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Everything writing related from feathers to soaring

Beyond the Monotony

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A foggy evening 01

A foggy evening 01 (Photo credit: AnneCN)

What would you do after three months of editing?

Variety is the spice of life they say, but how do you achieve it? Stop editing and write? Switch projects? What happens if you have five draft novels all needing editing and two new plots pounding at your mind?

Most sensible writers seem to blend the editing and writing successfully, judging by their Blogs and their Facebook posts. But living with MS makes that hard. If I work at the revision then I no longer have the energy to do anything more than chill out. Which is why it has just taken me three months to complete the third revision of my 97k novel Wyrm Bait. Yesterday I sent it off to my editor for detailed analysis; also sent it to four beta readers for their thoughts.

Some time ago, I would have switched into writing mode and produced another draft novel, which is why there are so many lurking around, waiting to be edited. Heading the queue is that blast from my past, my first novel Spiral of Hooves. It’s been with the editors for the US ebook publishers – one English, one American – and is due back any day.

Decision made, therefore: I have to revise that next, addressing their input = another month or so of editing.

You Want Me To Go Down Where?!

You Want Me To Go Down Where?! (Photo credit: tobym)

Do I scream? It’s a change of setting, characters, plot and of problems to be addressed. But it’s still editing – NOT writing.

But editing is part of the writing process, the experts tell us. I need to learn to love the revision stage. The short cut of editing as I write is a gag on my creative flow. I prefer to plot carefully, write freely, and edit gradually. Except three times five novels = 15 months of editing. But total revision for each novel is far longer, which cuts out the creation. Doesn’t it?

However no new novels won’t work, not if I want to satisfy my urge to create and my potential readers urge for new words. When Spiral of Hooves sells, the readers should want the sequel, but it’s not written.

One source of new material has been NaNoWriMo in November and I have heard rumours of a June challenge as well. Is that the solution? NaNoWriMo has produced two first drafts: The Last Leaf (2011) and Wyrm Blood (2012). One took a month but the other was almost three to first draft completion. Even have two ideas in plotting process; if I can decide which one comes first in the penning order. Probably Tortuous Terrain the sequel to Spiral of Hooves. However Seeking A Knife is more alive in my mind. Decisions, decisions.

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Need more time. Maths not looking good. Something needs to give. But what? Social media? Emails? Gaming? All cut to a minimum and part of my survival plan, whether to maintain contact or to chill and reward myself.

One solution is to blog rather than create new novels. Still writing and far faster, requiring quick editing. Revert to short stories and simplify my inspiration. Even novellas not novels. All ideas to be swept along in the tide of editing. And high tide is approaching. With MS lurking to dash the plans with exhaustion and pain.

So what do you do? What advise can you give the Silver Scribbler?

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How much time?

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St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writin...

St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writing

Please don’t think I’m lazy but apologies are due I believe. The unforeseen hiatus in posts was enforced by MS dragging me down. Anyway I am back to the Blogging again. However Time is a tough commodity to manage when living with spasms, stiffness and exhaustion, so no wild promises or resolutions this time.

When I started this Blog at the end of May, the dominant theme became Editing as that was the writing stage I had reached with my first novel.  After 12 years plus of working on Spiral of Hooves, I hoped that the end was in sight and only a couple of drafts were required to reach the finishing line.

Was I foolish thinking Editing would be so easy? 

Three months on from starting the edit I had reached a quagmire and quit three days ago. Identifying the dire marshes that trapped me is simple – word checking.  Was I reading too many posts about finding those ‘weasel words’ that grate and trying to eliminate them? I was spending day after day exterminating adverbs and expunging that/what/had/was or anything that was incorrect.  I began to hate the manuscript and believe that it was not good enough. Plus I craved the day when I could move on to a better novel and get out of the Dead Marshes.

English: A view of the Kepler Mire String Bog ...

English: A view of the Kepler Mire String Bog from the Mt York Road Southland New Zealand (Photo credit: Wikipedia) [Used in LOTR films]

I abandoned the novel and put it back in the ‘bottom shelf’, deciding to move on and use a better manuscript as my first novel – the one I would use to get an agent. There was a mixture of frustration at my failure to finish Spiral of Hooves and relief at the thought of tackling Wyrm Bait, which already has a sequel hovering in the wings (called Wyrm Blood).

But was I wrong to give up so easily?

In the last few days two things happened that have possibly opened up clearer paths forward in my writing quest.  First, my grand-daughter Jessica – step- if I was being pedantic – passed me a link to a US publishing group run by writers: http://www.spectaclepmg.com/. Perhaps they might be another route for a novel that needs a home – after a minor tinker.

Second, I read a repost by a US agent – http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/08/the-writing-rules/ – that made me realise that I could be following the rules too rigidly and stifling my creation before I had given it a chance. Thanks then to Rachelle Gardner for rekindling my belief in my creative process and putting the Editing in a context – not that I’m throwing out the rules that pulled me away from my worst writing excesses.

I need to learn from this journey through the Pedantry Marshes when I move on to Wyrm Bait and I must choose a more sensible approach.  I’ve learnt that writing a first draft isn’t so much of a burden as the Editing and I need to manage Time better.  I hope that I can do that and find enough Time to produce the other ideas that are crying out for creation.  On the cusp of 59 I wonder how much more writing I can manage before MS steals all the thoughts away.

How much Time does a novel require in your life? Do you juggle or manage?

"Writing on the wood is prohibited."...

“Writing on the wood is prohibited.” DSC07600 (Photo credit: Nicolas Karim)

Time, Editing, plus Writing a Novel

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As I slowly write my way to sixty – well 59 come August – I am increasingly aware of that precious commodity called Time and the need to juggle the commitments that life has thrown up.  Writing is of course my chosen profession for retirement and therefore the one I should choose to focus on.

For the last two weeks I have been carrying out what I have called The Overview edit on my second draft novel Wyrm Bait and yesterday I completed it.  Time was an important part of the edit in at least two respects:

(i)           Chronology – I needed to ensure that the sequence of events worked even if in some instances flashbacks were needed;

(ii)         Length of time – ensuring that the storyline covered the right amount of time in terms of weeks and months.  (My first novel Spiral of Hooves suffered for a while by getting that wrong.)

I am reasonably satisfied that the overall storyline works and that there aren’t any glaring gaps or wasted scenes/chapters. The best analogy is that the dominoes look like they are laid out in the right order to fall in sequence but I still need to check that I have chosen the right domino in every instance. Maybe there is room to fit in some more dominoes – a subplot maybe – especially as I have at least one chapter which feels too short and in need of another scene, but as yet nothing is crying out to be added.  I could however see plenty of places where I could expand on things like description and insert more actions to underline the words, in the next edit stages.

Continuity:  from an overall perspective I ensured that glaring errors including character inconsistency and muddled motivation were corrected and that plot revelations were timed right. Even found one character with a name totally wrong – taken from a pre-novel idea.

Pacing: this feels right but I know that when I start to work on Chapter level editing that pacing will really be tested.

I made some grassroots changes as I read the draft through and saw the mistakes, but I also made notes on things I needed to do at the next draft stage.  I even got some inspiration for the sequel Wyrm Blood and was compelled to scribble out the opening lines and the structure of the first scene.  The basic idea was already lurking in the wings as the protagonist, a wannabe writer, is asked what his next short story is about: ‘Umm..human sacrifice.’.

At this stage I find myself reflecting on how writing has changed over Time because of the computer.  Pre-writing and for thousands of years, storytelling has been a mix of stories learnt from the bards almost word for word but perhaps Chinese whispers change even storytelling.  Was The Iliad as the transcribed Greek stands, told exactly in those words originally?

Famous writers from Chaucer to Hemingway all had to re-write their work at each draft, word for word.  Each draft was truly a new version while with computers it is tempting to just change the errors in the previous draft.  And there lurks the danger that every subsequent draft can carry hidden errors, compounding the mistakes.

I admire Robert Louis Stevenson for his rewrite after supposedly burning the first draft of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He re-wrote the novella in three to six days.  Whether the story is true or merely apocryphal, it suggests that the effort in the reworking was worthwhile.

So should I be re-writing my novels word by word, searching as I write for a better way to craft each phrase, each paragraph, each scene so that the next draft is not an amended version of the previous?  Can plotting the story in detail, knowing my characters intimately, reviewing each day’s writing, focusing down a level at each draft, have the same effect? At least I can try to re-write some of the scenes in Wyrm Bait where I feel there is more to add.

Time well spent of course but then there are other things to do and the juggling is not easy.  For a start there is the MS which some days slows me down so much I can’t even crawl out of bed and if I do the headaches, stiff hands and exhaustion can drive me crazy.  Fortunately I have learnt to live with the MS and my wife Juanita is my daily blessing.   I admit that at the end of the day we escape together into another world as we are both passionate gamers – playing Lord of the Rings Online at the moment.  It is escapism but also inspiration especially for Wyrm Bait which is set against a Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) – also the setting for a future series.

Then there is social media: I’m finding that the time commitment is increasing as I read more blogs, post more Tweets, check out my two Facebook pages – one more equestrian and one more Writing.  Plus there are all the emails to check and react to.  I sense that soon it will become too much if I don’t limit myself as I’ve also had to do with the gaming.  Today I found these blogs: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2012/05/02/book-marketing-giving-up-social-media/ and http://writerunboxed.com/2012/04/27/should-you-focus-on-your-writing-or-your-platform/ which say things more succinctly than I can.

So this Blog will be weekly but never daily, the Tweeting will be whenever I see something important and I will prioritise my Facebook writing page over the other.  Then perhaps I can write more.

The next stage for Wyrm Bait is research on the workings of the gaming world using a book called The Complete Guide to Game Development, Art & Design to add missing colour & texture to some crucial characters and scenes.  Beyond that I have to work on another novel for a competition – but that’s another post from The Silver Scribbler.

Editing that Novel

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Originally posted on http://www.rolandclarke.co.uk on 17 May 2012

As I embark on editing my second novel, Wyrm Bait, it seemed a good moment to reflect back on the lessons I learnt editing the first one.

Editing was one of the reasons why Spiral of Hooves took 12 years of writing before I had a final draft that I had confidence in.  Sounds like I kept on re-writing and in a way I did, but in totally the wrong way – I call it back-editing or back-pedalling.  I would write a few of the early chapters and then show them to other writers, mainly reading short sections aloud to the novel group I belonged to.  They were anxious to help and I failed to discriminate between constructive criticism and comments to discard.  So I kept going back and re-writing the same chapters, even re-reading the same scenes to the poor group.

Eventually I saw the error of my ways and began to be more selective in what I listened to, although by then my characters and plotline had gone through major changes.  When I finally had a complete draft that I could begin to revise, a lot of the novel in terms of structure, chronology and scene order as well as character consistency was all over the place.  Revising that was a massive scissors & paste rewrite but at least I then had a draft that began to flow – so I could then go through and hone the actual words.

While going through all these drafts I read somewhere – apologies if I don’t know where – that one should start with the overall picture and work down to the level of the individual words with each rewrite.  Hopefully after the chaos that was Spiral of Hooves I might have an easier time editing Wyrm Bait and enjoy what is meant to be as much fun as the writing.

I envisage 3 phases to Editing:

1.   The Overview:  ensuring that the overall structure of the plotline works and even surpasses the original intent of the plotting done before I even started writing.  When my partner/No 1 critic-reader read the finished novel aloud, I made notes on what didn’t work BEFORE putting the novel in the bottom drawer; so those notes are my starting point.
It helped having the background & detailed characterisation worked out even before I devised a detailed scene by scene plot using cards plus my novel writing software. I also wrote the second novel (and subsequent ones) without back-peddling EXCEPT each day I re-read and made minor changes to the previous day’s writing before I wrote the next chunk.  Also I kept ensuring that events that needed foreshadowing were inserted or changed as necessary plus any potential inconsistancies were avoided.
Therefore this edit should in part have been done in (a) the read-through notes & amendments; (b) the daily review and other corrections while writing the first draft.  But it doesn’t mean everything works at this stage so I will still have to do an overview.

2.   Chapters – Openings & Cliffhangers:   It remains to be seen whether I was beginning to write more self-contained and concise chapters in Wyrm Bait, with the cliffhangers to keep readers moving on. I will need to ensure that the tension is kept up but not at a break-neck speed as there need to be lulls both overall and within the individual chapters.  One crucial thing is that the plot keeps moving forward and the characters either grow or at least learn.  I also know that although I did research when I plotted the storyline and when I was writing, that there are areas that will need researching in more detail, given how the plot evolved.   This could all mean one draft or probably more like two or three as I know the chapters in Wyrm Bait vary in how they are written, with some sketched roughly and others overwritten with flights of purple prose.

3.   Every word counts:  So finally at the grassroots level there are the individual words and the phrases they either enhance or kill, deciding if the sentences flow and the paragraphs work.  After Spiral of Hooves, I know that there can be a lot of dead wood hiding at this level as unwanted adjectives and adverbs, inappropriate verbs or obvious embellishments.  I might have cut out large chunks by removing whole scenes and even chapters but fine tuning the words and removing the dross added light and shade to the flow of that story.

On one level it’s daunting reflecting on what has to be done but I know that it is also exciting as I will be discovering Wyrm Bait again and I have the chance to find the jewel at its heart.  Isn’t that what we are doing as writers – crafting a precious object from words?

Although I’ve used various online sites and real-paper books as I tried to learn this craft of writing, one comes to hand as useful at many stages: Writing The Thriller by T. Macdonald Skillman – Published by Writer’s Digest Books ISBN 0-89879-928-7.  With contributions from other thriller writers it has some invaluable chapters including one on editing called ‘Words on a Page’ which is one of my ongoing references.

Welcome to Writing Wings

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Welcome to Writings Wings, my Blogging home online and a place to keep friends and followers informed about my journeys in the World of Writing & Scribbling as I try to evolve from a fledgling fiction writer into someone that can offer words of import or entertainment or even amusement.

On this Blog I will post my more instant musings as I perfect my writing and learn the art of editing the words into something that you would like to read.  For details on my writing you can also visit my website at www.rolandclarke.co.uk where Work In Progress gives a few clues to the novels and other creations that are finding their own wings through my scribblings.  If you want to know who I am, click here on About fora few clues.

In time I will add some Favourite Links including a portal to my life beyond writing at The Duskweald – www.duskweald.co.uk – as well as other valued links.  Finally if you want to get in touch either click on the Facebook, Twitter links above OR by following the blog by email below.

See you on the journey fellow traveller ~ The Silver Scribbler aka Roland Clarke.