The way to know life is to love many things ~ Van Gogh
If I may paraphrase ~ The way to
know a work in progress is to write many things.
Composing, revising, polishing,
proofing. The road from initial story idea to completed manuscript is not only
lengthy, but fraught with false starts, detours and any number of potholes to jar body and soul combined.
Those chapters constructed with
such care and strict adherence to the concepts of goal, motivation and conflict that have to be
ditched because they just don’t move the story forward. That complicated, epic
length manuscript, that was supposed to have been a simple short story. Or vice
versa.
I know a little something about
the latter. Not too long ago, I whittled a 70 thousand word novel that didn’t
sell down to a 40 thousand word that did. Humbling? You bet. But, surprisingly,
not all that difficult to accomplish.
For those of you who are writers,
which facet of writing do you find harder to do? To write an original draft,
tell the story you want to tell – no holds barred. Or to go back through and
rewrite that draft until it’s, well, polished to perfection?
As far as I’m concerned, the
rewrites are far more daunting than the actual writing. In the rewrite phase
there are rules to be followed, guidelines to adhere to. Being in the throes of
a minor overhaul of a once completed (or so I thought) novel may have
something to do with my current choice.
The, what I have come to refer to
as my WIP Repeat, was originally rejected by an editor who, before this, had
accepted everything I offered her. Among the reasons for her no thanks: Not
enough conflict, bad guy who wasn’t bad enough, and the ever present—in my
writing at least—too much flowery language.
After recovering from any
author’s reaction to rejection unbelievable shock followed by near crippling
disappointment, I got to work on the suggested rewrites.
In my opinion, there’s a lot of
good material in the original I’m trying to preserve and weave into revised
story arcs. Except, I’m haunted by some rewrite advice from a workshop I took
long ago. "If you have a line you simply
love and can’t do without, cut it, get it out of there. You’ll be better off in
the long run."
I think I’m learning the hard way
how true that statement is. Yet I’m confident, eventually this manuscript will
all come together. Much of it already has. I will get there with a submission
worthy work. Until then . . . let’s just say I sure am ready to have this WIP
Repeat behind me.
Then, as I begin that inevitable
next one, I am so looking forward to having that good old blank page in front
of me once again. Because we all know that next one is really the best. The one
that isn’t even started yet. The one still happily floating out there somewhere
with the rest of our still to be fulfilled dreams.
The one of many things—writing wise—we
truly, dearly love.
My days to blog here are the 11th
and 23rd. For more about me and my writing, please check out my
website
