Of Ovens, Writers, and Perseverance

Now that I've recovered from my most recent mini-disaster I've managed to work my way through the remaining 30k of the novel and returned it to the hands of my editor/copyeditor for further butchery in hopes that she will tell me how to carve delicious steaks from its carcass.

The best thing to do instead of nervously biting finger and toenails to the quick while I await the next round of edits, I turned back to some incomplete drafts in hopes that work on them would clarify the issues that impeded their completion.

I pulled one draft out of the pie-oven* to see how it had turned out from the perspective of a few weeks and with my recent near-death editing/rewriting experience, behind me.  The draft on this read was barely acceptable and contained more errors and misplaced emphasis than I'd realized.  The rewrite was extensive with as many words deleted as changed.  In the end I had a decent draft that I thought I could present to my (mostly) short story writers' group without embarrassment.

Although I did not identify members of the group as my target audience, they listened respectfully and then provided a barrage of insightful comments that revealed where more work was needed.  Some even suggested changes that might amplify and improve the story's message.  This process also revealed that three other writers in the group WERE in my target demographic after all. This shows  how naive I was to think what they wrote was what they liked to read.

The story, after a day's work of patching, shifting, adjusting, and rewriting to fix the problems identified, a much improved story is back in the oven where it will sit for another few weeks before my next read-through.   Hopefully** that next read will convince me to finally send it out for acceptance.

*I learned the pie oven technique

 from Michael Swanwick.

**As ever

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Abrupt Deletion, Frustration, and Recovery

Forget what I said last week about the joys of editing. In an attempt to clarify a few points in my latest novel revision I spent an entire day writing about 2,000 words of new material when, to my dismay, I accidentally erased not only the freshly minted words, but the outline for the remaining changes I hadn't yet made.  In desperation I tried every trick I knew to recover the work but, thanks to my normally safe setting for auto backup, all I was doing was overwriting the draft deeper every 30 seconds!

I cursed with every word I knew and, being a writer, probably crafted a few new combinations, swore I'd never write another damn thing, and fumed for hours at the injustice of it all.  Most of all at my stupidity for not taking additional protections.

The morning after the disastrous erasure, I sat down and tried to recall what I had lost and, little by little, managed to put together a rough outline of what I had (and intended to add) written.  I probably missed a few points and added some new material, but in general felt I'd managed to recover the flow and bits of the important dialogue.

Using that new outline as a basis, I recreated what I had lost as best I could, but did so knowing in my heart of hearts that the original lost material had been pure gold and worthy of acclimation.  Or so I kept deluding myself as I continued to slog ahead.

After all, they were just words.



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Writing, Revinsing, Revising damnit!, Modifying, Editing

Writing, Revinsing, Revising damnit!, Modifying, Editing provides both the bane and pleasure of writing. The bane is realizing that the piece I just completed is in fact an atrocious piece of poorly worded, rambling, disorganized crap. The pleasure comes from the continual polishing of successive drafts to make each word matter until the pearl steps from the oyster as it were.

All of my stories begin with far more words than ever reach the reader.  Most of my short stories were almost three times as long in their original draft. As the sculptor said modestly about his works, "It's easy to  a produce a statue once you see the part of marble you need to remove."

To begin with, editing a first draft is easier than the writing of a story. At that nescient stage errors of haste become glaringly obvious, as does any material irrelevant to the story.  Most misspelled words and grammar mistakes are hopefully taken care of automatically so are of no concern (except when you're writing SF of course.)  Editing becomes increasingly harder with each succeeding draft as you struggle to clarify and improve the action while honing descriptive and expository sentences into razor-sharp clarity. This last effort (reaching for the perfect word/sequence) can become as tedious as picking fly scats from the pepper line and would appear being overly compulsive to any rational observer.

As a case in point, take the piece I just completed (on the fifth draft.)  The opening paragraph was the most important scene in that it was supposed to  grasp the readers attention, raise questions that impel them to continue, and create a sense of anticipation so that they immerse themselves in the story's progress.  At the fourth revision my opening paragraph was 566 words long and, I thought, rather inelegant. After a full day (six hours) of struggle I had reduced the word count to a  more precise 213 words with greater impact.

I did this with two key internal scenes as well and, on reflection, the third draft would have been acceptable ( to the right editor, of course) and I question whether I was needlessly embellishing the piece without actually improving it. This is a question that remains  uppermost in my mind as I grind and polish each facet to get microscospic improvement to the work.

But then, that's just me.




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2017 in Review

Soon after the turn of the year, as in other years, I've updated my archive files, cleaned out the messes I've created, and looked at the various pieces I've worked on during the past year.  I've been doing this assessment since I started writing again in 1991, partly to see how far I've come and partly to torture myself with the realization that I could have done much better and causes me to reassess what I am doing.

During the last year I managed to get a collection, several short stories and another novel sold.*  These seem to remain around 98% completed due to continual rethinking and rewriting. I am anticipating the publication of another novel in May.

The number of pieces I count in a given year is the gross number of files, so novels get the same weight as novellas, novelettes, short stories and articles.  I do not count the number of multiple drafts, edits, and crap I threw away in frustration at my fickle muse.  Some of my friends obsessively count and report their word production and suggest that I really ought to keep track of total words written (drafts, sketches, edits,etc ) instead of a simple file count, but even for me the resulting number would be too horrifyingly large with ratios of written words to words sold at  millions to one.**

The chart at right shows the arc - the blue line representing the cumulative number of files worked on and the red the cumulative number of stories sold year by year (I don't count sales of reprints,audio productions, or donated stories.)  The total number of unique sales is 132 (six in 2017) and the cumulative number of files is just  540. This makes my "lifetime" sales average  24.4%. The green line is the ratio of sales to files each year, which declines as the number of works increases.

The chart shows the ups and downs of my working/writing career. Strangely, the years I had problems with my day job turned out to be the most productive for writing.  In my peak years I sold almost as many as I wrote, the bad news being that I didn't write very much in those years.  The chart also shows the decline of the novella markets, which was my first love, and which I continue to pursue against all reason.  It was only after I'd relearned how to write short, that my sales increased. Periods spent attempting novels also meant a lower production count, much to my regret.

So, looking back on 2017 I have to say I've not done badly.

* I also made progress in getting some 

more work done on the remaining three.

**I am a  brutal editor of my drafts!

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