revising – Page 12 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Some thoughts

This is going to be real quick, since it’s 1:30 am and General Conference is tomorrow. The revision is going along really well for Genesis Earth–I am really excited about this project. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to dedicate to it. As it is, I’m probably putting too much time into it already. But it’s worth it–it makes me happy, and I feel I’m telling a story worth hearing.

Yesterday was also the awards banquet for the English department. It was a very positive experience. I saw a few familiar faces–Chris from my English 318 reading group last year, and slipperyjim from Quark.

The main address and proceedings in general were very interesting. There was a lot of talk about the value of literature, its importance in our society, but more than that, the importance to write good literature. By that, I don’t mean the kind of stuff that has the stamp of approval of some elite clique of stuck up literary types somewhere–by that, I mean literature that has purpose and meaning, that shows us something worth living for, not merely pointing out the absurdities of our modern world. There are plenty of absurdities and paradoxes and stupid little meaningless things, but where does it really get us to be pointing those out all the time?

I came away from the conference with something really valuable: a heightened awareness of all the things that made me want to write Bringing Estella Home, the novel I’ve been working on this semester.

Bringing Estella Home is very tragic, a little dystopian, and has a lot of unrealized hopes–a lot of shattered lives. It’s essentially a tragedy, and I’ve found that I don’t particularly enjoy writing tragedies. When you’ve worked on one for a few months, it tends to grate on you–all of these suffering characters, and you with the knowledge that it’s only going to get worse. Not very feel-good.

But that’s not the thing that made me want to write this book. There were two things that I wanted to get across, two major ideas: sacrifice and loyalty. If that makes any sense. I guess it won’t, unless you read the finished book, but I wanted to show how people struggling to do the right thing in a world turned upside down could find meaning and depth in their suffering, in their trials. Suffering comes and goes, but it shapes you in ways that last forever, and I wanted to show good people becoming better through their suffering. I guess that’s the best way to put it.

I think I’d lost sight of that recently. This novel needs a lot of major changes to it, especially in the middle section, which I was just wrapping up when I put it on hold. But with a clearer idea of the overarching goal of the story–what deeper meaningfulness I’m trying to get across–I think I’ll be able to pick it up again and give it a strong finish. That’s good.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write another tragedy again. This one has been quite a ride. However, I shouldn’t just throw it out and run away from it–I really need to listen to this story and tell it like it needs to be told. I guess that’s the ultimate motivation, or should be. I don’t just sit down and write because it’s what I do, I do it because it is something meaningful, something that can help others see the world in a new, better way, and obtain those truths that will really bless their lives.

Revision is underway

Well, I started working on Genesis Earth 2.0 over the weekend. I’ve got to say, I’m really excited about it!

I’ve gotten a lot of really useful response from my alpha readers and I’ve compiled a master draft with everyone’s comments on it. I’m reading that now, keeping a list of revisions that I need to make, chapter by chapter, and using that as I rewrite this book. I’m not usually much for organization, but I really like the way this is set up–opening up that massive document and seeing all those comments across the pages. It’s really cool!

Of course, I’m not responding to every comment. When you have all the comments side by side in the same document, you can see where everyone disagreed as well as agreed. There are comments saying “I really didn’t like how you did such and such” right next to comments that say “I love this section and how it did such and such.” Where everyone had the same negative response, I’ll see that as a problem that I need to fix, but for everything else it comes down to my own judgment call. That’s how I’m doing things.

I rewrote the first chapter the other day, and I’m really satisfied with it. It feels really good when you can take something that has problems and fix them, make it better. That’s why I actually love the revising process.

Oh, and check out the REALLY awesome widget on the sidebar! It’s something that Drek wrote for me on the fly today. He’s really awesome–he wrote the speedometer widget that was up there before. I must admit, it was much more fun playing around with that widget and setting it up than doing my homework. And don’t worry–I repented for downloading and temporarily installing an ftp client on the public computers to upload the files to my server. Twice.

This sucks and I’m a horrible writer

It’s getting really, really hard for me not to believe that statement, especially as I finish up with the middle part of this novel. I’m starting to realize that I made a whole bunch of mistakes pages and pages ago, and that the climaxes just aren’t working without everything set up right.

I know, cognitively, that it’s mostly just psychological and that this book probably isn’t as bad as I think it is, but I’m finding it hard to convince myself of that. I got to the climax of part II yesterday, and it was…not what I’d had in my head. That’s probably what’s frustrating me the most. If I can’t write down the story as I have it in my head, what does that mean? It either means I’m a terrible writer, or that I didn’t get the setup right (or both…gah!).

So…where do I go from here? Throwing out the entire story isn’t an option–I’m not going to allow myself to do that. I could, however, put it on the back burner for a while, let it simmer…or I could do or die and finish the 1.0 draft, no matter how crappy it turns out. I suppose that would accomplish something for my self esteem, but is that the way to best serve the story?

Fortunately, this past week we talked about revision in English 318. Listening to my recording of the class gave me a few ideas. I could make a list of known problems, with their fixes, and continue as if I’d already made them. I think I did that a few times with The Phoenix of Nova Terra, but I don’t know how I feel about that now. I could probably make it work…

The main issue is that I feel very, very distant from this book. A month ago, I was immersed in the thing, writing over a thousand words each day, just chugging it out. Now, for various reasons, other things have come up and drawn away my attention, so I don’t feel that I’m really in this world anymore. I feel like I’m more of an outsider, writing for the sake of writing rather than trying to tell this story the way it wants to be told. I can’t really remember what I wrote a hundred pages ago, despite that big sheet of butcher paper up in my closet.

Another thing that complicates all of this is that I’m really, really excited about the other novel, Genesis Earth. I’ve gotten back comments from most of my alpha readers, and I’m all but chomping at the bit to start working on it again. If I had nothing else going on, no pressing obligations or assignments, with the enthusiasm I have for this project I could probably finish the second draft in a week, and the third draft the week after that.

So…what’s next?

Well, I think I’m going to start the revision on Genesis Earth today or tomorrow. When I was this enthused about revising Pheonix, I decided to wait and finish Genesis Earth instead, and the enthusiasm for that project died down surprisingly fast. Better to start now than wait until I’ve got the free time but struggle with motivation.

In the meantime, I’m going to finish the current chapter of Bringing Estella Home and let it rest for a bit. I’ll probably reread what I’ve got from the beginning, make a few revision notes, perhaps an outline of sorts–try to figure out what’s wrong, what I need to change to make it work. I’ll restrain myself from actually making those revisions (though I did that, mid-draft, for Genesis Earth, and it turned out alright…sort of), but once I feel I’m sufficiently “into” the story again, I’ll get back to work and finish the 1.0 draft. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do all that before the end of May.

The trouble here is that I’ll probably end up writing the first draft of this novel and revising the other one at the same time…something I tried last September and failed miserably. However, by the time all of this is finished, inshallah school will be over and I won’t have to worry about it. Things are looking really good for me to get an internship in NYC, which makes me think I should drop my Spring classes and just take it easy for a month before I start (as for housing, that’s a whole other conundrum…).

Gah! Writing is complicated. Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life? Something I can do? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just have to keep on writing through this depressing pessimism and trust that it will pass.

As a side note, I took the title of this post from a Writing Excuses episode some time ago; here is the link to that episode, in case you want to hear it.

Slow but steady

Okay, quick post before I go to bed.

Things are progressing in this novel, slowly but surely, as you can see from the wordcount. Unlike past weeks, I’m not pushing myself too hard, mostly because I’ve got a lot of schoolwork right now and if I were to spend much more time on this novel, I would neglect a lot of the more important stuff. Even though my course load is relatively light this semester, I’m a senior and I’m really not as motivated to do this stuff as I used to be. I get done what needs to get done, but just barely.

I have been successfully getting up early, however. And I’ve discovered something very interesting: I’m more productive when I have less free time. Thursday, I didn’t have class until noon, so when I got on the computer at about 6:30 to write, I opened up the email, opened up facebook…and, by the time I had to leave for class, I had only written about 430 words. Disgusting. But today, when I had class at 9:00 am and still had my Arabic homework to do, I got in about 700 words in half an hour.

I still have a lot of self discipline to learn, I guess. 😛 The scary thing is that my idea, up to this point, has been to keep my time open in the summer so that I’ll be able to write. Err…yeah. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve been getting a lot of comments back from my alpha readers on Genesis Earth, and it’s been REALLY fun! Even the criticism–as long as it’s helpful criticism, I really appreciate it. This one girl in my ward asked me if she could be an alpha reader, then read the whole thing in only a couple of days. She had a LOT of positive comments–in fact, almost all of her comments were positive–and she said she really loved it! So much so, in fact, that she said she was having withdrawals, so I sent her The Phoenix of Nova Terra v1.2. Hopefully, getting her comments back will give me motivation to pick up that old thing and rework it…goodness knows it needs it. Needs it bad.

My first two novels, The Phoenix of Nova Terra and Genesis Earth are completely different in some ways, but very similar in others.

<spoiler alert>

They both have an important romantic element, and they both have generally positive endings. The book I’m writing now is something of a tragedy, at least at it’s core, and there is a completely different dynamic there. No love stories, no happy resolutions–lots of pain, lots of violence, lots of grappling with difficult issues.

</spoiler alert>

I suppose it’s good to try out a lot of different things early on in your writing career. That’s what I’m doing. At the same time, though…I get feedback on the one novel, and I kind of want to work on it instead of the one right in front of me! And when I think about what I did right in the one I finished, I look at the one I’m currently writing and I think “man, this is crap.” Of course, I keep working on it because I recognize that I ALWAYS think “man, this is crap” at some point before I’m done. Knowing that doesn’t make it easier, however.

Jason from the FLSR writing group said something interesting about that, however. He said that writing a draft of a novel is like climbing a mountain: you do it three times.

The first time, you climb it in your mind as you plan it out. You’re excited and motivated, and busy with all the preparations.

The second time, you actually physically do the work of climbing. It is long, hard, and frustrating, you get lost a few times, the summit is anticlimactic, and the return is boring. You can’t wait until you’ve finished and it’s all over.

The third time is when you look back on the experience after you’re safely back down. No matter how excruciating the climb was, you look back on it fondly and remember all the best parts. You thrive on the memories and wish that you were back up there, standing on the summit, enjoying the experience.

Right now, I’m on my third climb for Genesis Earth and my second climb for Bringing Estella Home. I can remember how miserable I was when I was still in the middle of Genesis Earth–for a while I seriously thought about throwing the whole thing out and doing something else. However, now that I’ve been letting it sit for a while, I’m getting really, really excited about it! I can hardly wait before I can get back and write the second draft.

But that’s not going to happen until I finish Bringing Estella Home. And, no matter how difficult it gets, I swear I WILL finish this book! I’m a chapter away from act III, and that’s too deep into the thing to quit and start something else! This book WILL be finished–if not by April, then by sometime in May!