This week I go mad for revision. First drafts are so last month! I drop in on Pratchett’s process and find him playing with orcs. I check out the 20 best SF novels of the decade (What? No Gaiman?) I navigate the evil of the e-book, and arrive at the worst books of the decade, only to find the idiocracy hasn’t turned up.
Last year I wasn’t following blogs on writing as closely as I do now. So this week has been a shock for me. I expected last month’s NaNoMania, but I had no idea that right away afterwards there’d be a revision frenzy to match it.
I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s all useful material, even though I’ll probably not start working through my first draft for few months yet.
In fact there are so many revision articles about that I’ll kick off this round up with someone else’s. Anna Staniszewski posted a revision tip round up this week. Then she followed up with her own tips. I like her wood carving simile:
In a way I think writing is a lot like wood carving. You start with a block of wood and you give it a rough shape. Then you bring in some outside viewers and ask them what they see. If what you intended isn’t what comes across to them, you have to go back and start shaping again. You repeat the process until every curve of wood conveys what you want it to convey, or at least as close as you can get it.
A teacher said something similar to me this week. The first draft just gives you the material you must refine, and refine again, until the structure within is revealed. Of course, you need to know when you’ve found the right structure, and how to refine to make things better and not worse.
Alexandra Sokoloff at the Dark Salon posted three articles on rewriting: first, an overview, then two pieces on the suspense pass: parts one and two. These are fantastic if you’re looking to add tension to your draft. I’ll certainly be returning to them.
Laurie Halse Anderson from Mad Woman in the Forest posted a refreshing revision tip. That is, when you’re ready to write, don’t mess around writing revision tips. I’m a sucker for a nice bit of recursion. You should check out Laurie’s more detailed posts on revision while you’re there. There’s lots of good stuff there. One older tip caught my eye: don’t let partners or family critique your manuscript:
Rule of thumb: don’t ask loved ones to read your manuscript and don’t ask critique buddies to pick up their socks.
Advice to live by.
Once you’ve revised your story, probably a whole bunch of times, you might think about getting published. Larry Brooks has just started a nine-part series on just that topic. Expect a no-bullshit assessment of your odds.
There is one thing we can completely control, in a process riddled with things we cannot – and that’s our manuscripts. Our stories
Once they leave our hands, we are helpless. How many times they leave our hands, and in what manner, is completely of our own making. Which means that not only does the publishing proposition depend on the quality of our work, it also depends on the quality – and quantity — of our effort, as well.
Start here, for the first of the pieces.
In the same vein this week, Darcy Pattison reviewed Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us by Jessica Page Morrell. This is one of those books I’ve seen around but haven’t yet got to. It looks like it will be useful at the revision/submission stages.
Let’s leave the exhausting world of revision and have some literary fun. io9 is always good for that. This week they came up with their 20 best science fiction novels of the decade. You can just imagine the message board after that. Well io9’s readers are more civilized than most, but there was some polite outrage at the omission of Neil Gaiman from the list. Which straight away rekindled the eternal discussion about what defines SF. Me, I’m not getting involved.
If your novel is set a generation or two after the apocalypse, or if you’re just fascinated by the aesthetics of decay, you might find these photographs fascinating. Again they’re from io9 and, actually, they have a whole series of such articles.
Terry Pratchett wrote an article in the Guardian on the process of writing his latest novel, Unseen Academicals. Of note: his serendipidous research techniques, the tendency of characters to find their own voices, and a decades long mission to rehabilitate the orc.
Tim Adams wrote in the Observer on the menace of e-books. While I’m also dismayed by what sometimes seems like an online idiocracy (see the YouTube comments boards for an illustration), I’m a little more sanguine about the future of writing and reading. It’s an interesting and intelligent article, but I’m not sure it makes the case that the digital media threaten writing, or attention span.
On the other hand, perhaps the literary apocalypse is already upon us. Sam Jordison posted on the worst novels of the decade at The Guardian Book Blog. Bring on the trolls! At least so I expected. I could find no messages as of Sunday 13 Dec. Can it be no-one cares? Or did the debate get out of hand, forcing the Guardian’s forum moderators to get the hell out and nuke the thread from orbit. We should be told.
