Comments on: Wielding the Knife

by: Satima Flavell

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:33:28 +0000

I’m with Astrothsknot. If books didn’t need middles they’d be easy:-)

If I plan in advance it all comes from my head and doesn’t ring true when I start to write. If I flimmer, the unconscious, apparently in a misguided effort to be helpful, throws up heaps of material, not all of it relevant, that would make every story into an epic if I squeezed it all in. (Gee, how’s that for a convoluted sentence?)

How I would love a story to come to me, whole and complete, just wanting to be written…

by: astrothsknot

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:26:32 +0000

Thank you kindly, Therese. It’s annoying, you know where you want to go with the book, but getting it there!!

I’m fine with starts and finishes. If books didn’t need middles I’d be fine.

by: Therese Walsh

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:12:11 +0000

I fixed that for you, astrothsknot. I feel for you re: that long wip. Hang in. I finally reached The End, so I know you can too.

by: Juliet

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:12:03 +0000

Some great comments here. I do always save the old versions, but I’m not able to fool myself into forgetting the hours of writing effort that are being discarded. I guess my pain comes from the fact that my usual method is to pre-plan to the nth degree, then have a relatively smooth run with actually writing the book. I don’t do multiple drafts. So intensive revision does not come easily to me.

Dealing with the editor’s notes after submitting the ms is a separate issue. As with any unpleasant task I can’t avoid, once those notes arrive I give them all my time and energy until the job’s finished. This has a neat timeframe and a kind of inevitability. When the revisions are self-inflicted it seems much harder to tackle them in a workmanlike manner.

by: astrothsknot

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:41:04 +0000

Oh, bloody hell, I just read that back. I do appologise for the inadvertent swearing. I’d fix that if I could.

by: astrothsknot

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:39:13 +0000

God, to just sit down and write and come out with a novel at the end!! I’m still fighting with something I started seven years ago.

Cutting annoys me more than anything. I had the first 20,000 words of a perfectly serviceable novel and through circumstance it lay for over 18 months.

I came back to it and realised it’s not the novel I want to write. I like bits of it, but the story I’m telling now? It just doesn’t fit.

I ended dropping 17,000 and it seems like such a waste! All the time spent! I can only tell myself that the words are just part of the story’s journey, I couldn’t have got to B if I hadn’t written A.

Then I go back to weeping and wailing

by: Kathleen Bolton

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:38:58 +0000

Every atom of shed blood is felt in sympatico with you, Juliet!

I just cut a chapter I sweated over for two weeks. I could talk about pacing problems, etc. but the truth is, it sucked. So I put it in my FRAG folder (’frag’ as in fragments, not fragging my own work, lol). So like Therese, I can make the cut and pretend that if I don’t like the new version, I can always go back to the old.

Which I never do.

Oops, that was a fragment.

But I’m mostly like Lyle, OCD about plotting until I actually have to write it. Then the plan goes out the window. Sigh.

by: Miranda

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:38:10 +0000

That’s a good plan, Therese. I’ll have to try that next time, even though I do enjoy hacking and slashing at my work.

by: Therese Walsh

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:27:42 +0000

Yes, it feels like I’m taking a knife to my own offspring. What makes it easier for me is to open a new file, call it “experiment” and then butcher away. I know I’m not REALLY killing my babies, just being creative with their doubles. By the time I’m finished experimenting, I usually prefer the new version to the original and the pain of losing the old work is far less.

by: Lyle

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:40:45 +0000

I had the same urge to weep after reading Ann Aguirre’s interview. Her process (just sit down and write, no planning) is the complete opposite of mine. I’m completely OCD, with maps and diagrams and everything.

I love structural revisions. It’s my opportunity to take my amoeba-like mess of a 1st draft and give it some bones. I move things around, cut cut cut. Because in the end I *know* it will all be worth it, that I will have a much better book than I did before.

My way of getting over the feeling that I’m murdering bits of my “baby” is to save the old draft in a different file. I tell myself I can always go back to it if I change my mind about cutting something. I almost never do, though.