Polishing rice to a mote

One of the things we went over in class is polishing a manuscript to death.  It seems I've been doing that.  

I should have known.  I know better than to turn my paint into mud, so why in the world would I do the same with words on the page?  Going over a work is fine.  Going back to fix things that need to resonate with things written later, no problem.  But I've been playing with sentences, even individual words, trying to get that perfect lightning/lightning bug thing going.

At least with my process, that may need to happen on the first draft, because work that I turned in that I thought was some of my best work couldn't hold a candle to the stuff I wrote overnight for the class.  And you know what?  That was true for everyone in the class.

Everyone.

Just think of what we could do with a longer deadline so we could really think things through and no rewriting?

I firmly believe that learning to rewrite words on the page is critical--at a certain stage in a writing career.  Those are important skills, at least in my opinion, if for no other reason than it would be good to be able to respond to an editorial request without falling apart.  On the other hand it seems I've gotten past that stage.  My revision skills went from productive to destructive somewhere along the line.  

My classmates shared that trait.  We are Borg.  (We all had similar problems, and we even came up with similar story ideas until K&D started handing us completely different news articles to write from.)

So it's back to Heinlein's Rules for me, and with a confidence I didn't have before.  I've now had complete strangers, over a baker's dozen of them, tell me my writing is better when I don't polish it to death.  I may write a little more slowly and be more considered with those first word choices as a result.  Or not.  I'm not sure what it'll do to my writing speed.  I'll be interested to find out.

In other news, no news about Brian yet.  We'll be going to the humane society again in a bit to see if he's there.  I suspect he isn't.  They called when a dog matching his description came in last time.  They'll probably call again when another comes in.  But we'll look just the same.  Maybe they haven't had time to give us a ring and he'll be there, fanning his tail and looking very apologetic.  

That would be incredibly wonderful.

From Hand to Fingertips

I finished a flash fantasy today.  Well, as finished as a polished first draft gets, anyway, before I'm done with it and send it off to various critique groups.  When I hand wrote it it came in too short, around 180 words or so.  Mulling over it for a couple of days helped deepen the idea so that by the time I sat down to transcribe it, it grew by a lot.  It sits at about 900 words at the moment.  

This is reverse of how I normally write in almost every sense.  I'll sit at the computer with an idea and type on it.  The prose is lush--too lush--way too many adjectives, long sentences trying to do too much, characters examining every detail of their cognitive process between fight scenes where every drop of blood is displayed in super-saturated colors.  When I reach the end I'll think about it and then play with it the next day or next week, editing on screen.  Then, when I foolishly believe I'm happy with it, I print it out and go sit in Not the Office space.  There I usually find several flaws, all kinds of grammatical silliness, extra pronouns and quite a few adjectives that escaped me on the first cull.  I type the hand-written changes in, and presto.  The focus is rarely on additions.  I cut cut cut until my little cutters won't cut no more.

Writing long hand into a notebook I wrote sparsely.  Very sparse.  I think it was due to having to write slow because I handwrite so much more slowly than I can type, which also gave me extra time to think.  The extra time wasn't well spent.  A whole bunch of stuff happened in my head that simply didn't make it onto the page.  So when I transcribed it I had to put flesh on the poor old bones, and on the final (semi-final anyway) pass I put skin on the flesh.  Tada!

I think I ended up in the same spot, but I can't tell these things.  Maybe my critique group will tell me all about it.  Honestly I'd rather hear them say that I didn't achieve my normal quality than 'it's the best thing you've written ever!'  Why?  Because I can type a lot longer than I can handwrite.  Hand cramp from hell ...

Word Choice

When I created my Wordle, I had a revelation about word choice.  When I started out putting it together I opened the first chapter in Masks determined to just pull out the articles, weak verbs, conjunctions, all pronouns except pertinent personal pronouns, and so on.  I didn't bargain on gaining a lot of insight into my word choices.  I'd always known that I used too many adjectives, and I'm developing the skills to help weed them out, but as far as actual word selections I never realized how much potential (and freedom) there was in choice.  Not just picking the exact right word for the situation.  I'm talking about the ability to fold word choices back into a theme or atmosphere or both at once.  The Wordle laid those choices bare and I went through (after I'd sent the book to Lucky Labs for review, of course, because I couldn't have been so lucky as to find this out before I sent it out) the first chapter again with a sharper eye.  It was a lot of fun.  I'd go through the rest of the novel, but I'm busy with other projects at the moment.  It's not a lesson I'll soon forget, though.  Yay, I have a whole new tool!

Also, I'm starting a new blog tradition (for me.)  I don't think I'll ever go into reviews.  I'm too critical and not particularly eager to have my opinions known to the wide world.  But I'm comfortable with rating books on a general scale.

What I'm reading:  Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah Ross

Quality:  Very high

My quality ratings:  Struggling, Emerging, Average, High, Very High

Cleaning

There's something exhilarating, a definite sense of freedom, when I clean house.  The daily drudge work (with the exception of vacuuming--I've always liked vacuuming) I could do without, or at least have less laundry and dishes.  But I actually enjoy getting places cleared out, making things shine.  Today I cleaned out the woodstove.  The glass is all sparkly and the ashes are swept out.  I also swept the stairs (they're carpet but I find sweeping is faster and actually does a better job than vacuuming most of the time) and cleared out part of my office in preparation for tiling.  

Yep, I'm getting back to tiling my office.  

If I could get this same sense of cleaning out and freedom and exhilaration when I edit a story, that would be so fabulous.  Unfortunately I end up pinched between Charybdis (that sinking feeling that I'm making things worse, not better) and The Scylla (getting frustrated with the many layers involved in editing and the fact that it's both a big scope (plot) and small scope (line editing) problem that requires many passes.)  I get exhausted by the immensity of the task.  

Typing at normal pace I can write a first draft in three months.  I can write a Nano in a month, also.  But regardless of how quickly I write that first draft, it takes years to edit it.  That's normal.  A book should take years to put together.  A very skilled writer can write a passable book in six months or less.  Yes, I include romance writers in this category.  There's no doubt in my mind that they're skilled, talented and prolific writers, all traits I admire, and I won't hear a thing said against them.  However, if you gave a romance writer 2-3 years to write a book, you'd end up with a real masterwork.  Someone like me who isn't as skilled at editing would have garbage at the end of six months.  After 2-3 years, I have something passable, or maybe even pretty good.  The time frame, though, really wears me down.  It's not so much the hours.  I love to write, and I even like to edit at times.  It's the number of times going through the manuscript.  

Sometimes I get lucky and I don't have major plot issues on a first draft.  Yay me, because that saves a great deal of headache in the long run.  Unfortunately, more often than not there are plot and structure issues, character issues, and other major stuff that has to be addressed.  By the time that's sorted out, the line editing is a mess, flow is an issue and often there are stylistic issues as I struggle to find character voices, the feel of the setting and other things.  The trick is to make as few passes as possible so that the writing still has freshness and fire.  Each time a writer goes through the document they improve things, but they also polish off some of the good stuff.  It's like a grain of rice.  You start out with this rough, richly-colored grain that's typically too coarse to enjoy (at least in quantity.)  If you polish off some of that coating you get something more palatable, but you also lose nutrients and that wonderful color.  Flavor is also lost.  Polish too much and you end up with short grain white rice--incredibly bland but fully digestible, and also constipating.  Heh.

Like everything else it's a balancing act.  As I improve my editing skills I'm sure it won't be such a chore, but for now, editing is the endless laundry and dishes of the writing world.

Masks opening

After receiving a rejection from the wonderful Nelson Literary Agency, I've decided that it would be a good idea to solicit some opinions about my opening.  Anyone dropping by is of course very welcome to comment.  I'm especially hoping to see some opinions from folks who haven't read further into the novel, although comments from INKers and anyone else who's read Masks would be great as always, because I have no perspective left.  Readers who haven't read anything prior of Masks are particularly valuable to me right now because they're in the same emotional space (or pretty close) as agents and editors who are looking at my partials.  

The contest had us submit the first 500 words, but I think I have less time than that to capture someone's imagination.  I decided to go with the cleanest break near 250 words and ended up with about 280.

Here it is:

Mark stared at the robin egg blue ceiling while lying in Lord Argenwain's bed.  He checked the ancient clock that tocked at the far wall in the golden master bedroom.  Almost three in the afternoon.  He had to be at his history lesson soon.  His tongue felt furry and an unpleasant pressure thickened around his mouth and eyes.  Thirst tightened his throat.  He didn’t want to be here, but he didn’t want to leave either.  Bainswell might be bored, or in a mood, or waiting.

The old man stopped snoring.  His fish-like mouth with its stained, long teeth gaped open.  Mark caressed Argenwain's papery skin, concerned.  Still warm.  He held his hand near the old man’s mouth.  Warm, moist breath.  Relief eased through him and he sat up.  Mark worked his hands through his hair.

If the old man died he’d grieve, but it would be a complicated sort of grief.  He didn’t want to think about that, or anything complicated at the moment.

Mark forced himself out from under the covers and padded across the fur carpet into the cobalt tile bathroom, his feet curling from the chill.  Wheat-colored lengths of hair curtained his face as he bent to wash his face in tepid, jasmine-scented water in a marble sink.  He settled his bare bottom on a mahogany chair, grabbed a comb from the vanity, and combed his hair out with his head bowed.  Tension burned in his belly while resignation bowed his spine.  Maybe it just seemed like he’d had one bad day after another because he was exhausted, but a superstitious part of him wondered if a morbai watched from the spirit world, waiting to satisfy its malice.  

As an aside, I hopped over to LitLotRS and found that my good friend had posted a great poem.  Check it out.