Revisions

Having finished my second novel, THE HOLLOW QUEEN, and having let a few months pass, I've now started the excruciating process of revising it. I have to go through and do this at least once before I'll let my critique partners read it. When they're done critiquing, I'll go through it again. And again. And maybe one more time before I let them read it a second time. And then I'll revise some more. And maybe more after that.

The first draft, of course, is terrible. Awful. I hate it. HATE it. I wrote it as quickly as I could and paid little mind to good grammar, active voice, and sentence structure. I also wrote it for the purpose of getting the story out, not necessarily telling the story well.

Since this is only my second novel, revising is still a major process for me. However, there are a few things I learned from my first novel, which I am putting into practice this time around to make life a little easier on myself:

1. Don't let anyone read the first draft. ANY. ONE. I already have a page full of notes I made as I was writing the first draft, of things I need to change. There is a huge continuity error in the middle. Names change halfway through. Characters' entire religions and ethnicities change, and I have to fix all so it at least makes some kind of sense to human beings.

2. Don't let anyone other than my three critique partners read the second, third, or fourth drafts. Too many cooks, and all that. By the time I let my loved ones read my work now -- even short stories -- I'm pretty much at the point where the piece is ready, or very nearly ready, for submission. This way they get to experience the work the way I want other readers to experience it.

3. Make notes. Lots, and lots of notes. Like I said, I have a page full of them: things I wanted to remember to add earlier on in the story, names that have to be changed, points I need to look up and clarify.

4. Use this resource to identify overused words, and change them.

5. Do a search for the following, and change them: "-ly," "that," "seemed," "tried," "began," "felt," "knew," "it," "was."

6. Comb each chapter for character motivations. Since this novel is multiple POV, make sure each character has a distinctive voice.


Only when all of this is done, will I feel comfortable sending a draft to my crit partners. Even then, I know the manuscript will not be the best it can be...yet. I'll get their notes back. Some I'll agree with, and make changes. Others I'll disagree with and leave alone. I'll revise yet again, and probably think of a few new things to add or remove from the ms. Then I'll send out a draft again. And then I'll keep revising until I feel like the only real "changes" left are small, insignificant ones. That's when I know it's ready: ready to query to agents, ready to pitch on Twitter contests. Ready to be read by my husband and other loves ones.

But that journey is still a thousand miles from where I am right now. I'll get there, and hopefully this time around I'll get there quicker than the three years it took me with my first novel. Until then, I try not to beat myself up too much, and just focus.

The End?

How do writers know when the revision process is over and it's time to submit their work to agents?

I know writers who spend years revising their manuscripts to within an inch of their lives. There's always something that needs tweaking, a subplot pulled or added, word counts chopped up or beefed up.

And I've also read books that seem poorly edited, like the author submitted a first draft and that first draft somehow made it through the agenting process, got sold to a publisher, and passed at least one editor's desk as-is.

So, how do I know when I'm done?

I'm almost through this round of revisions with Bloodsisters, and when I reach the end that will be it for me. It has to be. From this point forward there's nothing else I can do for the manuscript that won't either a)change the entire story around, or b)be so minor as to be unimportant -- a changed word here, a different sentence structure there.

Bloodsisters is, for me, the final product of over twelve years of work. Sure, some of those years were more dormant than anything else, but this novel really started back in 2000. The original idea was to open the story with Atya and Ochira's first meeting and chronicle their travels together before reaching this point in the story, but I figured that would get boring. Maybe some day I'll write prequels about their pre-Bloodsisters adventures together, but it took me a decade to realize the interesting story, the real story, opens with them already at Ochira's home of Dark Wind Palace. That's where the best action happens, and that's where the important storyline in the Prophesies trilogy is born.

The first version of the story was crap. I'm not too proud to say so. I wrote it in a hurry (...after ten years) mostly just to prove to myself that I could finally write this novel. And I did! Yay for me! But it was kinda terrible. Kinda really terrible. Out of that whole 72K-word draft I kept one chapter intact -- a conversation between Atya and my villain, Hatchi -- and ditched the rest. I made a mind map, reworked the plot in a way that made more sense from a storytelling perspective, invented a few new supporting characters (Michio and Masuko) and subplots, researched my brains out, and started over. It was painful, but I pushed through. On the way I found two excellent critique partners who kicked my ass with tough love and pushed me to make this puppy WORK.

And it does. It finally does!

This round of revisions will be the third round on the second version of a novel twelve years in the making. After countless false starts, starts and stops, and 72,000 words sent to the trash, this version is THE ONE. I feel in my heart it is. And after this round of revisions I will have weeded out about 99% of the problems, added some polish, and finally feel that this is the story I want to tell, in the way I want to tell it.

I don't know how other writers know, but this is how I know. I know I'm done. I know Bloodsisters is ready.

Both Sides Now

Having spent time as an editor over at The Rose & Thorn e-Zine many years ago, I can appreciate the work editors put in to the stories they publish. And so now, on the other side of the writer/editor relationship I'm trying to be easy to work with. Spencer Hill Press sent back my "Esther" story with some edits, and I've already made them and sent the story back. Quick, easy, relatively painless. I agreed with about 99% of what they said and so am not putting up a fight. I want to be a writer editors enjoy working with, not a pain in the butt.

That said, this is really my first experience in making changes for an editor, and it was for a story of less than 7K words. Maybe things will be different if Bloodsisters gets picked up. I hope not...I am definitely open to critiques and suggestions, but will they be harder when I'm doing them for a much, much longer work than for a short story?

Once, while I was an editor, I got into a nasty, knock-down, drag-out fight with a writer over a single word in his story, a word I felt did not match the tone of the rest of the story. My managing editor finally had to step in. I hope I never become the kind of writer who drives an editor crazy over a single word.

I feel the same way in my parenting life right now. As a teenager I babysat a lot. And now I have kids and I'm the one interviewing and hiring babysitters. Being on the other side of any relationship is certainly eye-opening, and gives me an appreciation for what editors/babysitters go through.

And now, "The Esther" is back out to the nice folks at SHP. Time to return to early 20th century Japan and my novel.