I have in front of me a story manuscript with many slashes and new words written in red pen as well as some others in blue. On my computer desktop is an open file with a copy of this story and the number "nine," as in the ninth saved draft. Now, I don't always save every new draft as I revise. I try to only save substantial changes as completely new documents. I like to be able to go back occasionally and see previous versions, but it seems excessive to save every adjustment as a new file. So, although this is now the ninth draft, it could well be the fifteenth or twentieth thirty-eight time I've reworked this story, and that's not counting all the drafts from before I separated the piece from the surrounding novel to see if it can stand up on its own.
So I sit down with my marked up manuscript and go to type up changes. Although I only have a few marks indicated on my hard copy for the first sentence, I'm not satisfied with the sentence as I read it over. It's not bad, exactly. But it doesn't flow. It doesn't pop. It suggests a bit of what the story is about, but it doesn't resonate. So I start a new sentence. I begin with a new first word. I change the order. I try three short simple sentences instead of one complex sentence. I alter that again and try two simple, one complex, and a compound sentence. I fiddle and twist. I replace words that seem dull and lifeless with others that have multiple connotations. I consider the story's themes and try to insert phrases or terms into this first sentence that will subtly suggest the themes immediately, or if a reader doesn't pick up on them right away, they will be there on a second reading. I delete and rewrite. I add and subtract. I cut and paste. Finally, I'm a little bit happier. I think there's something reasonably decent there. I have a start to the piece that might encourage a reader to keep going, to think, "maybe this will be interesting; I want to see where this writer takes me."
Twenty minutes, and I have a stronger batch of sixty-four words. Now all I need to do is continue on to the other four thousand, nine hundred. And then return to these sixty-four to find I don't much care for them anymore.
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3 comments:
I have a hard time revising sometimes because I often refuse to actually print it out and physically write on it, thinking it's a waste of paper. But I think I need to get in the habit of editing my stuff as physical manuscripts and not computerized text. I think that would help me to see more flaws and stuff.
The hardest part of writing anything for me is the first line: first just actually starting to write the thing (and after the first couple paragraphs the first draft seems to come better), and then seeing if it's still good a couple weeks later. I have a super hard time a) figuring out a great opening line and b) knowing whether it's actually good or not and c) if it's not good, knowing how to fix it. Hoping to get better at this as time goes on...But as all my profs say, "good writing is rewriting," and I suppose revising any part of a story is good even if there's still a lot more to go...10% is better than 0%.
I definitely think working with a hard copy is a good idea. It's also a good technique to actually retype a new draft after printing it out and marking it up. It encourages more rewriting as you go, seeing more places to alter and adjust. I definitely hold to the idea that writing is rewriting. That's where the real work is done, but often (at least for me) that's often where the real fun is, too.
Yeah, for my Advanced Composition class, for each major paper we worked on the professor wanted us to revise and save a new draft each week, and then hand all the drafts and the final draft in when the paper was due. At first I thought it was a waste of time, since I would only make a couple superficial changes between some drafts, but it helped him better gauge our revision/rewriting abilities and see if we were actually making progress and absorbing what he was teaching. I just revised on the computer, though...I probably would have been more intent and focused on it had I been looking at hard copies.
Sometimes I'm really into the revision process, but other times I just want to call it quits and let the piece go as is, with minimal revision. I'm just lazy and need to build up a habit of revision. It's easy here to just shoot off papers for gen ed classes without much afterthought...a bad tendency.
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