So, I’m stuck.
As I’ve mentioned before, my first draft is finished, more or less. More or less means that technically some of what I add from here on out could be considered first draft itself—bits of continuity, character/setting description changes, small but key scenes I may find I’ve forgotten—but most of what I’ll do from now on can only be considered rewrites, and that’s second-draft-land. Doesn’t matter; whatever we call it, there’s plenty more to do.
If only I could get some momentum on it.
I’ve written about certain walls I’ve hit at different times, walls I think most writers hit, sometimes over and over. Now, though, this doesn’t feel like a wall. It feels like a chasm, a big rift between first and second drafts, between writing and rewriting.
So what’s making it such a big deal? Well, for one thing, I hate everything I’ve written. OK, that’s not true. Not quite everything. But I can see a huge number of places that would benefit from improvements. I’ve decided to forego any notion of firm deadline and instead work to make this first novel the absolute best that I can. That means wherever I’m pretty sure I need to insert/change an improvement, I really need to do it. And that’s a lot of changes.
I spent two of the last few months on 14,000 miles of road trips across the US. I found myself totally unable to write on these trips, for reasons both logical and lame. However, I did manage to accumulate a fair number of ideas for improvements, and took decent notes about them. (“Notes” in the Hollywood sense: otherwise known as “aggressive and expansive plans for improvement.) Since I’ve been back, I’ve added even more notes, and I’ve compiled most of them (except the last few days’ worth) into my Scrivener project. It’s exciting in the sense that I know a lot of neat stuff to add/change in the story, but it’s also very daunting.
So what’s scaring me? Well, for one thing there’s a ton of work to be done, and that’s tough enough, but life is work. What’s bugging me more is that I’ve gone and implemented some small percentage of these changes, and I find that there’s a price to every change. It has to do with the way I write in the first place. Back when I was writing articles, it was the same. I would write at the paragraph level: sentence 2 would tie in with what sentence 1 had to say, and so forth, in a chain. So I have to break and reforge those chains to insert and remove things from them, and sometimes I don’t like the resulting flow. Imagine trying to insert lines into a rhyming poem with lovely imagery and haunting language. I don’t claim to be turning out choice poetry here, but whatever I’ve managed to do in that vein is severely slapped around by subsequent changes.
“You’re doing it wrong,” you say. I know. A first draft is supposed to be quick and dirty. But I just have trouble doing that. I tried it in some parts of the first draft, and it just wasn’t enjoyable to me, though it was a lot quicker. All I can say is, it really does seem like every writer writes differently, and this is just how i do it. My style of first draft composition is more like second or third draft writing should be. Only…this is the result: rewrites shred that flow.
The solution is obvious but even more terrifying. I might have to do what some of the more extreme writers do, which is to rewrite from complete scratch. More than anything else, that scares the hell out of me, because it’s a huge amount of work and there’s no reason to believe the next iteration will be any different. Thinking about a total rewrite is sort of like looking into the deep black abyss of despair. You know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but all you can see is black right now.
So, like any good abyss-starer, I’m doing the only thing I can do: procrastinating.
Well, that’s a little unkind. What I’m doing now is actually more productive than your average procrastination. It’s something I should have done earlier, though if I had, I might not have gotten nearly as far as I have. Sometimes you have to just go for it, free-write. Other times you need to plan and fill in the details, and that’s what I’m doing now. I’m doing up full character sheets, thinking out the details of each setting (location), working on the structure and metadata of my Scrivener template, and some other things I’m thinking about blogging on later.
Honestly, I’m glad I’m getting this stuff done, because nothing less than an abyss would have made it look like fun by comparison. I figure that if I get all my notes into the right places in the documents and get all my reference material laid out and sorted, it will make the rewrite go more smoothly. Will it really? I guess I’ll let you know.
A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing covers a range of topics pertaining to the world of indie writing. There’s a lot of very specific practical information, including number-crunching, which I personally really hate doing. Outspoken, largely pro-Amazon, and a strong advocate for indie writers vs. the traditional publishing model, it alternates between hardcore and pretty damn funny.
Let’s Get Digital - How to Self-Publish and Why You Should espouses the upsides of self-publishing over traditional publishing models in what you’d call “no uncertain terms.” There’s also a lot of practical advice directed at indie writers, as well as news and commentary on writing-related topics.
Why would you ever need more than Tuna for Bernadette? What can those other guys offer you but bad trips and good intentions? And extensive working experience? Math skills and documented statistics…track records of successful published fiction….
Look, never mind all that now. What matters is: while TFB is clearly the bright center of the universe, it turns out there are some other fried gold slices out there too, scattered about the interwebs. Translated into saner language, this means that from time to time I, or the writing-type people I talk to, come across other blogs and web sites with interesting ideas and/or info on offer.
So: I’m going to start posting some of these here. Over time, I’ll post each blog, forum, or other relevant-type site as its own blog entry, and add it to the appropriate “linked resource” page (e.g. BLOGROLL) as well. (This current Tumblr theme puts these in the upper right, beneath the HOME link.)
I haven’t got any connection to any of these guys, and don’t even know them, at this writing at least. I just think other prospective authors and involved readers may, as I did, find some of these thought-provoking and/or informative too. By the way, if you have found any blogs or sites of interest to interested parties—or if you write one yourself, and it’s awesome—please feel free to contribute them. The CONTRIBUTE link, top center above (on the current Tumblr theme), is one way to do this.
By no means is this meant to serve as a comprehensive writers’ resource guide; nor does it necessarily represent a studied selection of the choicest of the choice (though I obviously think there’s merit to be found within each). But at least, hopefully, the results will, as Spinal Tap might put it, “add a tiny bit of color to [our] gray little lives.”
Or at least dump some fuel into the fires of existential confusion.
Let’s start with one or two right now…
In my last entry, I mentioned that I would list the reasons one is not supposed to show an early draft around. I wrote about some of those reasons, but I didn’t actually mention the one that convinced me the most. It was something Sol Stein wrote in a book I’ve quoted before: How to Grow a Novel. Last time I referenced this book, it was about something he said that I found destructive and really disagreed with. Conversely, this point made a lot of sense to me, and I think it bears repeating. I’ll refer to his key point down the page a bit.
They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, though I suspect there are exceptions to that rule. But I can definitely see the logic to the idea that there is such a thing as harmful feedback. Knowing the difference is key to an author’s success, especially an indie writer, who serves as his/her own gatekeeping editor and publisher. I am by no means the expert on this stuff, but I’ve read a few things that made sense to me, and seen a few things happen, and I’d like to highlight a couple of them here.
The basic idea is that there’s feedback and then there’s feedback…and not all feedback is created equal. There are different factors that contribute very heavily to the value of a given, to use the Hollywood term, “Note.”
One factor, for example, is the appropriateness of the material for the reader. Is the reader part of the book’s target audience? If not, the feedback given might be exactly the opposite of what the book needs. I remember when a friend of mine was showing a near-final draft around to beta readers, one of them absolutely hated it. Turned out the reader had no idea there was a horror aspect to the material, and was also very protective (overprotective, IMO) of his/her kids. He/she thought the YA material was way too harsh for them to be reading (not that they did read it) and ended up going so far as to give the book a low Amazon rating and review when it did go up for purchase. The bottom line was that he/she wasn’t in the target audience. And kind of a douche, frankly. Not that I have strong opinions or anything.
Another factor is the amount of attention the reader commits to reviewing the material. Sometimes when we scan and skim and gloss over a chunk of text, we miss things that are key to the story (and the quality of the writing). We might get the wrong idea about a character or event, or misinterpret our own failure to follow plot points as a problem with the plot being convoluted or dull. If an early reader is just looking at it as a favor to the writer and isn’t into it, the resulting feedback can be sparse, confusing, or just plain wrong.
Good friends can be a problem as well. The whole time a friend is reading your stuff, he/she might be thinking, cool, my good bud Gryphon wrote this, and it’s pretty good considering he’s someone I know. A friend’s feedback can be biased in a lot of ways, including softballing to save your feelings. Or by contrast, it might be excessively harsh in order to avoid the appearance of bias, or just because you tend to be hard on each other…the way some friendships are. Well, most of mine. Anyway, I think the most common scenario is, “wow, cool, you wrote this? I like it! I want a signed copy.” (But it’s an ebook….)
The most important factor, I think, and the point Stein was making above all, has to do with the idea of treating writing as a craft, writing a book as a project/process, and publishing as a business. On page 156 of the aforementioned book, he says:
Friends and family are the least objective people in the world for manuscript reading purposes. … They are so pleased to see your words on paper, they will exult, they will praise, and they will mislead because your prospective readers … will be judging your material by the emotional charge they get out of reading it [as opposed to] out of knowing you wrote it.
He goes on to mention, perhaps more importantly, that:
The editing of fiction is a high craft that takes years to learn, and you can’t expect friends and relatives close at hand to substitute their intuitive reactions for experience.
As indie writers, or at least independent-minded writers, we often think in terms of bucking the system and the way publishing has worked in the last couple of centuries. The reality, of course, is that a lot of the professionals who’ve worked in the business as writers, editors or hands-on publishers have developed experience and expertise that’s extremely relevant and meaningful, especially to inexperienced novelists like, say, me. The same applies to people who have fought their way through the indie system.
What I’m talking about is that if writing is a craft and publishing is a business, there are right and wrong ways to do things, or at least righter and wronger, or certainly more/less likely to be successful. This means that there are a ton of things you can do in the structure and content of your novel that experienced professionals can see right off the bat will not work well for the typical readership. Feedback from a professional editor who has spent time studying the craft is very different from feedback from your office-mate (assuming he/she hasn’t been through the workshop circuit or the publishing grinder). By different, I mean better, or rather, more likely to be useful and result in improvements, not just changes.
Of course, most indie writers don’t have ready access to professional story editors, at least not for free. And anyway, not everything an editor says is necessarily right, or right for you. The way I see it, though, the closer you can get to professionally-minded feedback, the better. And there are definitely degrees and in-betweens. For example, other writers, especially those who have studied the craft by reading lots of books and ideally taking workshops, are more likely (IMO) to give useful feedback than the average bear. I’ve heard that’s one of the top value points workshops deliver: meeting and befriending (or at least allying with) other writers who can trade considered critiques with you. I haven’t done any workshops, at least not yet, but this makes a ton of sense to me, and it’s the number one reason I’m thinking about doing one (a big one, ideally) in the next few months.
So…showing an early draft to friends might be a good stroke, but it also might mislead us into taking the wrong direction with our rewrites. Worse, generalized negative feedback might be devastating and drive us to despair. To my mind, feedback is only useful if it comes with clear suggestions as to how to fix the perceived problem. This generally means being able to tell with some level of accuracy what specifically is missing. Is the tension being built too slowly or too quickly? Is it being built inconsistently, in peaks and valleys? Is there not enough conflict in the dialogue, and in which scenes is the problem most pronounced? And also, which scenes/chapters/exchanges of dialogue read like the work of a professional? Positive feedback is a lot more wonderful if we know both where and why we’re doing everything, or something, right.
Naturally, there’s a lot to be said for just “I like it” or “I don’t” when it comes from enough target audience members. Still, it seems to me that we might as well use the craft, and thoughts from its other practitioners, to get as far as we can before the public even gets a look. It’s always possible to get lucky and pump out a bestseller (or literary classic) without paying attention to any of the rules (or breaking every one of them). But I don’t see any harm in listening to the voice of experience, or at least training, whenever I can get it.
You probably like to shower before going out into the world each day. I generally do, too, especially since nappy really doesn’t work for my hair.
Lately, as I’ve talked about the first draft being more or less done, more and more friends have been asking to read it. I’ve been tempted a couple of times, especially on days when I like what I’ve done.
So what’s the big deal? says the shoulder devil. Let them read it. Thrill and delight them. Bask in the glow of admiration and get some early feedback.
Don’t do it, says the angel on the other one. It’s a bad idea, for every reason in the book.
I’ll list those reasons in a minute, but first, a little history. I used to write articles for computer magazines. Exactly ninety of them, as it happens, plus chunks of two computer books. One thing I learned from this, about my writing, is that what I write doesn’t need editing. It’s perfect as it comes out. Perfect!
How I learned this is, one time many years ago, I suspected editors weren’t doing much editing on my articles. They would change the titles sometimes, but I could never find anything that had been changed. Like every hungry freelancer, I followed length guidelines closely, so that was never an issue. And I honestly do have good spelling skills, except for a couple of rules I can never quite learn dealing with “-ence” vs. “-ance” and that sort of thing. And spell-checkers have existed since before I was in puberty. Just barely, but still.
So I tested the theory. I dug out the magazine with my latest article in it and compared it to the original manuscript word for word. What I learned was interesting: not one word had been changed. I even found a typo, and when I looked for it in the original, there it was.
So, what did this mean? I assumed it either meant that editor was lazy or that my writing was perfect as it was. I’m sure there was some truth to both. A valuable lesson.
Only…
A martial arts instructor told me once—many times, actually—that some lessons are really bad to learn. He would get students in with nonprofessional training, or who’d tried to learn some things on their own, or who were naturally graceful and adept at certain movements. These people tended to be the hardest to train, because they had a lot of unlearning to do first. And just like that, it’s important that I unlearn what that article comparison taught me.
First of all, nonfiction is very different from fiction. While doubtless my articles were, without exception, hilarious and uplifting, they were fundamentally fact-based. As long as there were no factual errors, and the information was delivered concisely around the humor bits, they would serve their purpose.
There are a lot of of other factors to good fiction, though, especially novel-length fiction. Constant conflict in action and dialog. Escalating tension at scene, arc, part and total book levels. A purpose to every descriptive passage (foreshadowing, establishing terrain for a fight, etc.) In fact, nothing in the book at all that doesn’t serve a purpose. Not to mention plot and subplots, appropriate PoV voicing through syntax and vocabulary, character differentiation, and, wherever possible, a musical flow to the grouping and order of words. And of course, most importantly, conveying emotional experiences of interest to the reader, from sympathetic misery to plain old fun. Still want to write fiction?
Anyway, no matter how “perfect” it may seem in terms of spelling and grammar and punctuation and generally hanging together, no first draft ever has all of those things. Probably not even most of them. Plenty of final drafts don’t either, not to mention published novels, but at least by then the writer’s given it hris all. (Hris=his or her, and yes, I made that up.)
So, showing someone your first draft is like going out stinky. On a date. A first date. Sure, you can do it, and you might even not be instantly loathed. But your first shot is important and as a new novelist the odds are massively stacked against you anyway. Only one chance to make a first impression, and the opinion of every early reader is a key voice contributing to the ultimate success, or failure, of the book. I’ve seen the same phenomenon in releasing software before it’s completely finished. Users don’t see bugs the same way developers do.
The moral of the story, obviously, is that it’s probably wiser to put in the effort and not present until it’s ready, or at least as ready as I can get it. So, if I’ve got any wisdom in me, which is questionable, I’ll keep it close until the next full pass at least. And that will take more time.
Well, after two out of the four months spent on road trips, I’m back and writing with reasonable efficiency. I did zero writing on the trips, but I did note a bunch of ideas. It’s just too hard to write on a (mostly) solo road trip. There’s just too much thrashing involved in the mindspace switching between driving hundreds of miles a day, photography and writing. So two out of three was all I’d expected anyway.
No other trips planned at the moment, though I often try to go away on train trips or other city destinations in winter. We’ll see. I don’t plan any further ahead than absolutely necessary.
Since returning home a couple of weeks ago, I’ve pretty much finished the first draft. I’m going through finding and trimming loose ends, planting candlesticks for use as murder weapons later (metaphorically speaking) and generally looking things over for the second draft process.
I feel like things are coming together pretty well. Of course, everyone may hate it. But if I don’t, that’s a start.
