Revising, a Tale of Two Drafts
Right now, I just want to crawl into bed and take a nap, but I can’t because I have to revise Book Two. As soon as I open up the Scrivener document, Ill embark on a long journey of editing, rewriting, deleting and polishing, one that starts with this first emailed critique from my (marvelous) CP, and then will continue on with my agent and with my editor and with my copyeditor, until at some point several months from now, Book Two will be a book shaped thing with a title and a satisfying plot and I won’t ever have to think about it again.
Whenever I draft, I would rather edit, and whenever I edit, I’d rather draft. I don’t know why my head is broken this way, so that whatever work I’m doing is so agonizing, and then I don’t know why when things aren’t agonizing, I feel guilty, as if something being a miserable experience makes it a thing of quality.
QUALITY, DAMMIT.
Here’s how it’s going to go down:
Suffering Bethany’s Suffering Spiral of Suffering
1. Read CPs’ insights. They are all geniuses and right about everything, and have solutions for me THANK GOD.
2. Open document.
3. Decide to jump right into revisions.
—Delay looking at book by looking at Community GIFs on Tumblr.
—Read Prologue. Vomit and die.
—Open email to reread CP’s email again. Find an email from mortgage lender instead. Spend thirty minutes looking up refinancing options on Internet.
4. Okay, jumping into revisions was a bad idea. I should make A Plan of Attack. Yes.
—Facebook!
—Okay, Scrivener makes this easy. Start inputting notes into relevant chapters. Do this for fifteen minutes. I AM A PRODUCTIVITY GOD.
—More Facebook, more Tumblr, a text to husband about how hard life is.
5. Give up on Plan of Attack—I should just start making changes now. I pick one thread that needs working on and follow it all the way through the novel.
—Except, wait, that thread connects to this other one in this scene, so I’ll just go ahead and change it while I’m here, and that actually leads me right into this other problem that needs fixed…
—End up revising slowly and chronologically, just like I always do.
6. Repeat Step 5 every day for four week to eight weeks.
7. Send to Agent Lady.
8. New edit letter–repeat Steps 1 through 6.
7. Send to Agent Lady again. (If thumbs up, proceed to Step 8. If thumbs down, repeat Steps 1 through 6.)
8. New edit letter from Editor Lady. (Repeat Steps 1 through 6 once for major revisions, once for smaller scale revisions, and once for line edits.)
9. Copyedits.
10. First Pass Pages.
11. ARC review.
Listen, I’m not complaining in the traditional sense (well, maybe I am.) I love that I get to make my books better. I love that my books are going to be actual books on actual shelves and that one day, actual people will read them. But it’s hard. It’s all hard, but this is the part where you are continually confronted with all of the problems, all of the glitches and plot holes and typos that remind you that you are not a master of your craft, but only a hapless beginner. And you know? That’s probably a good thing. I don’t like it when my karate instructor, perpetual coffee cup in hand, watches me do katas, but his corrections make my katas better. Hell, even just the scrutiny makes me better; I lower my stances, strike harder, and focus on my hand forms when someone is watching. As with karate, so with life and art and all that. The corrections strengthen me. The scrutiny pushes me further than I would have ever pushed myself.
But I’d be lying if I said that part was easy. It’s not. It’s so hard.
So how to get started?
I remind myself that this is a first draft. (A first draft that took me five months to write.)
I remind myself that my ego does not need to be stroked. My ego needs to shut up and chill out.
I remind myself that this is just a stage in the process. Because the process includes its rewards too: moments of pure inspiration, books of the heart, meeting fellow artists, and seeing your book in public. That stuff is tight. That stuff is cool.
I had to legitimize my Tumblr addiction somehow.