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FlickrThe Trouble with Stopping
Sometimes, it's hard to make oneself stop editing.
A manuscript can spring from you, full-formed and with all its sentences in order; but inevitably, when reading it over a second time, one finds those places in which the muse was not speaking quite as loudly, those little sentences put there because they had to be, those sections that clearly meant something deep in the beginning but were lost along with some alternate plot or characterization. And these finds are good; these rough spots are there to be planed down, to be transformed and perfected.
Except that one will find more of them on the third go-through.
And the fourth.
And the fifth and sixth and so on.
A piece of writing is rarely perfected; rarely brought to that sort of shimmering silver Ur-place that it existed in when it was conceived. Rarely are the turns of phrases as witty, the characterizations as deep, the thought processes and philosophical conundrums as bone-deep and challenging as they were when the ideas lumbered into ones' forebrain, demanding to be written down.
Aldous Huxley has gone on record as saying he wished he could re-write the ending of Brave New World; Franz Kafka demanded his writings be burned rather than published. Neil Gaiman catalogs this agony practically every time a new book is published. Every writer feels a certain amount of ecstasy in the act of creation, but every writer is also unsatisfied with what they have wrought. It's never quite what was imagined; never quite what was expected; and in some ways, that's the most exciting part, but in other ways, it makes reading one's own work a terrifying disappointment.
Me? I'm editing Done with Mirrors for what has to be the fourth time, forcing myself not to make too extensive a set of changes. I am going through and checking for a common grammar error I make (or rather, checking for those places in which "grammar error" is the operative word rather than "stylistic choice"), and in the process polishing up a little thing or two I see on the way.
After that, though, I refuse to let myself read this draft again without someone else's input; refuse to let myself revise it again; because if I don't stop, I will be some character from some terrible British comedy, revising for the thousandth time a novel that will never be published.
I'll never be perfect; but damn if I won't kill myself trying.
A manuscript can spring from you, full-formed and with all its sentences in order; but inevitably, when reading it over a second time, one finds those places in which the muse was not speaking quite as loudly, those little sentences put there because they had to be, those sections that clearly meant something deep in the beginning but were lost along with some alternate plot or characterization. And these finds are good; these rough spots are there to be planed down, to be transformed and perfected.
Except that one will find more of them on the third go-through.
And the fourth.
And the fifth and sixth and so on.
A piece of writing is rarely perfected; rarely brought to that sort of shimmering silver Ur-place that it existed in when it was conceived. Rarely are the turns of phrases as witty, the characterizations as deep, the thought processes and philosophical conundrums as bone-deep and challenging as they were when the ideas lumbered into ones' forebrain, demanding to be written down.
Aldous Huxley has gone on record as saying he wished he could re-write the ending of Brave New World; Franz Kafka demanded his writings be burned rather than published. Neil Gaiman catalogs this agony practically every time a new book is published. Every writer feels a certain amount of ecstasy in the act of creation, but every writer is also unsatisfied with what they have wrought. It's never quite what was imagined; never quite what was expected; and in some ways, that's the most exciting part, but in other ways, it makes reading one's own work a terrifying disappointment.
Me? I'm editing Done with Mirrors for what has to be the fourth time, forcing myself not to make too extensive a set of changes. I am going through and checking for a common grammar error I make (or rather, checking for those places in which "grammar error" is the operative word rather than "stylistic choice"), and in the process polishing up a little thing or two I see on the way.
After that, though, I refuse to let myself read this draft again without someone else's input; refuse to let myself revise it again; because if I don't stop, I will be some character from some terrible British comedy, revising for the thousandth time a novel that will never be published.
I'll never be perfect; but damn if I won't kill myself trying.
Labels: writing process
posted by Tyler at
12:16 PM
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