Revision and Rewriting the WIP

 

Katerina Sokova

Writing is hard work. It's also emotionally challenging at times. Some days are sheer joy and others are torture. Some days I cannot work at all and I feel hollow that all I can really do on those days is think about all the work ahead of me. Occasionally I read over material or make notes, look at pages I will revise or pages I will throw away. There are lots of pages to rewrite. Same story. But a different kind of beginning and a different MMC. Much of this is due to all the changes I made from last summer's idea of the story and what I envisioned when I actually began drafting in NaNo, which for me, was November and December of 2023. I wrote new pages in January, but the last two months have been dedicated to plotting the book in detail. I know, from experience, this is how agents and editors sometimes work. They outline the plot. Then look at it. They ask the important questions. I felt I needed this step right now or I would have regrets later and maybe a manuscript I did not like. There are moments when you have to seriously regard more than just your instincts or loves, but what a reader is going to see on the page and how the words will affect the reader. I also began to look at scenes that I felt needed a rewrite, in other words, I had the story on the page, I had the emotional life of it, but it needed new words. Many of my darlings died during this process. Nothing is more challenging than deciding what to throw away. I could have fixed some things with revisions, but it occurred to me that this was fixing something I should not keep. I sank under these realizations. Fortunately, I know many working writers and one of my friends told me she had cut 40,000 words from her manuscript. I am guessing (I have not counted) that I am throwing away at least 125 pages. Brutal. Part of this was due to the fact that I changed MMC in December instead of middle of November when I suspected I needed that change. Good natured people will caution you over and over not to make these changes but finish a draft. I knew not to take this advice but I kept writing and as the story developed, soon realized I had erred and should have relied on my personal experience. Do not take advice from people who are not really qualified to give that advice, no matter how well intentioned or how smart. For me, that's people who have not written or sold as many novels as I have. But occasionally writers feel great doubts, fear change, and make mistakes. 

And so I am dealing with losing much of the first part of the book. I decided to blog this, instead of just my writing notebook for several reasons. I wanted it out there, my mistakes, my feelings, so I could look at it and remind myself that I will never ever write another book without a very detailed plot, without thought on the deeper levels of emotional impact. I will deep dive. I am not one of those people who can just sit down and write by the seat of my pants. I end up changing too much. I've known this. This is not my first time facing this predicament, but it will be my last. As I was looking at plot the last two months, at story, at how to tell scenes better, I realized what I was doing, (learning) and I made a new way to plot. Not only what happens, but the emotional level and which scenes might need special attention. I could see those scenes. In some ways, this entire project has been a learning experience for me. I am writing outside my comfort zone, am writing outside my former genre, am writing outside the way in which I worked a narrative. I am trying new things, new ways of approaching a narrative, even new ways to show emotional impact in a simple, ordinary scene. Of course, no matter how much we plan, changes will appear. I am not afraid of those changes. I am afraid of fundamental structural change. That's the front of my book. Yes, I am smiling. At least I know it. I am aware I need it. That's a plus for me at this time.

There is much good in all of this. I feel satisfied with the overall vision and work. I feel especially good about the characters, which are some of the best I have ever written. Developing this plot has been challenging. I do write big stories with lots of plot. I remember reading Uprooted by Naomi Novik and smiling at how much plot she had in that book. I remember thinking what I learned from reading that book several times, how I needed more space for the characters to move but also mirroring all the action and story. Good books always inspire me. I love reading. Reading teaches me. Writers should read like editors all the time. I am smiling again. One thing that really helped me was a reader who analyzed some novels that had both fantasy and romances in them. She made this incredible chart to show how four books overlapped and how they were different. I realized that my book was definitely fantasy plotted with romance vibes. It was not romance plotted with fantasy vibes. I could see the difference. Other changes I realized was that my book could never be truly YA and that is how I saw it in the beginning. I had to age the characters accordingly and look at books like The Night Circus. All of this, everything, was whirling in my mind as I wrote pages. It was not until January that I saw the whole, and I knew when February came, I had to stop and reimagine what I was really doing.

Perhaps this is how I truly create, part of my new process, how I will work from now on? I don't know. I will prepare more for writing the next time around. I will plot not just action, but scenes and yes, the emotions. I will see character arcs, and yes, perhaps envision how to best tell a story from scene to scene, or from vignette to vignette. I don't ever want to feel that I cannot try new ways to tell a story. I want to write fiction that has a high emotional impact on the reader. I want to be a better writer.

So, I am not only revising, I am rewriting. Bravely.

I am going to do one of these post on the WIP each month until I reach what I call, 'just editing' draft. The sum of this post is admitting to myself that in the middle of a project, I decided to write a very different kind of book than the one I once started.