The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward re-writing. The writer, professional or not, looks forward to the opportunity of excising words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters that do not work and improving those that do. Many a would-be writer thinks whatever he puts down on paper is by that act somehow indelible.
–Sol Stein, Stein on Writing, Chapter 32, Triage: A Better Way of Revising Fiction
My thoughts have turned to editing as I’ve begun laying down plans for my new novel. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.
Yet again, having finished another revision of my novel, The House, I am querying myself as to what I can improve in this novel. I am pondering what I’ve left out, what doesn’t make sense, along with all the other questions I hold with any writing.
These same questions fill my head as I devise a blueprint, write a one-paragraph premise, and make notes on character sketches and analyses before starting the first draft of this new novel. There is so much that goes into writing a novel. And many revisions lay ahead of the best-written work.
Yet and still I want to avoid the experience of spaghetting, a term Jon Franklin uses to define what I describe–having undergone it numerous times–the process of having hurriedly writing the rough draft of a novel only to delve into revision and discover so little was thought out and rendered plausible.
What should be the process of revising has then become an act of re-writing the entire story, sometimes to later realize, and with great dismay, there is no clear narrative line, or rather the premise isn’t plausible.
I often hear published writers state that only after writing as much as 150 pages do they realize they have no story.
Those writers must have fewer responsibilities than me. Or perhaps the money they are paid more than makes up for the time they waste discovering what could be made obvious at the outset with but a little thought and planning.
As I grow older I also want to enjoy writing my story or novel. I’m not talking about always feeling inspired, rather, a desire to greet the challenge of the blank page of each day with confidence that however tall the obstacle in plot or character I have several resources on which to call and work my way through the obstacle.
I want to hold anticipation toward seeing what will appear upon the page, that will obviously require re-reading and teasing out, clarifying and as stated earlier many revisions. I do not want to write words to what I later must acknowledge and admit are not a story.
I don’t think that is too much to ask, particularly as Jon Franklin suggests in his book, Writing for Story, that this process of writing a 60,000 words or half to determine whether you have a story, if you can call it that, is truly inefficient in both time and creative energy.
The writer that hopes to earn a livelihood by writing, must inevitably meet deadlines. Editing can be accomplished on a deadline. Crafting a rough draft is something that only the muse can deliver. How much better it is for the writer to create a situation wherein the muse can give birth to a healthy book that can then be revised and edited without despair and frustration.
Just as successful journalists who have mastered the task of meeting deadlines devise an efficient method for crafting and editing newspaper articles, so too must fiction writers of the 21st century devise a process that allows us to not simply work, but do so smarter.
Franklin suggests that every writer has a process for planning her or his stories. Even sage writers who write the first draft of a novel only to throw it away have a process.
But how efficient is writing a first draft that must be dumped into the trash?
And what does all of this have to do with editing?
The link between a first draft in to which one can pour their soul, give birth to a messy, but healthy book, yields a work of fiction, holding all the answers to questions that arise in the editing process. The old adage that it is easier to cut than create is so true. Like the sculptor of clay, a writer must have raw material with which to work before beginning the revising process, less she or he finds her or himself re-writing their story.
The essence of a positive and fruitful experience in revising and editing lies in the cradle of planning the novel.
The more organized you are when starting to write your story, the easier your task of going deeper and exploring the various layers of your work when revising and editing.
A multi-layered work of fiction is a much more inviting and entertaining read.
And isn’t that what we as writers are trying to do first and foremost, present our readers with an escape from the humdrum responsibilities of daily life?
Yet on some level our work must offer the writer, bits and pieces of an escape–glimmers of what it will be like to read our work as the other, a reader, when finished.
Joy and discovery must have their places within the myriad emotions we undergo as authors while writing, crafting and refining a story, lest we convey to readers is a sense of someone putting down the rudiments of a story under a deadline that their process provides no way of meeting with quality of craft.
Do you plan your novels and stories?
If so what is your process?
How do you feel when writing?
Do you look forward to each writing session?