revising – Page 5 – Julie Liddell Whitehead

So How Do You Do It?

How do you take on a long project and stick with it to completion? Good question.

One way to NOT do it is to talk about it too much. I try to reserve my initial enthusiasm for the project by keeping it under wraps. I actually started revising Hurricane Baby in January of this year but didn’t blog about it until much later. Why? Because I was afraid that I would lose enthusiasm for it if I talked it out too much, exposed too many of my ideas to scrutiny before they were fully formed.

Another way to keep the enthusiasm strong is to think about it in terms of craft and process instead of results. I used to find myself so carried away with the future of a project that I lost sight of the project itself. This phenomenon happened to me with this manuscript as well, which is why I abandoned it for a bit in April and May–I thought too much about where I wanted it to publish and who I wanted to pitch it to that I forgot I needed to spare my creativity for finishing it first.

Another way to keep the enthusiasm is to limit the project to something achievable. If you set out to write the Great American Novel, I guarantee that somewhere along the line you will freeze up because you will realize that the project is not living up to the hype you have put on it in your mind. I set out to write a series of short stories that were linked by Hurricane Katrina. I limited it to twelve stories. Only after finishing that initial plan of those twelve did I allow myself to think about how I could make it longer and bigger and more extensive.

As you get further into the story and the initial enthusiasm begins to wane, then it’s time to think about enlisting an accountability partner. For me, having a deadline is a blessing because it means I cannot take off too many days from writing or dawdle too long over any one particular story problem. And having someone eagerly waiting to read what you’ve written can be a boost to your productivity in that the audience is no longer just you–it’s someone else whom you are now accountable.

Just a few suggestions that have helped me sustain energy to stick with this project and finish it.

And Just Like That

I. FINISHED. THE. BOOK.

I got on a writing roll the Saturday before Labor Day and did not stop until I finished midweek last week. I wrote like a crazy person. (Which I am, but that’s another blog.) I revised both storylines until the tension was white-hot in each one and the knife was buried up to the hilt in my insides with not being sure what the characters were going to do next. But as all stories do, they ended and my eighth revision of Hurricane Baby is in the books.

And I decided I had enough. I ran it through spell-and-grammar-check a few more times as I refined certain passages and finally found a search-and-replace that fixed the worst of the mistakes I had introduced accidentally. I bit the bullet on some things that my reader said needed to be changed that I had resisted changing when I was rewriting new passages, but I finally broke down and took out some dialogue tags that had been near and dear to my heart. I searched for words that were used too often and found replacements.

And now I am going to start sending it out to small publishers and university presses. I’m entering three contests for short-story collections and sending to someone who already published a novella of mine just for a try to market it as a novel-in-stories. And I picked out two others to send to because they are known to be open to Southern writing. So that’s six so far. Then I will wait and send to others if none of those work out.

It’s an exhilarating feeling to be done with this round. I’m certain that anyone who is interested in publishing it will require more. Because perfection is not of this world. But I think I have taken it pretty far and done some pretty honest work in telling these stories I have carried around in my head and on my hard drive for far too long. (I also finally saved it into the cloud!) That’s all I meant to do–tell some honest stories.

So now we wait. I hope I can have some good news in the coming weeks. I’ll keep you posted!

Surprise, Surprise.

I had another real gut check moment this week. Two, actually. I got into my revisions and suddenly realized I have to rewrite almost every bit of Tommy and Cindi’s storyline. The first story is fine–now. I have to totally rewrite the second for it to be from Tommy’s point of view, then that means that every other story in that arc has to be rewritten, too.

So I resigned myself to doing that. Scared I would mess it up by doing it, so popped out all five stories into their own document to revise on in case it’s too hard and I have to give it up.

Then Saturday I realized that once that one is beefed up the way I want it to be, that James and Lori’s story arc was terribly weak compared to the others. I needed more juice for it too. I started fussing to my writing friends. It was so demoralizing for about a day to think that just when I thought I was done, that those characters were crying for more development as well. But since I had already decided on one set of revisions, it seemed deciding on another set wasn’t as hard.

But oh, I fussed about it to my writing friend for this project. She listened so patiently over Facebook Messenger as I went “Augh!” over and over talking about how I knew it all needed to be done. She first advised me to not do it at all if it was going to drive me this crazy. Send it out as it was and see what happened.

I realized I’d rather not send it out at all than do that.

And then I thought of a book that just got published recently. By someone I knew. Who isn’t even a writer by profession–he was an accounting professor at my alma mater. By a press that had rejected Hurricane Baby when I first was sending it out.

So. I thought “Boy howdy, if he can get a book published in this environment, SO CAN I.”

So I am making the changes. Started last night during a rain delay of the football game I had been planning to watch. And I went in hot on it and am now on my way. I am going to succeed with Hurricane Baby as far as it remains in my power. I’m going to write something I am proud of, even if it never gets published. And I’m enjoying ever second.

Plans For Revision

So I heard back from Laurie Marshall, my workshop mate that read Hurricane Baby. We swapped manuscripts–I read her fiction chapbook and read mine. She did a wonderful job with feedback–giving me notes in the manuscript, then writing me a document that noted big trends and suggestions for throughout the manuscript.

It was all very positive and uplifting with a lot of practical advice sandwiched in that I agree with. A few things are issues I always struggle with, like descriptions of settings and characters. I try every manuscript to get better at that and am glad when someone can push me to get even better at it because I know I struggle with it.

But the cast of characters is set, the plot is set, and the form is set. So that represents a huge advance in the process. She only judged one story as being much weaker than the others, and it was among one of the last I wrote, so I’m not surprised. It’s the last section of Tommy Hebert and Cindi Delafosse’s story, the new arc I added in this revision.

Tommy’s Hurricane Katrina story opens with him doing rescue work throughout the parish, and the subsequent drinking problem he develops after seeing a scene that scars him for life. I plan to plant the seeds for the resolution that is in that story earlier in the timeline throughout the other stories in that arc and plan to put in as much work as possible to bring that arc up to the standards of the others. I’m looking forward to starting Monday on the revisions!

Proofing

So now I am at the nitpicking stage of writing–correcting commas, passive voice, etc. etc. One of my readers said I used passive voice too often. So I did a daring exercise–I ran a total find-and-replace that deleted all instances of the word “HAD”.

It worked.

I’m putting all my sentences into active voice with that one deletion. Often it came out cleanly without needing to change the sentence at all. Other times I had to work out the new tense of the action verb that it preceded. But I will be on the lookout for this in manuscripts from now on.

So in checking all my prose I am correcting grammar and rewriting sentences and doing all those tiny, tiny tasks that make a manuscript look professional and polished. I work on one chapter a day, passing the time until my last reader gets back with me with feedback on the story as a whole.

After I hear back, I will hopefully pull the manuscript apart again and make improvements and make it even better. And I think it can be better. I’m under no illusions that what I’ve done is the best I can do. But I may have done the best I can do for this story now without more input. So I am looking forward to that.

Revision Finished

Revision number I’ve-lost-track is in the books. Now I am cleaning up typos, etc. in the typescript. I have a ton of backwards quotation marks. Not sure how that happened. I’m proofing a story a day while waiting on another read by various people and seeing what they have to say, and then I’ll dive into another workover based on that feedback.

I’ve collected a list of small presses to send to in the first round–they are all hospitable to Southern lit and I hope one of them takes an interest in it. I am looking over publishing guidelines and all those details to get them fixed in my mind so the final copies will hold up.

So Hurricane Baby is a few steps closer to reality. I hope you are enjoying this trip into the innards of writing a book. I’m still going to be posting on how everything goes with the new revisions and all the developments I anticipate in this journey. Come along for the ride!

Hard-Won Knowledge

Well, something interesting happened yesterday. I have always been a very particular writer. I write it out and don’t finish a piece until every word is as good as I can make it–the first time I write it. I am used to turning out very clean copy in a first draft and not having to revise. I’ve never been one to subscribe to the “crappy first drafts” mode of writing–where you just get a bunch of stuff on the page and sort it out later.

But yesterday I did exactly that on this fiction project. I was writing one of the last stories and wanted to get everything down that was in my head about this scene, but I realized halfway through that it needed more attention than I was giving it–I was “telling” a lot in summary when I needed to be showing it in scene.

But I just kept plugging along and finally finished what I could do that day. I went back and read it and made a big cut, and immediately the scene felt a lot better. Now I need to go back and put in the scenes I was summarizing. I have never really been able to revise my own work–I think it’s all good until someone tells me otherwise, then I can see how to fix it. So I think yesterday was a step forward for me as a writer in that I know I have to fix it and know what I have to do to fix it. Instead of just thinking it’s wonderful from the get-go :).

So today’s craft tip–go ahead and write the garbage. At least sorting through it later will help you separate the recyclable from the trash and find the treasures within that you didn’t notice at first. I’m awfully late to this awareness, but I’m glad I finally have it. Happy writing!

Story Continuity

I have been having fun writing the new installments of Hurricane Baby and cleaning up what I call “continuity problems”. Since I am adapting a huge mass of already-written material to a new purpose, I have to watch for continuity problems.

These could range anywhere from calling a character a wrong name to putting someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, one story had been set between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I didn’t realize that until I was doing yet another read through and realized that it couldn’t be set during that time because of changes to the timeline occasioned by the new stories I’ve written and other changes to the timeline of the book itself.

How to solve? I’ve started keeping a list that consists of when each event happened and what it was. So if Lelani announced she was pregnant in early January, if she went into preterm labor in the sixth month, the baby would be born in June. If, if, if. Asking a series of If questions make the dominoes of the story fall into place with minimum disruption.

Eyes On Your Work

What do you do with a manuscript once you finish it? I always try to get someone else to look it over. I am about to reach that stage where I will be finding another pair of eyes to read and see where the story needs revising. I have a few more pages on my last story to do and then I will be ready to get another perpective.

You can go about finding readers several ways. One avenue I have taken is to go to my MFA mates that I still stay in touch with and offer to switch manuscripts–I read one of theirs, and they read mine. Both of you get a new perspective. and all you’re out is a little time. Cooperation is a wonderful thing. Maybe you have a writing group or people you met in a conference or workshop. A swap can really work in your favor.

Getting different perspectives from your readers is something else to think about. I am getting another writer’s thoughts from my MFA friend. I have another friend who dabbles in writing but also reads voraciously. He can give me a reader’s perspective–does the story hang together? Where is he tempted to put it down because it’s boring? Etc.

Free options are the best options–but if you want a little more professional opinion, Facebook groups or Twitter searches are always a option to find a professional developmental editor. Be sure to vet someone first–see if other books they have worked on have eventually sold or if they are good enough editors for their own work to sell. If you’re paying for it, make sure it money well spent.

So when you finish a manuscript, celebrate your accomplishment however you choose. But know that the work is not necessarily done; getting other eyes on it is the next step.

Tag: revising