Second Draft, same as the first. Little bit cleaner and we hope to god not worse.

[leahbobet]

August 6, 2008 Progress Notes:

Above

Pages today: 29.
Pages total: 29/264. Yep, that's short. I printed it out in 10 pt. and double-sided to assuage my tree-killer guilt.

29 / 264 (11.0%)

Reason for stopping: They very politely kicked me out of the noodle shop so they could close.

Munchies: Beef noodles with peanut sauce, mango cheesecake, iced chai.
Books in progress: Jeffrey Ford, The Memoranda.
The glamour: Baked the bread I started last night (which rose really nicely), resume work, garden puttering.

---

I printed this out on Sunday, when I finally opened the file and my eyes didn't glaze over in self-defense. And then it sat on my desk for three days, waiting for the general restlessness and avoidance and feeling that I'm a listless waste of space that I've been nursing for the better part of a week to wear off. I'm not good at waiting, or doing nothing, and job-hunting (even with my two work shifts a week) is a lot of waiting and doing nothing. This is what happens to me when I don't have active and tangible projects to throw myself into.

So I finally got myself up and took this manuscript out to dinner mostly because that feeling wasn't wearing off, and that means I've been in this apartment much too much. Memo to self: if you're bored and restless and focusless and getting all with the self-hate because of that?

Go outside. Sometimes the damn ennui is being done to you by you.

(Signed, Self.)

I marked up the first 30 pages a lot more than I expected to, and this is going to be slower and take more thought than I expected. I worked for a good two hours, and a lot of it was fiddling with words, moving beats in sentences, changing little details and emotional timbres of an exchange to seed in things that'll fruit later, or to...run the threads of ideas introduced early into a needle, to pull them through the fabric of the rest of the book. My major thing to fix on this revision is connection: to take the threads that start and then dwindle or break, and the threads that rise out at the end, and suture them together so it's a whole thing. I have a little list of notes in my notebook of things not to forget, notes to hit again or raise up gently or relationships that could use some complicating.

I suspect this is a kind of revision unlike all revisions done in this house before. This is not daunting, interestingly. Just...thoughtful, and food for thought, and I circle it carefully and think and study before I lay down the pen to cut.

(How do you revise? How clear are your goals when you walk into a revision? Talk to me.)

Comments

[csinman.livejournal.com]

Your subject line is HILARIOUS. I chanted it aloud, for full effect.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I filled my brain with camp songs at six years old for a reason, dammit! :D

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

It is what you are describing in several stages that cycle between what I catch, what my CPs catch, and what my agent says.

When it's me, I know what needs addressing--like inconsistencies that evolved during the draft, and other times I stumble on something I've missed. I usually have scrawled notes in addition to MS WORD comments.

When someone else is offering feedback for revision guidance it becomes more of "what didn't they understand and how do I make it clearer for them?"

[karenthology.livejournal.com]

I have different goals each revision, but you couldn't have said it better for most of them. Threads, needle, connection, fiddly bits.

Once it was, "dear God, just salvage something!"

Good luck!

[andyleggett.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'm very qualified to advise you on revisions... I don't revise much lately, but then, I'm just coming out of a dry spell, after a long period of revising what I had *too* much, and I've since abandoned much of that...

Then again, I mostly write poetry. Trying to get on that prose wagon. It prolly works different for fiction, but I'm guessing they both benefit from some time away, which it seems like you've had...

As to tackling a revision of a full-on novel... again, I wouldn't have any idea, and I doubt my little verses can much compare...XP

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

This is less me asking for advice and more wanting to talk about process. Talking about process is fun. :)

[andyleggett.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah, I guess... I mean, I know *I* always find it interesting to read...;D

I guess I've been at that place where I stagnated a bit and needed to take a break to recharge my creative batteries of something? So, I've been trying new things just now; obviously, I am still at an early stage as a writer...*shrug*

It's strange, y'know; not even a year ago I had many a thought about revising--lord knows I did enough of it. But now--I can't really get the thought of it into my head. I guess I'm at that point where I'm just needing to pound stuff out.

[clarentine]

I want to hear the answers to this one, myself, being immersed in a nasty rewrite/revision. They had a similar question posed at a Fourth Street panel, but really didn't get into the subject as much as I would have liked.

For myself, with a completed draft, I try to decide what the story is about. I often have the complete internal conflict arc but lack a lot of the external plot arc. Which means that, for this latest rewrite, I'm spending a lot of time preparing a detailed synopsis, complete with highlighted items that need to be in there for the novel to make sense but aren't written yet. I have lots of yellow on my 10-page synopsis. *g* (As a point of comparison, I'll note that my usual for-querying synop is 2-3 pages.)

This particular novel has many, many plot threads, too, so I'm having to go over the synopsis with each one of those plot threads in mind to make sure all the elements are on the page.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

How do you revise? How clear are your goals when you walk into a revision?

Much less organised than yours, apparently. Which is pretty much my answer to any question about process. *sobs* *in a disorganised fashion*

I'm always looking for cuts, because I was trained that way (and I always overwrite)(in anticipation?).

Apart from that, I just want to make it better. Which will include sorting out all those plot muddles where I changed my mind about something halfway through and just carried on writing as though I had in fact made those changes already, so that my first drafts don't actually make sense; and will include my trying to tackle those vague feelings that "surely I can do better than this?"; and will certainly include - and may just degenerate into - a line-edit for balance and beauty, because that's what I do by nature, I fiddle word by word until it's lovely. What I lack is the disciplined overview, the understanding that it would all be so much better if I took it apart thuswise, and put it back together in a different way altogether. I create a text linearly, and I can only think about it linearly, as it comes...