I am currently working on revisions

No matter how many times I've tried over the course of the past three decades, I can't actually write new words while fixing old words. I've tried writing new words first, and that works for a day or two at most, but after that my brain is in full revision mode, which his more about hunting down problems and fixing them. I tend to gloss over actual, good words because if they're good, they don't need fixing, and they are therefore not a problem.

In the past three days I have gone over chapter one four times (this would be the Cast novel); there are two major things that I have to do but they're later in the book. On this pass, however, it's always sentence-by-sentence because some of the fixes for the major things are not "fix this scene" or "rewrite this scene so it works"; I was asked to evaluate whether a section was necessary, structurally, and actually, it probably isn't.

So just cut it, right?

If only things were that simple. Yes, I will cut it. But the section did serve a structural purpose and in order to remove it, the element that it carried in the book has to be carried by a different, parallel element, which does already exist, and is the only reason I thought I could do without. So I need to revise around the section I'm keeping to make it clearer and distinct enough to do the structural work that the two combined elements previously did.

I turned this book in at 148k words, after cutting 4k words. But everyone would be happier if the book was actually shorter. I will spare you the long and completely usual Michelle whine about the ability to write to a specified length--but assume it's lurking in the background constantly while I'm revising this book. The editor is looking at elements that might not be structurally necessary, having read the book (at least) twice. She reads once as a reader, and then takes those impressions back to the beginning of the book where she then assesses the book as a whole.

We generally discuss things over the phone/zoom, and during that discussion I said: I hate revision. It's my least favorite part of writing. She asked if it was because of my attachment to my words (which, of course, is there) and I said, no. It's because if I'd gotten it right the first time I wouldn't have to spend so much time fixing things. Revisions make me feel incompetent and stupid. The joy of possibly getting things right is not strong enough to overcome the certainty that if I were better at this, I wouldn't need to do it.

This is probably the real reason I can't write new/first draft words while revising old words. I start out feeling incompetent; I feel grateful for the chance to fix as much primary incompetence as possible, but as the book wears on, I become certain that I've missed something that everyone will then notice, which ... feeds into the sense that I'm not competent, which basically means every New Word I try to write is written under the cloud of self-doubt and fear of incompetence, which... stops me in my tracks.

So I then set new words aside because I'm not getting many of them anyway, and try to revise and fix things quickly. Or a variant of quickly, but if it were actually quick, I would not have gone over chapter one four times.

This book is actually mostly fine, and I know what fixes need to be made. But, well. Whining >.>

***

This post is mirrored from https://michellewest.ca/

I find it hard to have a conversation on Patreon, and have created a WordPress Patreon only blog to make it easier for me to find new comments and respond to them, sometimes at length.

This post is https://michellewest.ca/2022/06/04/i-am-currently-working-on-revisions/; you should be able to hit Login with Patreon, and should be able to read posts there at the same levels you can read them here.

I'll answer comments here as well if this is your preferred format, but probably not as expansively (which might be a good thing!).