Posts in the "Feedback and Revision" Category

• The One Where Thomas Repeatedly Uses the F-Word

  Feedback and Revision

  

  When it comes to writing, “Feedback,” of course, is the real F-word — an obscenity so strong that even Lenny Bruce was scared to utter it. I’ll get to that in a minute, but I’ve got a few things to say about that other F-word, first. I’m going to use it reluctantly, so I hope you’ll indulge me.

  I’m not a writer who believes that the writing is in the rewriting. The writing, for me, is in the writing. There is a certain quality that needs to be there in a story or novel before rewriting will do me any good. There’s got to be something that burns at the center of it; the plot and the characters, and hopefully the setting, have to reach critical mass. If it doesn’t, I don’t think anything will save it. I find that more time will be wasted trying to save an uninspired story told in uninspired prose than would be spent starting all over again.

  Starting all over again, sometimes, would also be — and here I use the F-word, as promised, only with a shudder.

  Sometimes, starting all over again would be more fun. (more…)

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• Dross

  Feedback and Revision

  Revising and rewriting your work is the smelt that allows you to slough off the dross. What you’re left with is pure, gleaming and sparkly metal.

  And that’s about all I have to say about that except…thank Cthuhlu that my agent is also a top notch editor.

  Wait.

  I guess I do have more to say on the matter. (more…)

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• Completely rewriting a book as we speak

  Feedback and Revision

  Right now, I am avoiding working on a massive rewrite of the latest project I’ve got going,  a story for an iPhone app. The one I very confidently told the guys I’d have ready for them in July. And if I’d cranked out ten thousand words a week like my little spreadsheet tells me I could do, that would totally work. Except the spreadsheet does not understand getting fifteen thousand words into it before giving up because your main character is an annoying cow and you completely need to rework the character, rewrite the plot and, heck, let’s change from third-person past-tense to first-person present-tense while we’re at it. Stupid spreadsheet.

  Here’s my writing process: (more…)

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• Just get the clay on the table

  Feedback and Revision

  Just get the clay on the table. That’s one of my favorite writing phrases. Git ‘er done, and then at least you’ve got something to work with. In other words, you can start revising, making it better.

  Don’t take this to mean that you should write a crap first draft. No, wait. Let me rephrase that. You should try not to write crap, but if it’s a choice between writing crap and not writing all, write the crap. You’ll more than likely find that if you just get to writing, you’ll slip into the mode of writing, and you’ll be back up and running toward those two wonderful words: The End.

  My approach toward revision has changed a lot over the years. It used to be that I would submit chapters as I wrote them. This was when I was just starting out. I joined the Critters writing workshop and then the Online Writing Workshop (which at the time was the Del Rey Writing Workshop). This was really crucial for me at the time. I couldn’t afford to write the entire book and then get feedback on it. I needed feedback now. The OWW’s system worked great for this: critique others and you get points to have your own work critiqued, and as long as you kept critting, you could burn through the chapters you were writing and get immediate feedback. (More on that critting stuff in a bit…)

  Eventually, though, I found this sort of system—critique, revise, critique, revise—to be too cumbersome, and I started drifting to the approach I use now.

  (more…)

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• Process

  Feedback and Revision

  Writing is in the re-writing, I was once told. I happen to believe it’s true. The first pass is for me to get my thoughts onto the page. No one sees that version, not even my husband. The second draft is where I firm up the prose and look hard at the symbolism and the layers of story. That’s what my husband sees. Then, I’ve a beta reader who happens to be an amazing reader. She goes through it, and we discuss what feedback she’s given me. Next, my agent reads it and then my editor. So, all in all it’s pretty straight forward. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what your process is — only that it works for you.

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• It Doesn’t Get Easier. It Gets Better.

  Feedback and Revision

  

  I didn’t post last week because I am a bad, bad writer. I am currently hip deep in revisions for Infidel, book 2 in my God’s War trilogy. I am also simultaneously writing book 3 and marketing book 1. And, you know, dayjob and neighborhood shenanigans and such.

  Revisions are funny things, because, just like with writing, you get better at them as time goes on. It gets easier to see what’s wrong. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to fix, mind you, just easy to see, which means eventually, hopefully, you’re writing better books. I try to have a first round of readers that see the book first so they can point out the worst of the flaws. Sometimes, when you finish a book, you’re in this happy-glowy place where you think it’s the best thing ever, and it’s good to have some folks around who’ll call you on your crap. The more I wrote and the more feedback I got, the more clearly I saw the places where I was weak. That’s a good thing, because it can tell you where you need to spend more of your time getting better at something. For me, that’s plot and pacing. (more…)

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• The Joy of Revision

  Feedback and Revision

  It’s truly amazing how individual everyone’s writing process is. Some people swear by Heinlein’s famous rules of writing, including #3, “You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.” Personally, I boggle at that idea, because I’m not a writer – I’m a rewriter. For me, writing a first draft is a painful, difficult process, probably because it’s so hard for me to turn off my inner critic. I have to force myself to spew out words with a constant mantra of “It’s okay if the first draft is crap! It doesn’t matter if you’ve used the word “grim” ten times in the last two paragraphs! You’ll fix it later, I promise…”

  But ah, revision…for me, that’s where the joy lies. I love taking a rough, raw scene and figuring out how to make it sing on the page. Maybe it appeals to the engineer in me – I’ve always liked to fix things. I need that initial first draft sketch of the story to help me figure out where all the pieces fit in relation to each other; but then, the second draft is where I take that pencil sketch and transform it into a fully realized painting, full of color and form and depth. (Though sketch is a bit of a misleading term for my first drafts. Some folks write spare in their first drafts. I am not one of them. My first drafts are far too wordy, full of overexplanation and extraneous scenes and dialogue.) (more…)

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