Very quickly in the comment thread from yesterday’s post on revisions, Rick Daley raised an interesting revision checklist question: “Can you sit back and read through it without a compulsive need to continue changing it?”
This got me to thinking: when do you know you’re finished with revisions?
When a writer is faced with a possibly infinite task, when do you close the computer and say, “I’m done?” And do you have any strategies for resisting a premature declaration of completion?
Revision is my favorite part of the process. It's where the vague idea in my mind, the one I've rambled around and through for far too many words, finally starts to take shape as a real entity, with interest and focus. I start to understand what the story is about. I start to get rid of junk. Then I can see where I have extra characters, where subplots can be eliminated or combined, where I've left out critical scenes.
And then I can start to work on whether I've said it well.
And then — well, I guess I'll be one of those writers trying to make changes to the galleys as they're being taken to the printer, though I think I'll be able to resist the temptation to write corrections in the bookstore copies 😀
I work on something till I shout, "I've had all I can stands and I can't stands no more!" Then I write a query letter and send it off. 🙂
Since I just mailed out a full manuscript this is a timely topic for me. You can edit a manuscript to death until you suck all the life from it.
I think there's a point where YOU KNOW you've done the BEST you can — the finished point. So you take a leap and send it out. Otherwise nothing would ever reach the outside world, right? (I always have another set of eyes on the ms before shipping out.)
MARIAN
I have a set critiquing procedure, which helps it to be a more objective process for me.
0. (This step is optional, but I do it if I have time and feel like being nice to critiquers.) Skim read it. Remove the most glaring chunks of bad writing and fix inconsistencies.
1. After setting the story aside for at least a month (barring deadlines) and collecting critiques, do a detailed and vicious line-by-line edit. I usually cut 30% of what I've written at this stage.
2. Let it rest a little while and then read it aloud, fixing flow and phrasing and transition problems as you go. Reading aloud tends to shift my mental gears enough to notice things I might have skipped over when reading it quietly. (I have also heard a suggestion to change the font to help this step, and I might try that next time.)
3. Submit. If you are blessed enough to get feedback, reread story and decide if suggested changes are right for the story.
4. Pick a number. After the story's been rejected that many times, repeat steps 2-4.
That's my general submission procedure. Step 1 has become slightly more complicated this time around, as I revise my steampunk novel, Vicesteed. People keep reading chapters and then volunteering to critique the whole thing because they want to read it, but I'm already 3/4 of the way through the heavy revisions, which are where I like to use outside feedback.
I guess it's a good problem to have. Promising.
The answer is that the revisions never really end, but they do trail off significantly!
(And, hmm, I just made a post.)
I know I'm finished with my manuscript when new revisions suck the life out of my story. There is a point when one must say they have made the story as best as it can be.
I've always said, "if Hemingway were alive today he'd still be editing."
I work as a tutor to student and professional writers in a university setting, and I often see writers struggle with this issue.
Obviously, all professional writers should review their work carefully for unintentional surface errors, inconsistencies of language, and the like. Though it may seem tedious, at least this aspect of revision is fairly straightforward, as there is a standard system of rules.
However, revising for content is much different. Because each content revision is subjective, the writer is brought into constant conflict with his or her own judgment. I see writers react to this conflict in two main ways–they either back away after typing the last line or become trapped in a process of perpetual editing.
Those who under-revise or can't start editing seem to fear that it will open a Pandora's box or create some sort of butterfly effect that will require ever more revisions. Those who can't stop editing seem to fear that their work won't represent them well enough unless they make still another change.
I tell writers who don't know where to begin editing that, if their ideas are worth sharing, they are worth revisiting and will withstand a thorough editing process. They need to break their work into parts, like taking apart a machine to see how it works, and have confidence in their ability to put it back together again.
I tell writers who can't stop editing that, if the ideas are worth expressing, readers will connect with and follow them despite the minor flaws which seem magnified to their writer. No written words will ever perfectly represent their author's mind–that's what keeps us writing. Sometimes perfectionistic writers just need to pick up another project to see that they will have other chances to express themselves.
This might seem like a psychology-heavy approach, but I think that people turn to writing because they want to enter that mental territory, and one of the great rewards of writing is that it forces us to confront our own tendencies.
When it gets sent to print. And even then, I'll probably be mad that I didn't add that new bit of conflict I thought of, or that great line of dialogue that came to me yesterday, or took out that sentence to two "was"s and an adverb that I missed.
I'm not sure it will ever be finished. There is always room for improvement.
Hello, all. I'm glad to see that my comment sparked some other thoughtful discussion. Replies to a couple others' comments on my first post:
1) Mira, thanks! As I hinted in my original post, the focused process is essential for me because I'd never get far enough along in the project to have something to revise if I weren't fanatically organized. A short attention span is a huge liability when you're writing anything longer than text messages. So it's a defensive reaction to deal with the downside of the way my mind works.
2) Wanda B. Ontheshelves, I agree completely with your comment about the need to be willing to fail and to experiment. In my process, the experimentation is mostly pushed up to the front — before I sit down to write the plan for a document, I do a lot of stream-of-consciousness scribbling, either in a small Moleskine that's always in my hip pocket (handy on subways, buses, taxis) or on colored index cards (blue for scene/plot, yellow for scene/setting, red for character detail, etc.) then I rearrange, toss, shred, etc. with gay abandon.
I try to front-load experimentation as much as possible, without squashing creativity at any point. It's a software engineering mindset–it costs 10x as much to fix a design flaw in programming as it does in the design phase.
My life has had so many great ideas that I've jumped into with passion and energy but haven't finished that I try to stay focused on the ultimate satisfaction — sharing the end product (whether that be with friends, paying customers, readers, etc).
Edison also said, BTW, "Success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration."
3) Christine H: Agree that experimentation is important, and it's really a lot of fun to come up with the sparkling little snatches of scene, dialog, plot that you want to build the rest of the story around. All I'm trying to do in my process is to be able to find those later on in the process, and to remember how the heck I thought at the time of that inspiration that I was going to hitch a given fragment up to the rest of the story. My big problem is not being able to remember what I was thinking sometimes even 5 minutes ago. I type fast. So if I get more stuff down at the outset, I have a higher "hit rate" of using cool stuff that I brainstorm.
–CapitalistPoet
I revise it until I can reread it with a smile. If you get all crazy and keep cutting at it, it just becomes different, not better. You have to know that at some point enough is enough and lose the neuroses.
What if your novel needs work you cant do? is there a place you can find a co-writer, or something. i have the story all figured out, and a hundred percent finished, but it has a lot of grammar mistakes, and its not the greatest piece of work out there, but the story is amazing, and i want to find soemone to re-write the whole thing, are there people that do that?
if you know email me@ jamajrust@yahoo.com
When it's published and adored by millions of readers and you know you will forever have sucess in the publishing industry. It's not THAT hard to get there you know. =P