OMG! I cannot believe that I am 8 days into November aka Nanorevismo aka 3 weeks to go until my deadline and right now it is feeling NOT possible. Though I guess I should clarify that when I said my deadline was December...I conveniently left off a specific calendar date to accompany December, I simply said, December. So...when I feel like I am overwhelmed, it's because I have in my head December 1st, but in reality I'm not actually holding myself to that. But still, I'm 10 chapters in out of 22 and this week
Shannon read my first 10 chapters, not to mention Kelly AND all of the girls at the
FNC, plus my beta readers Asha and Atiya. So while chapters 1-10 are in the best shpae of their life-they still have plenty of room for improvement. So I kind of shudder to think what sort of shape chapters 11-22 are in.EEEEk!
Anyway now that I have SO much feedback, I am very tempted to sit down and obsess over my comments and critiques, BUT I have to move on and finish 11-22.
So I thought I'd do a two part post today. Part one, covering my thoughts on getting
stuck in revisions. And part two about
what your role is as a writer when you work with critiques.
Stuck In Revisions:
Ok confession time! I have some mad skillz in revising. I know how to do it, and not just go back and fix awkward sentences or rearrange a few sentences, I know how to re-VISION. Look back at the greater whole, themes, motifs, foreshadowing, etc...and completely rewrite something. I have written over 100 pages into my manuscript and then thrown it out the next day. I have tried writing chapter one in about 100 different ways. I have deleted characters, added characters, changed characters, moved them back a book, and yes...I kill characters. So while I have all of this down....the truth is...
I have never revised an entire book before. Much less a 489 page novel! AAAAH!
And one thing I'm sort of struggling with is actually doing the entire revision. Maria Snyder once said that many writers get stuck writing the first 3 or so chapters of their book over and over and over again. And sure they are writing and probably getting the most amazing first three chapters EVER, but they aren't writing a book, they are writing a few chapters.
It took one of my writing teachers, Gretchen Haerstch to actually
forbid me from retouching a single word to teach/get me to finally write an entire novel. And since I've finished this version of my WIP (of which they are many) I have found myself constantly going back to fix the first few chapters in the begininng. And I realized that I was starting to repeat my pattern again.
Revising a few chapters of your novel is not revising your novel.
So as AMAZING and insightful and exciting some of my comments on chapters 1-10 are...I know I can't do anything with them until I pay equal attention to chapters 11-22. When I think about the changes I might make to 1-10 and the changes coming in 11-22, I definitely start to feel overwhelmed and wonder if my December deadline is going to look like December 31st, or like...nothing at all....it's scary, but I know all I can do is keep moving with what I have and with what I know I can do.
But when I am ready to go back and tackle all of those comments again... here's a little bit of my philosophy/advice on
what to do as a writer when you get critiques.
First of all, you have to remember that your story is YOUR story. Only you get to write it, only you get to come up with the witty dialogue and only you get to decide what is right for your story in the end. Which basically means you cannot listen to every critique you get. And you cannot accept the advice you get blindly. You have to think about what each change means, but you also need to follow your gut instinct too. If your gut tells you that making a change is wrong, even if it sounds really good, even if you know the person who made the suggestion is amazing, your gut is still right.
But I know sometimes its hard to listen to your gut, especfially when you're overwhelmed with the idea of revising your entire book. But in general, a good rule of thumb is this:
listen if everyone is saying the same thing. If one critiquer tells you that a piece of dialogue isn't working and you think it is, then maybe it's fine.
BUT...if five critiquers say a piece of dialogue isn't working, then it's 99.9999999999% definitely not working!
So those are just some of my thoughts today because I'm realizing I need to move forward, but I also need to have a plan of attack for what I have.
Ok, well now I must return to the scary unknown of chapter 11 and so forth. Hope everyone else who is revising is doing well. Any advice or tips you want to add, please do in the comments.
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