C. S. Rickard

Archive for the ‘stuck in editing’ Category

I’ve been working on my novel for several years now. Most of that time was half-hearted effort as my job, house and kids took up so much of my time. As I mentioned in this post, for the first time I can remember, I now have time to myself. I wasted quite a bit of last year trying to figure out what to do with myself (don’t laugh, it’s not as easy as you’d think). However, towards the end of the year I started getting the hang of it. Most of my free weekends I now spend on my novel. I’ve had the time to actually look at and evaluate my writing process and I’ve discovered a few things.

I have tunnel vision when I write. What I mean is that I get so focused on the action of the scene from the characters POV, I have a difficult time backing out of that POV to create the visuals. For example, when I’m in my character’s head and moving through a scene, I only see what they see. I write what the character is doing or saying, showing as much as I can remember to do, but the scenery remains barren.

Once I finish writing a scene, I then need to go back and go through it all again. This time, I don’t write from the main character’s viewpoint. Instead, I step back and describe the details of what’s surrounding her. I’ve repeatedly tried to write both simultaneously and I simply can’t do it. I know what’s there, but it doesn’t come out in words when I’m in ‘character mode.’ At least not yet. Perhaps, with practice, I’ll be able to switch back and forth, but for now, I sink so deep in the character, that it simply isn’t possible for me to go back and forth between the two.

Another thing I’ve discovered is that I’m pretty good with dialogue. It’s definitely my strength. Speech is something that I’ve always had an ear for, as they say. I took French in high school and college and that language always came natural to me, if that makes any sense. I don’t get the chance to speak it very often and have forgotten most of the grammar and vocabulary, but when I do converse with a native speaker, they almost always think I’m a native speaker or compliment me on my accent. Of course, if I have to say more than a few words, then it’s obvious I’m not French! My point, however, is that I’ve always been able to listen to a native speaker of another language and duplicate very closely what they said. I’ve done this with many languages. I think whatever it is that let’s me here small changes in intonation or accent is what allows me to write good dialogue.

It’s nice to know there’s at least one thing I don’t have to work too hard at when I write!

There are also more than a few areas in which I’m weak. The big one is senses. I do okay when describing visual scenes, but I struggle when incorporating the other senses. Usually it’s because I forget to do it. Regardless, this is one area that I’ve noticed the tunnel vision I described above, doesn’t happen to that degree here. I do tend to focus just on the scenery and images, but when I remember to expand beyond sight I can write the other senses in that same frame of mind. It’s just a matter of forcing my brain to make it a normal function of writing instead of an afterthought.

With these new insights, I’ve decided to try a different approach to writing this year. At least until I can determine whether or not it works better for me. As I mentioned on Twitter yesterday, I completely re-wrote chapter two, about 17 pages, in a day. All of that writing was in what I’ll call character mode. Tonight I’ll go back through it and fill in the scenery and background images. I think taking a two pronged approach will work much better for me. It allows me to get the scene written without fighting myself every few paragraphs to write descriptions. Yesterday was the most I’ve ever written in a day, and I did staying completely in character mode. I felt better about it. The story unfolded easily. I actually had a few more details creep in that I hadn’t thought about as I let my character take the reins of what she wanted to do.

If this works out like I hope it does, it shouldn’t take 2 years to finish the book, which is what I’m estimating based on my old process. I’m certainly not going to rush it. I want the book to be the best that I can make it, but if I can do that and finish early…oh yeah!

Well, I’m somewhat following the advice in the article about making time to write. I posted a link to this in the Writing Links section I made yesterday. The author advocates committing yourself to writing 3 pages per day, with the flexibility to take weekends ‘off.’ I definitely have the ‘weekends off’ part down pat.

I spent the day yesterday, and will spend most of today, working in the garden. There’s a lot of weeding that needs to be done, mulching, putting in edging around the new garden I made, fixing the pump on my koi pond, etc. Suffice to say, no time to write this weekend.

However, I intend to take his advice beginning tomorrow and write 3 pages each week day. The trap I fall into is that I write 3 pages one day. The next day I come back, read what I wrote the day before, make several changes to that text, then write a bit more. The third day I go back and read those pages, make edits, maybe more than I did the day before, and end up not adding any new pages. I get stuck in the concept of: how much is too much editing on the first draft?

That rut had me locked in for several months, but I think I finally broke free. Now, I write a chapter and edit that chapter as I go. Once I finish the chapter, I don’t go back to it. I keep going. I only allow myself to edit until I have a whole chapter written. At that point, it’s off the table for edits. Once I have the entire manuscript finished, then I’ll go back to the beginning and work on editing.

I’m feeling pretty good about this new process. it allows me to edit what I write as I go, but still allows me to see progress, by forcing me to continue instead of hover over a chapter too long. I think everyone needs to find what works for them. And as we’re all different, what works for one won’t for another.

I’ll let you know next week how the ‘3 pages per day’ process goes for me. It sounds very reasonable, so I’m looking forward to it.