Embracing the Revision Process

I first tackled NaNoWriMo in November 2008. I hadn't even heard there was such a thing until maybe a week before, but my girlfriend at the time was very into the idea, so I decided to join her in her efforts.

It was an unmitigated disaster. I had no characters, no plot, and no storyline. I came to the end of my hastily constructed outline at about word 30,000. I had to make up a whole "tagged on" story arc to get to 50,000 words by November 30.

On December 1, I saved the final file. Then I promptly threw it away. Even the thought of tackling revision on such a blemish on the face of the literary world sent me into dry heaves. I feared to even attempt NaNoWriMo again until 2013.

As a young writer in my teens and early twenties, I hated the very idea of revision. Why change what inspiration drove me to write? Sure, I would go back and proofread, but revision? I didn't really understand what that meant, and I certainly didn't know how to do it.

Then, I got older, and though my revision and rewriting skills improved, my patience did not.  My July 2013 Camp NaNoWriMo project is still waiting for its promised round of revisions/rewrites.  It's been put on the back burner.  I haven't quite decided to scrap it yet, but I'm not sure when I will feel the desire to work on it again.

I wonder how many writers have that same attitude toward the revision process.  I wonder if fear of changing, of losing the beauty of what we've painstakingly written, freezes many of us from ever aspiring to improve as writers.

It's amazing how time and experience can force one's perspective to change.  Now editing and revising are my favorite parts of the process, for one simple reason.

I loathe first drafts.

There is nothing more intimidating to me than a blank screen or empty page. It doesn't matter if an entire scene, story, or novel has been swimming around my literary womb, waiting for the orgasmic ecstasy of birth. When I see that empty page, devoid of all life, my creative well dries up like Oklahoma's water supply in mid-July. I wonder whether I will ever write another story, another sentence, another word that might color that lifeless desert.

At heart, writing is about creating.  It's about bringing forth something from nothing.  Yes, one could argue that just an idea already gives you a starting point, but setting an idea into words, somehow conveying that idea to people who don't have the benefit of living within your mental landscape--that's beyond challenging.  Sometimes it feels impossible.

But I push through.  A "sloppy copy" somehow appears on the blank screen--I'm still not entirely certain how--and I feel an immediate sense of deep relief.  The hard part--emotionally anyway--is over.  Now comes the fun.

There's nothing quite so amazing to me as watching a complete load of manure be crafted, compacted, and sculpted into something that can truly sparkle.  Therein lies the true craft--and I would argue the true joy--of writing.

It's not that different from bringing up a child, really.  Through some great gift of the cosmos, you are given the ability to create life, to bring forth something from nothing.  But when she arrives she's completely helpless, defenseless, and frankly has no idea what she's doing.  So you guide her.  You read every book you can, ask for every bit of advice you can get, and implement every (good) idea you stumble upon.  It takes years, but she grows into something vaguely person-shaped.  Then one day, you look at her, and your work is done.  She's ready to fly, to spread her wings and venture into the terrifying, dangerous, and wonderful world.  Once she's gone, you no longer have any control where she goes.  You live on the edge of fear, terrified that something awful will happen to her.  But she's grown up.  She's become what you've always hoped (or perhaps what you had no idea) she would become.  That's when you let her go.

Writing is similar.  It would be irresponsible to send a toddler out into the world on her own.  She isn't done growing yet!  She takes years of practice and perseverance, and our writing can grow no other way.

Remember, though there are days when that piece is sitting on your desk throwing the equivalent of a four-year-old temper tantrum, refusing to bow to your will, there will also be days that you look at it, and you will think, "Wow!  I created that!"  The dirty diapers are just as much of the process as the hugs and kisses and whispers of "I love you, mommy."

Cherish it all.

First Post! -- Fun with Heterophones

Well, after months of debating whether or not I should open my blogging up to the wider wilder world of the intarwebz, I have finally decided to begin a standalone blog dedicated to my adventures in writing.  To those of you who may stumble upon this poorly designed first post, welcome!  And I apologize.  To those of you whom I personally guilted (or blackmailed) into visiting this blog, welcome!  And I apologize.  And to the archaeologist two hundred years into the future who is going to spend an absolutely ridiculous amount of time on the "blogosphere" in an attempt to understand the social structure of humans in the twenty-first century, welcome!  And I apologize.  In advance.

As I considered what topic I might address first, I decided I would begin with my personal nemesis when preparing first drafts of anything:  heterophones.

Strictly speaking, the word "heterophone" has been defined in two distinct but related ways.  The first definition describes any of a limitless list of word pairs in which the words are spelled differently, have different meanings, and have different pronunciations.  (By this definition we might consider "orange" and "apple" heterophones just as easily as we would "red" and "reed.") The second definition more specifically applies to words that are written identically but have different pronunciations and meanings (i.e. "does," the present tense form of "to do," versus "does," meaning multiple female deer).

However, my use of the word relates specifically to a personal phenomenon.  It refers to my unusual proclivity toward replacing one word with a sometimes (but not always) vaguely similarly sounding word.  Sometimes the replacement word might not seem even remotely similar to the word I intended, but it may somehow be etymologically or cognitively connected to the topic of conversation at hand.  For instance, a few times a week, variations of this particular conversation might be overheard as my partner and I eat dinner and binge-watch bad BBC television on Netflix:

Katherine:  "Honey, can you pass me the remote control?"
Me:  "I don't see it.  Are you sure you didn't put it under the fish?"
Katherine:  *slow blink*
Me:  "Fish.  Plate.  Blanket."
Katherine:  *lifts blanket and finds remote*

Indulge me as I explain my oral composition process.  My brain processes ideas very quickly.  Oftentimes too quickly.  The moment a thought has fully-formed in my head and I've begun speaking said thought aloud, my brain has already moved on to what I might say next.  Perhaps my thoughts have already completely derailed and I have begun mulling over some other topic.  In the above scenario, Katherine happened to have been sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a dinner plate sitting on her lap.  My intent was to ask whether she might have set the remote control under the blanket sitting right next to her.  But even as the words stumbled off my tongue, my attention had already wavered.  I watched as she seasoned her plate of fish, and I began to salivate over the delicious piece of tilapia that had just come out of the pan. By the time I got to the word "blanket," the word "fish" had replaced it in my mental foreground.  It took me three full attempts to retrieve the originally intended word.

My writing is not immune from such errors.  I've just finished up a month of working on my upcoming novel during Camp NaNoWriMo.  For those who haven't participated in any of the various "NaNo" projects before, the premise is simple.  You dedicate a particular month to completing a draft of some project, whether it's a novel, a screenplay, some nonfiction paper, etc.  For novels, the general goal is to complete 50,000 words in 30 (or 31) days.

I've been working on the aforementioned novel for almost six months now, but I have not yet created one beginning-to-end fully realized draft.  I decided that, for July 2014, I would complete at least 50,000 words of the draft within 31 days.  The end result is that, amongst all the insanity of my sister's wedding, 1400 miles of driving, and my ordinary work responsibilities, I had to write a bit less than 2,000 words a day.  I'm not saying that the task is impossible (it obviously isn't), but it takes a particular level of dedication that many lose midway through the month.

I make a valiant attempt to disregard my inner editor during these writing sprints.  I have to kick her to the curb, or else I'd be lucky if a single complete sentence ever made it onto the page.  Some writers will intentionally disable the backspace key during these sprints.  While I'm not quite that determined to avoid editing entirely, I do try very hard not to re-read unless I need to remember details of something I'd drafted earlier.  The end result?  A draft so full of heterophones that Katherine (the only one who seems to be able to interpret them) has to go back and make a note for each one she finds. The result can sometimes be more interesting than the intended sentence.  Just yesterday I stumbled across a sentence where I referred to a particular character as a woman's "lady husband" (i.e., "late husband"). 

The point to all of this discussion is that sentential construction is rarely the simple task we tend to assume it to be.  Language is complex, the brain moreso, and there are a million microsteps along the way at which we might stumble, perhaps not even noticing we've tripped until a third or fourth proof-reading.  Be kind to those who present their souls to you in the written word.  Hold them accountable for poor proofing perhaps, but give them the benefit of the fish, too.

In my case, I choose to blame some underlying undiagnosed aphasia which will certainly eventually turn me into an inarticulate puddle.  Better get to writing then.  Those nouns won't verb themselves.