrite it again. Then I’ll revise, and when I feel like I can go on, I will. Then I’ll read the novel again for more revision and see how the newest effort holds up.
That’s how it goes.
The Writing Moment
It’s just one of those days, unpredictable to me, when the writing effort gains sharper clarity and focus. I think the bottom line is that after weeks of thinking and writing and editing and revising, my understanding of the story as originally written crystallized and is now much higher. This feeds to greater focus and concentration, because I’m more certain about where I’m going. Which then generates greater writing energy and enthusiasm, pressing me to keep writing and editing, keep going, keep going.
But, writer’s butt is setting in. The cheeks are compaining about the chair’s hard surface. And though I’d go on, my stomach is querying, “Hey, are we going to eat anytime soon? Very hungry here. Hello? Anyone feel me?”
And my brain is harping, “You need to run errands. Go shopping and get needed supplies for yourself, the house, the wife, and the cats, and add gas to the car because it’s almost on empty.”
Moments like this are always bittersweet. So much was accomplished, leaving me feeling joyous over my progress. But I must stop. There will be other days. Some will be like a slog through knee deep mud, but there will be others like this, when I feel like I’m soaring.
In the muses we must trust, amen.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Mood: glum
After greeting us with sunshine this morning, Sunday, October 22, 2023, has served non-stop rain to Ashlandia, where the fresh air is never canned and the drivers are extra-distracted.
Well, first, my apologies. I’m glum today, even irritated and moody. This is due to my illness. It’s plagued me for over two weeks. Nothing deep nor serious, just enough to be bothersome. After convincing myself I was rid of it, the sore throat, lethargy, and headache parts all stormed back. Just depressing, you know? And irritating.
And frustrating. Did I mention that? I’d entertained visions of industrious editing and revising and this damn sickness just undercut all intentions. I’ve been gritting my teeth in a struggle to will myself through it. Instead, I just want to sit back, feeling sorry for myself, reading and chilling. Heavy sigh emerges after I acknowledge and type that.
I’ve tried to edit and revise twice; it’s a challenge today. Some of this is because I’m dealing with a very abstract notion toward the novel’s end. I’m attempting to transition it from its abstract roots into something real and authentic. Patience, deep thinking, and persistence are needed, and I’m struggling to generate those today.
Today’s theme music is “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden. I came up with this by myself, without The Neurons’ help. It came about from watching clouds move in and overwhelm the morning sunshine, undermining my enthusiasm for the day. These days come, of course. It’s not necessarily indicative of anything except a crappy-ish day. It’ll pass.
Meanwhile, I’ve always enjoyed “Black Hole Sun”. It comes across as a declaration to me. The words are sort of contradictory — “Black hole sun, won’t you come, and wash away the rain” — but that somehow springs some defiant hope in me. Perhaps it’s just the plaintive way it first comes across before exploding with brashness, a tone and mood reinforced with hard guitar chords and rolling drums. Besides those elements, weariness is wired into the verses such as this one:
Stuttering, cold and damp
Steal the warm wind, tired friend
Times are gone for honest men
And sometimes far too long for snakes
In my shoes, a walking sleep
And my youth I pray to keep
Heaven send Hell away
No one sings like you anymore
h/t to Genius.com
It’s a stream of consciousness of spent energy, which is much how I feel today. I should warn you, it’s a bizarre video.
Stay pos — at least more positive than me, please — and be strong. I’m trying to move forward; hope you do as well. More coffee, please, black as the sun, hot as ice. Here’s the music. Cheers
The Writing Moment
I love reading and writing. I think I’m learning to love editing and revising, but they’re more challenging.
Writing is a matter of switching on my imagination and playing various games. These games are typically, ‘what if’ and ‘who did’ variations, putting the characters into interesting and challenging situations, and then finding the resolution of those created problems. I write these in bursts and then spend time refining and expanding on them.
I’m a pantser, as it’s called. Pantsers are also sometimes called organic writers; we don’t outline, or outline very little.
A problem with my method of writing from the hip is what happens next is often a surprise. Characters often go into unexpected directions. As I write then, I need to address how they veered from my original intentions. Then I edit to some degree, to confirm it all somewhat fits together.
Editing and revising requires me to delve more deeply into these matters, also addressing pacing, and clarifying as I do. These activities are seriously embraced once a draft has become solid enough to start resembling a novel.
Editing and revising requires more discipline, and I’m not the most disciplined individual. Burdened with its own challenges, editing and revising also brings greater reward. As many writers will say, the first few drafts are learning the story, finding the plot, and understanding the characters. For me, the editing and revising parts are about developing authenticity and depth.
Then comes reading. I mean writing others’ works, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, and any of the sub-genres.
I often limit my fiction reading while I’m writing. I know from my experiences that fiction reading causes me to challenge what’s up with my own fiction in progress. So I avoid it.
But all reading also inspires me to write. Non-fiction pulls me into a different direction, of course, which ends up costing me time as I pursue knowledge and expansion of things I seek to understand more deeply or clearly.
Once I’m finished with drafts and enter the editing and revision stage, I happily jump back into fiction reading. Where fiction reading now becomes a problem in that stage is that I need to divide my time between the book I’m enjoying reading, and the book I’m enjoying creating.
You know, though, I have it pretty good if that’s the summation of my life’s problems.
Just for the record, I’m now reading the second book in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. A creation of alternative history, it’s written like historic fiction with a fantasy kicker. That kicker is the existence of dragons. These dragons are intelligent and well-spoken. Yes, they speak, and they develop solid, beautiful relationships with their people.
They’re also used as instruments of war. A great deal of the first book dealt with dragon strategy in conjunction with naval warfare, and the tending and treatment of dragons.
It’s all set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, but fascinating politic variations emerge, as well as challenges built into that era regarding class and sex roles. Lot of fun to read. I can imagine writing it was terrific fun.
As far as non-fiction reading, I’m now into The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. I’d previously read his books, The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon. I enjoy his writing style and the information they convey about things that I didn’t know. I know so little about this world, and it’s fun and exciting to learn more.
I don’t hesitate to recommend any of the mentioned books. My hope is that someday at least one of my efforts will be regarded and enjoyed in the same way that I enjoyed these.
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.
Michael Seidel, writer 