Cindy Asks… (Meljean has an actual post about writing.)
In the previous post about the Demon Bound galleys, Cindy asked,
Question – how many times have you read this book by now? I just wonder if there is a time when you get so sick of reading it over and over again. I’m just thinking of my university days when I wrote all those massive essays and would finally just say ‘fuck it! I’m done!’ Guess that wouldn’t be good business for you though.
I don’t know the number of times, but I do know I’ve read the beginning many, many more times than I have the end.
When I start a book, I start at the beginning. That seems really obvious, but I know a lot of writers start with a scene, then back up and write the opening, then jump to another scene, and so on. I can’t do that. In revisions, I can go back and insert a scene out of order, but when writing the first version? Nope. I just can’t. I write from the opening sentence to THE END, then go back and fix anything I’ve left out.
And so, when I’m starting the book, each time I open the manuscript — and until I’ve completed the first act — I pretty much re-read the entire opening up the point of the current page before I continue setting any more words down. Some of this is because it IS a new story, I’m still familiarizing myself with the characters and the rhythm of their speech and voice, and establishing the little things that make the characters themselves. So I’ll edit those opening chapters each time, according to things that I’ve added and discovered about them in later chapters, in order to strengthen their voice and character.
But let me add: this is a retarded way of writing. It’s SLOW. It’s slow as hell. If I’m fifty pages into a manuscript, that means I’m spending at least an hour re-reading every single day. My manuscript is really clean (line-edited unto death) by that point, but I’m slow slow slow.
Once I hit the second act, though, I won’t re-read the first act as much. I might re-read the pages directly preceding what I’m working on that day so that I fall into the rhythm of the scene, but I won’t re-read such a huge chunk.
There are times, though, when I will go back and re-read it all again. This is usually when I’m stuck and can’t get any words out, or I’ve got a bad feeling about where I’m going or something that a character has done. That ‘writer’s block’, for me, usually means that something in the story has gone wrong. So I’ll go back and re-read, and try to figure out where I fucked up. It’s not always an action; sometimes it’s just a tone. And usually, I’ll hit a line in the manuscript that will make me go, “OMG! I forgot about this — this is the way I need to go, because I already set it up here!” Then I’ll get back on track.
That block can happen more than once in my manuscript, but inevitably I have one toward the middle/end of the third act. I haven’t yet had a book where I don’t stall at the end of the middle. It might be just writer nerves, forcing me to go back and make sure that, as I begin to wrap up all my plot threads, I actually have remembered every thread that I need to wrap up. Or it might be because my middles are typically a little looser and more saggy than the rest of the book that I’m feeling like I’m just writing shit at that point, so I have to go back and catch the entire rhythm of the novel again.
Again, this is slow. Slow slow slow. One thing that I’ve forced myself to do (I started this in Demon Bound) is to open up a separate file for each chapter (starting with the second act, because I still can’t stop myself from re-reading the opening until my eyes fall out) and I don’t let myself open the other chapters until I’ve got a couple of them to paste into the big manuscript file. So I might re-read the current chapter to death, but I CAN’T go back and re-read other scenes. I’ll be doing the same with the WIP, in hopes that my writing speed will increase.
I don’t really get sick of the story/the scenes, especially once they’re finished. (Writing it is completely different; there are days when I’d rather poke my eyes out than attempt another word of the massive FAIL that is my manuscript.) Also, if I find myself getting bored when I’m reading, there’s something wrong. I should be just as engaged the sixtieth time reading it as I am the first. That doesn’t mean that I read it the *same* way — I might focus on a different aspect of it by the sixtieth reading, such as the pacing of the sentences rather than the diction, or layering in bits of the character’s history — but if my eyes are glazing over (and it’s not 4 am) that means I’ve failed.
What it comes down to is that these are my characters and this is my story. I know them and love them better than anyone else possibly could … and if I’m sick of them, how can I expect my reader to stay engaged? So if I hit a section that bores me, it has to go (or be re-written until it doesn’t suck).
Still, how many times now? Does your hubby ever read your work and help with editing or would you kill him (cause I about killed my hubby when he suggested I used a word too many times – hey, I only want to hear I’m perfect from you buddy!)
My husband has never read more than a sentence or two of my work without me rushing in and yelling, “Noooooooooo!” As for how many times … I’m really not sure. The beginning scenes, a whole hell of a lot — maybe up to a hundred or a hundred and fifty times. The ending scenes, maybe twenty to twenty five. (But that also has a lot to do with desperation. As my deadline approaches (or flies by) I simply don’t allow myself the time to re-read.)
“I write from the opening sentence to THE END, then go back and fix anything I’ve left out.”
Same here.
“So I’ll edit those opening chapters each time, according to things that I’ve added and discovered about them in later chapters, in order to strengthen their voice and character.”
You scare me.
“You scare me.”
Heh. I’m trying to stop!
Mostly, it’s little edits. Like changing something generic to fit the character’s voice better. So something like Jake thinking, “This isn’t good.” becomes something more like “Flippin’ hell. He was fucked.”
I would go insane.
I mean, yes, I do go over and read the opening chapters a couple of times because voice slips and I’ll do line edits at that point, but to do a constant reread, that takes balls. I’d never finish that way. But my writing sucks more than yours, so that’s probably why – I’m scared that if I reread long enough, I’ll drown in a puddle of self-hatred.
Not balls, but stupidity
I just can’t break the habit, but I think it’s the opposite for me: I start with the puddle of self-hatred. I hate it until I go back and feel like the voice is right. It just eats at me.
Later on, I don’t have to do it because the voice is so familiar at that point, but the beginning … yikes. I think I do run the problem of overwriting it, though — in that it gets bogged down, and I get much more married to the writing than I would if I read it less. After a while, it becomes more difficult for me to envision substantial changes — especially at the beginning — because it’s burned into my brain as is (with small changes made here and there.)
Your writing feels very light to me, which I’d give my right arm to do. Not light as in no complexity, but … not clunky and heavy? You capture what needs to be said in fewer words. Theoretically, my continual editing and paring down should do that …. but it doesn’t, not so much.
continuous? I can never remember the rules for those two.
“Not light as in no complexity, but … not clunky and heavy? You capture what needs to be said in fewer words”
Small brain. I can only contain a few words at the time.
(I’d give my right arm for your complexity. We should be crit partners. You can tell me, “And here you sound like a telegraph…”)
I am about to scrap my 3.5 of start on Kate 4, so I guess we truly are opposite: if it’s not working out and I can’t fix it on the first couple of tries, I cut the whole thing and start over.
The retarded thing is that a lot of times it will be actually similar to the previous draft, but I apparently need that freedom of having completely gotten rid of it before I can rewrite it.
Do you normally just patch and patch it or do you cut it?
Are you asking me? Because I don’t know.
::holds a “Not a Native Speaker” sign::
Of course now I have to go look the difference up.
Continuous = uninterrupted
Continual = also uninterrupted, but also frequently repeated.
So says the dictionary. This dictionary doesn’t always make a hell of a lot of sense.:boggle:
“Do you normally just patch and patch it or do you cut it?”
It depends on how bad it is. If it’s totally the wrong direction, I cut it. If there’s something salvageable, like a sentence or a paragraph, then I chop all but that one thing (which usually gets completely rewritten anyway.)
Most of the time, I’ll try to patch, because I find it easier to edit what I have into something I like. And that’s on a scene by scene/paragraph by paragraph basis — once I’ve got the scene down, I move on. But the scene/paragraph itself, I’ll work and chop and patch until I like it and feel comfortable moving on.
Ah! one thing I also have is a rough, rough notebook outline of what I want to happen or how a conversation goes, and I work from that as I do the real writing. That’s where a lot of the cutting is done — I’ll have a note to myself with something like, “the nosferatu were smart enough to hide the human bodies” (which is a signal to me that I need to explain how the nosferatu hide from Guardians most of the time) … but then when I get there, I realize that information really doesn’t matter.
I do end up rearranging conversations and the flow of information from notebook to computer, and having stuff pop up that I didn’t plan on, but that is mostly just the rough scene work. But it gives me a checklist of sorts, so that when I finish the scene, I know if I’m accomplished what I wanted to there — so that means less cutting later. Now and then, I’ll cut out the end of a scene when I realize I lingered in it too long.
I have been trying to change this all, somewhat. This WIP, I’ve written a really, really rough draft from the outline, then I go back after every three chapters are done and clean it up. It meant less tiny, nitpicky edits because I was essentially rewriting each part of the rough draft … I’m not sure though if it is overall faster yet.
Now I remember why I never remember which is which.
So I guess it’s like waking up at 6am to the continuous drone of a motor, and the continual ring of a hammer?
“So I guess it’s like waking up at 6am to the continuous drone of a motor, and the continual ring of a hammer?”
Your words are full of mechano-wisdom.
::is impressed::
w00t!
I will forget that by 5 o’clock, but now I will have this convo to come back to when I need the definitions again
Do you read some chapters out loud and act the scenes out? I sometimes do that when I write.
Does that sound silly? I blame it on my theater background.
OMG! We write the same way. I’m even worse in that I edit from the first page every single day until I hit the halfway point. Then in the second half of the book, I go back to that first page in the second half each day and work to the end. It’s ridiculous and takes forever.
I’m just happy to know I’m not the only insane one…
Heh. Next time I get chewed out for my inefficiency, my response will be: “Meljean and HelenKay do it, and it seems to be working for them, so nyeh!”
Wow! Thanks for answering. I think I actually write the same way in that I tend to re-read/edit the earlier parts more than the last. Thing is I would get frustrated with myself because like you say, it’s slow and by the end I just wanted it to be all over.
Course when I’m writing anything besides a comment or blog I write long hand first (Does this still mean the same thing? I mean I hand write – typing and thinking at the same time are too much for me). Talk about clunky!
And I think it’s super cool that you can do all that and still have time for a life
I am just sitting here totally fascinated by this insight into the writing process. I could never do it.
I’m the complete opposite of you, Meljean. I start writing, and I never go back and reread until I’m done with the first draft. Then, I’ll re-read the whole thing and mark it up like there’s no tomorrow with my Sharpie. Re-reading the whole thing at one time gives me a better sense of whether or not the whole enchilada hangs together.
Then, I go back through and work on the second draft. Then, I’ll re-read that one when it’s done. And so on and so forth.
By the time the page proofs roll around, I’m thoroughly sick of reading the same book, even if it is mine. Then again, I’ll stumble across a really cool sentence I’d forgotten and think, “That’s not half bad …” Which makes it all worthwhile, in the end.
Wow I think it’s amazing that you re-read the first part of your ms 100-150 times! Incredible. But your writing is sooo very good obviously you’re doing something right!
Oh, man. It’s like reading about myself. I think we need a support group, or something.