And so it begins

[ksmith]

Lunch: sweet-sour cabbage soup and a salad. The soup's a little heavy on the "sweet", but it's not bad. The right kind of soup for a cloudy, chilly day.

Actually, it is a chili day, but the cafeteria didn't have any.


Still awaiting my official J5 revision letter. For the past week or so, my frontbrain has been bemoaning fate and looking up online masters programs and trying to figure out what to do with my copious amounts of free time since the writing thing is obviously a Big Fat Waste O' Time. Meanwhile, my backbrain pondered the email exchange I had with editor prior to WFC. Could editor be right, even in part? Could I see her point of view?

It's a tricky bit, deciding which battles you fight. Some writers believe that every word they write, every aspect of plot and character, every punctuation mark and space, is sacred, uneraseable, never to be removed or altered for love or delivery and acceptance money. I tend to think that this attitude is a mistake. Some of us are better at self-editing than others, but damned few, if any, of us fail to benefit from an editorial "are you sure?" Yes, I have heard editorial horror stories, and sometimes the marriage goes sour and the viewpoints no longer mesh and that is a bad situation. But sometimes...

...I wonder, am I giving in too easily? Am I sacrificing the world through my eyes and co-opting the view through another's, a view that will soon move on to other worlds and leave me impaired and lost in my own? Am I making changes just because someone asks me to, because I am so unsure of my vision that I will accept as valid any criticism, any comment that I do not see what I think I see? Am I gutless? Do I have any clue? Do I not yet know, after eight years and five books and now a few stories, what the hell I am doing? Am I a writer, or a transcriber?

Well. After pondering comments received, and thanks to a short email exchange with a beta reader, I think I know how to approach this rewrite. It will be extensive and I will howl at the night sky at least three times as one vital turn of plot or another hits a freshly-built brick wall. But in the end, I may still have the story I want to tell, and it may be better, and readers may like it more than they otherwise would have. And I will be left to wonder whether I will ever be a self-sufficient writer, one who knows as they are writing what works and what doesn't. One who can always trust the voice in the back of the head that says "yes." One who knows when to say "no."

UPDATE: And of course, the official revision letter arrived as soon as I posted. Now I have that to work with.

Comments

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Okay...I know I missed a few things. Have you mentioned this? Is this just typical second thoughts of "I should have done X," or "Maybe if I'd followed up Y the book would move faster in the middle" sort of thing? Has she already spoken to you about revisions?

I keep trying not to borrow trouble -- I have enough as it is -- but I occasionally wonder why I want to write again.

Maybe just a touch masochistic...or desperate to communicate with the world?

Writing is hard work. I like it, usually, but it's hard work.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

My self-confidence took a big hit. I felt sure that this draft was well nigh unto publishable as it was, and that I would wrap it up by year's end. Instead, it's apparently in no better shape than any first *submission* draft I've ever turned in. It's not the worst first pass--that honor falls to the CI initial submission. The difference is that I knew the CI submission was in horrible shape--I warned agent and editor via email that it wasn't ready to be read and that I was only turning it in because I had to turn in something at that point. I felt that the ENDGAME story was solid, and what doubts I had could be fixed with minor tweaking.

Well, no.

It's not a ground-floor rewrite, but there will be some major structural changes. One entire POV is going to be pitched, and that is going to require some major retooling in places. In a way, it will be returning to the book I originally envisioned years ago. But some work will be required to get it to that place.

I should say that editor did tell me she "really likes this". What's shaken me is my apparent lack of ability to figure out on my own what isn't working. Maybe that's not the awful thing I fear it is. Maybe that's why God Made Editors. But I always seem to insert these major pieces that just don't work, and someone else always seems to have to break the news. I may sense that these pieces aren't as strong as they need to be, but I don't consider that they're unfixable. Even when they are.

Every time I think I would like to make my living, or even part of my living, at this, something happens to drive home the point that I really should reconsider. I really admire the folks who can hit their marks the first time, but damn, I am not that kind of writer and it seems to be getting worse as I age.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I remember Octavia Butler telling me (when I said I admired her ability to stay the course on her complex books) that she occasionally wrote half a book, and never got beyond that point. (Even Charles de Lint gets 2/3 of the way through a book, and panics briefly that it's crap.) So even the great among us have moments.

I had to cut 88 pages out of my second novel. The editor wanted 100, but said that the 88 took care of the problem. This is why I read my stuff out loud -- it usually helps me catch problems.

You are not alone. And having a day job you can make work for you is a very good thing. So right now it means one book a year. But with my medical problems, you can bet I wish I'd gone on to law school, all those years ago. I'd be on disability now, but I would have the disability and the pad from the law practice. So I get one book done a year, and worry about money.

Everyone has something....

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

What's shaken me is my apparent lack of ability to figure out on my own what isn't working. Maybe that's not the awful thing I fear it is. Maybe that's why God Made Editors. But I always seem to insert these major pieces that just don't work, and someone else always seems to have to break the news. I may sense that these pieces aren't as strong as they need to be, but I don't consider that they're unfixable. Even when they are

A different editor may or may not feel the same way, different people do have different perspectives and opinions. On the other hand, one's own prose, one tends to be too close to to see all that objectively..

But different people do bring different perspectives to the same writing. I've heard two different people have totally different opinions of whether someone in a story works or doesn't work--the difference is between the readers and their tastes and views in such cases much more than the written words. What one person finds brilliant and wonderful, can be completely boring to someone else, from perspectives of taste and interest and focus.

Much/most of that is subjective, not objective. Tech writing one can sometimes say, "there need to be metrics in this, to be able to do quantitative measurement." When it comes to fiction writing, though, most of the measures are qualitative, not quantitative, and subjective, not objective.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Let me know when you need another reader, if necessary.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Thanks. There's no point in reading the present brick, but I may impose upon you in a couple of months to look at the revisions.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

Good. Maybe I'll have stuff myself by then.