Confidence and enthusiasm at low ebb today. Bleh.
Partly this is because I am tired, having unwisely stayed up past midnight working on rewrites.
Mostly, though, rewriting just kind of sucks.
Partly this is because I am tired, having unwisely stayed up past midnight working on rewrites.
Mostly, though, rewriting just kind of sucks.
This is pretty apt, except that I’m not sure all the bits and pieces go back together in the tidy mechanical fashion of gears and cogs and springs. A better metaphor might be surgery. On zombies. With hacksaws. It’s like I’ve taken a limb and chopped it into little gobbets that I’m now trying to stitch back together in a different order. The monstrousness of the result seems guaranteed.
Things I am trying to remind myself of:
* I have been through this stage before. I rejigged the opening not too long ago in response to contest feedback, and it was brutal. I had to peel back the nice stylistic veneer to get at the working parts and then layer it all back on once I had them functioning again in their new places. For a couple of iterations the revised version looked downright barbarous. It is OK for it to look barbarous at first. This can be worked upon. This time it will probably take longer, is all, since it involves ~40 pages instead of ~10.
* This is part of the process, and everyone’s gotta do it. Even – especially! – the pros.
Things I am trying to remind myself of:
* I have been through this stage before. I rejigged the opening not too long ago in response to contest feedback, and it was brutal. I had to peel back the nice stylistic veneer to get at the working parts and then layer it all back on once I had them functioning again in their new places. For a couple of iterations the revised version looked downright barbarous. It is OK for it to look barbarous at first. This can be worked upon. This time it will probably take longer, is all, since it involves ~40 pages instead of ~10.
* This is part of the process, and everyone’s gotta do it. Even – especially! – the pros.
1 hour= 3 pages edited. If you think writing is all about muses, inspiration, whispering characters, and magic, sorry. Writing is rewriting.
— Delilah S. Dawson (@DelilahSDawson) July 1, 2015
I do it at work all the time, too, after all – just usually on a much smaller scale. See above re. 40 pages. I am not going to turn this around as fast as I do a promotional email.
* Kids going camping with grandma next week will coincide with a couple of vacation days I’d forgotten I booked. So I can spend HOURS AT A STRETCH on this next week, completely uninterrupted. Dealing with All The Other Things this week need not sink me into the quagmire of time starvation.
* Lack of sleep will not help me come up with fresh verbs and musical sentence structure, to say nothing of focusing on the dayjob or being patient with the kids. Shoring up spoons is a legitimate use of my time.
* Having to break out the hacksaw does not make the positive elements of the feedback I’ve received any less encouraging. If nothing else, those positive comments reassure me that my once-barbarous opening is now operating at a high shine, and if I can achieve that once, I can by god do it again.
* Kids going camping with grandma next week will coincide with a couple of vacation days I’d forgotten I booked. So I can spend HOURS AT A STRETCH on this next week, completely uninterrupted. Dealing with All The Other Things this week need not sink me into the quagmire of time starvation.
* Lack of sleep will not help me come up with fresh verbs and musical sentence structure, to say nothing of focusing on the dayjob or being patient with the kids. Shoring up spoons is a legitimate use of my time.
* Having to break out the hacksaw does not make the positive elements of the feedback I’ve received any less encouraging. If nothing else, those positive comments reassure me that my once-barbarous opening is now operating at a high shine, and if I can achieve that once, I can by god do it again.
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