Revisions and courage

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revision, writing

After a month of hard labor, I’m coming into the home stretch with these revisions… hooray!

Revising under deadline is always a fraught process, I find. I’m lucky because my editor wrote me a wonderful letter and lots of notes, which built on what I’d already done and opened up new possibilities. Yet it’s easy for me to doubt myself at every stage of writing, and revision is no exception.

Revising under deadline only ratchets up the anxiety. Do I change this character’s name? Do I put the new scene here or here? Do I jettison a good scene in hope of a great one?

The annotated manuscript

When doubt freezes me up, I remember a story I heard from Frank Cottrell Boyce at the SCBWI-UK conference last November. Apparently, if you look at Mary Norton’s drafts for The Borrowers you’ll see that she made some brilliant late-stage changes, including elements that now strike us as essential, such as the title and the character’s “borrowed” names. The Borrowers only became a classic, in short, because Norton was fearless in revising to the last.

“Fearless” is not exactly my middle name. Yet I’m finding that courage is a good companion as I revise. I’ve pushed myself to dive deep; I’ve had to trust my instincts. But I think Chantress will be a better book because of it.

Wordless Wednesday: Fuel for the last lap of revisions…

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food, revision, writing

… a lemon meringue tart

Resolutions, growing, and gardens

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gardens, outings, revision, writing

I’m a bit late to the resolution game this year, and that’s only partly because I’m in the middle of revisions. Truth is, 2012 is shaping up to be a challenging year. When I finally sat down to take a look at what I’m juggling, the single-spaced list went on for over a page. And some of those juggling balls are mighty big: WRITE BOOK TWO, for instance.

So challenging is putting it nicely. How about terrifying?

After making that list I felt like cowering under the covers till 2013. Only I’m not sure it’s going to get any easier then. And cowering under the covers isn’t any fun.

Yesterday I decided it was time to reframe things. It’s the beginning of January, and when I look at that list, some of the items on it look darn near impossible. I have no idea how to pull them off. But you know what? I don’t need to know right now. I don’t need to have the perfect game plan. I just need to get in there and try. Because in the very act of doing these things, I’m going to grow. And it’s the growing that will help me find a way through them.

So that’s my word for this year: GROW.

I have to admit, the word was inspired partly by a New Year’s visit to the Oxford Botanic Garden, where I saw these beauties:

Geraniums — aren’t they bright?!

Oranges! In midwinter! Admittedly in an orangery.

Cyclamen blooms, which look so fragile but are surprisingly sturdy

Snowdrops — the earliest I’ve ever seen.

Who knows? Maybe by the end of the year, my word for 2012 will turn out to be BLOOM.

Ten hours

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revision, writing, writing process

Ten hours a week may not be much, but I’m trying to make use of every last minute. Naptime? Scribble, type, type, type. An offer of an hour’s break from my husband? Scribble, type, type, type. A quiet moment when Sweetpea is doing puzzles and doesn’t want help? Scribble, scribble, scribble.

I’ve covered almost 5,000 words so far, though I’m not entirely through with them yet. Not terribly quick progress, I know but these were chapters that needed major changes throughout — the wholesale ditching of some parts, construction from scratch of others, and drastic modifications to the rest. So I’m actually quite happy about the progress I’ve made.

I wish that I could write after P has gone to bed, but every time I try this my mind runs riot and I can’t sleep that night. And without sleep I crash the next day. But this week I’ll have some sitter time to write, so I should be able to break the ten-hour barrier without crossing into insomniac territory.

If I don’t run out of steam, that is!

Onward

Tags

enchantment, revision, writing, writing process

Realized this weekend that I could outline and fill out plotting worksheets forever, but I think I’ve gotten as much good as I can from that approach by now. It’s time for me to plunge back into writing again. At this point I think I’m only going to have a handful of hours free for writing for the foreseeable future (maybe 10 or so in a good week, less in a bad one). But a handful is better than none, and I want to make use of what time I’ve got.

So I’m about to start this rewrite. Scared as anything, but I have a gorgeous iris blooming on my desk, and the sun is shining, and it’s time to begin.

I’ll start with a fresh file, though I’m not above importing text as and when I need it, to save my hands. (If the hands weren’t an issue, I’d just re-type, but they are, and that’s that.)

And as I go, I’ll keep these wonderful words from Antonio Machado close at hand, as I always do when I need courage:

Traveler, there is no path.
The path is made by walking.