Kit: do you think it worthwhile to post some stuff from the “What to look for when revising” handout I do when doing kid and first-timer workshops?

Somewhere around the third quarter of a book, I always hit that “everything I write is crap” moment . Sometimes I get over it before I send it in. Sometimes I don’t.

Carol, I may print this out and hang it on the wall next to my computer desk. Hell, I should probably cross-stitch it on a pillow. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a better writer’s mantra.

Carol

I’ve just turned in the third manuscript in my four-book YA series, and I still feel like the whole thing stinks. The writing of it was hard, and the rewriting worse. Strange experience. I wasn’t even tempted to renegotiate the deadline, because in the last days before it was due, it felt like anything I fixed broke two more things, and I was just spinning my wheels. Yuck.

So, while embarrassed that this manuscript wasn’t in as good condition as the first two, I also know that my editor will help to isolate what really doesn’t work, as opposed to what I’ve been obsessing over. No, I’m not proud of that, it’s just a reality I’m trying to accept. Maybe it’s copping out, I don’t know.

What I learned in this experience is that once you sell your first book, everything changes. I don’t get three years to perfect a whole book anymore. I have to write faster and rewrite faster than I did before, because someone is actually waiting for the manuscript. Luckily, I’m a tech writer by trade and get paid very well to write fast. I just have to become as good at doing it in my fiction as in my job.

I have two critique groups that I find really helpful. I easily get lulled by my own prose and my own vision, and it’s always useful to have someone say, “This scene just doesn’t work for me. I can’t SEE it.” Or, “What does she FEEL about what she’s describing here?” These people are all writers and all readers, and they don’t try to solve these problems for me. THey just report what they see.

Once I’ve done that first draft I prepare for editing by doing a rough outline of each chapter so I can follow the threads etc, but sometimes I find the ‘whole’ overwhelming.

Yes, it does click into place and epiphanies arrive that so and so should have done this, or I didn’t foreshadow that. Hmm, I think I’m presuming that once one becomes a fully fledged author (if you do) it gets easier. By the sounds of things it doesn’t.

It does keep life interesting.

I find the discipline of editing and re-writing harder than the actual writing, even though it is all part of the package. Mind you, when an agent did ask for a full, the adrenaline flowed enough that I buckled down and worked like stink.

I know several people who like the process of re-writing more than writing the original, and I can easily see why, because you are making the novel shiny.

Thanks for sharing that, Carol. Even though it seems that all our ways of reaching the end are different, it’s good to hear how other folk achieve it.