Why, it's revision-fest!

Welcome to the fourth annual (fifth? we may have skipped a year)re-write of my West Virginia novel. This year we're working on making it sure it "jells" and features a "plot."

At the cabin right now, and the peepers are outraged.

Post revision paranoia

Almost a week out from having "finished" the revision of Wisher, my New Orleans novel (formerly called Social aid & Pleasure),I am waiting to hear from my readers and reflecting on my choices. I've already heard from an editor-friend who had many lovely, positive things to say and was undeterred by the bewildering dregs of a subplot I had failed to delete completely (I got rid of a major character, but I recycled her sex scenes). I'm waiting to hear from my husband, who is re-reading, and a close friend seeing the work for the first time. The earlier draft has been read by about a half dozen folks ranging from friends, agents, and publishers. So far no one has called me out on what I think is a glaring issue--none of my main characters are African American. My out, of course, is that I usually write about characters who have traveled to the place of the novel to re-invent and restore themselves, and in Wisher my main characters, Victor and Val Swaim, are white folks from up north who have fled the suburban life they we born into. Another point--none of my main characters are Louisiana natives, either. While I have no qualms about appropriating and messing with "male" experience, I don't think I could ever cross the color/culture line in a meaningful way. Having been raised in a casually racist environment probably means that my creativity will always be subject to my guilt and desire to correct for my family, 50% of whom feel no shame while the other 50% us waddle around changing the damned subject.

Thinking about this today as I encountered a student who complained that her Government Ethics text book was "heavier than a dead minister"--is that a saying? Because I laughed my ass off. But then I was catapulted back into embarrassed child mode when she told me she did not want to go to a particular admin office to complete her paperwork because "that black gal down there is bossy."

my brain turned over

If writing is the exercise of thinking, then I'm just getting my heart rate up.

This is about revision.

the eyes have lasers in them!

My husband made a wooden mallet today. He also disassembled a remote control dinosaur. But not with the mallet.

In other places we have discussed the bullshit of “process,” but as I’m coming off a successful revision—if our mallet wielding dino dissector is credible— the how of it is very fresh in my mind, and I kinda want to nail it down.

The problem was intention. The original idea came from a scene in my WV novel where the main character is in her remote cabin, and she’s freaked out by a late night trespasser. From there I was shaping something fairly conventional—a story of transformation that to fit into my spooky vsf project. The draft, having outgrown flash, teetered into Poe-like Gothicism. On those terms it needed more rational development.

Like a mercenary I started writing the linkage, which was easy-peasy. When I write fast without breaking an emotional sweat, I always think I’m phoning it in. But very often that writing turns out to be my best. And sure enough, one day later I reread the work to discover that the craven linkage was more clear-eyed and dramatic than any of the original work.

So I threw out most of the old draft and re-built from the linkages (now free from plot servitude). I think I ended up with something much cooler than I planed for. Editors? Start your bidding now. (I always make that joke).

revision status

well alrightey, I'm "through" revision 1 in that I've gone through the draft and managed to whittle it down to 330 better pages. I got some great advice about the first 40, which I'm still applying, and now I think I may be at the stage of re-writing the chapter by chapter summary to see what this tighter version looks like, bird's eye view.

one of my worries is that I never really answer the questions of the supernatural phenomenon that drives the plot. all I do is write about the affect on my main character. hope I can get away with that.

next weekend we go to new orleans. whee! research! gonna eat and drink myself stoopid.

revision update (snore)

I'm revising my draft, Social Aid & Pleasure, and that's coming along, but my goal was to shed 70-80 pages of the 386 I ended up with. I'm at about 140 pages now, and I've only managed to dump 20 pages so far. Maybe I'll run into some digressive chapters about knot tying soon, but I don't remember writing any of those.

The main job in the first 40 pages was to make them more active and focused, less expository and discursive. This required me to wrestle with my narrator, who is a naturally loquacious, sometimes affected, dude. Dean read the pages, liked them, but he knows the concept too well to determine whether I'm delivering enough information at a decent pace, so I have two readers on the job (thanks E & D).

I also put a section of dialogue up on fictionaut, sans context, and the folks there are treating me very well indeed. I'm feeling pretty good about how this is going, with the only barrier being the fact that people keep expecting me to work for a living.

The pic is my WV cabin undergoing renovation. If you click on it, you'll see the toilet is outside in the yard, next to the entrance. This is not our preference.

the quest

Tomorrow we learn whether we have successfully acquired the land next to our cabin in WV, which would give us a total of about 4.5+ acres. So that's one thing.

The other thing is that someone has expressed enough interest in my WV novel that I have definitely mounted a re-write to increase the suspense. But harder than that is writing the full length summary. I don't know how this effort will pan out in terms of representation and publication, but I do know my new draft will be the lean, dark animal I always intended it to be. Wish me luck.

I've shared the details of the process with a few people, and I'm grateful for all the offers of help. I'll need readers soon, but right now I'm getting help from Jeanette Winterson's The Passion and three or four powerful Lucinda Williams' tracks.

revision strategy or superstition?

I rarely do simultaneous submissions. Nothing moral about it, I just can’t keep track. I do send out to a second place if the first place is taking for-fricking-ever to respond, since I can’t recall having something out there for 2/3rds of a year producing an acceptance. Regardless, if I haven’t gotten and answer or I’ve been rejected, I always make some sort of change to the piece before I send it out again. Sometimes this is in response to an editor’s criticism, and the change is substantial. But mostly it’s a little tweak, unnoticeable to anyone but me. For example, in the story I have coming out next, I removed the word “dewy.”