I'm always interested in how other writers write. The conventional wisdom is "never edit as you go, just get through the draft," and "when you're done, put it in a drawer for six weeks and come back with perspective." Most writers I know try to follow that advice. Not me.
I plow on through during a single writing session, but the next time I sit down to write, I go back and read everything I wrote in the last session (whether it was a few hours ago or the day before) and edit until I'm reasonably satisfied with it before continuing. Sometimes my edits don't satisfy me and I put things I absolutely hate in brackets to revisit later. But it makes it easier for me to go on when I see where I've been and feel fairly certain that I'm going in the right direction.
When I'm done with a first draft, I go straight back to page one and read through for grammar, typos, and continuity, fix anything in brackets (if I can), and then immediately go back to page one to read again and rework sections I'm not happy with. That draft is what goes to beta readers and critique partners. (Though I have to make a confession: I don't really have critique partners. I have a single friend I share critiques with when I can, and another friend who's a very critical reader; Orson Scott Card refers to this as the Wise Reader: someone who knows how to let you know when you're on track and when you're skidding onto the shoulder—or way out into the dirt and weeds on an unimproved county road.) When I get their input, I start over. If I make significant changes, I go through all three stages again, and then try to find a reader I haven't annoyed.
The reason I write this way is in part related to my depression. Writing is necessary to stave it off (and usually results in some nice hypomania and occasional euphoria when it's all working), but when I reach "The End," I'm in danger of an epic crash.
The first two novels I wrote differently. I fed them a chapter at a time to my closest friend or partner (or both) while I was writing the first draft. I think it was necessary at that stage to have the external validation that someone was interested in the story and wanted to know what happened next. Without that, I would not have kept going.
But when I reached the end of both of those novels, it felt like the end of the world. I put them in a drawer for six weeks...six weeks that sank me deeper into despair, knowing that every word was crap, that I couldn't fix anything, that I would never write again. I tried to write other things, but kept obsessing about the "love I had lost." I didn't want someone new; I wanted them. By the end of six weeks, I had lost all faith in my writing and I was mired in hopelessness, which led to epic periods of writer's block. Maybe that still happens now, just a little bit later; I don't know. I certainly still have periods of despair, as evidenced by some of my recent posts. But I do know that re-reading and reworking while it was still fresh made me feel like I hadn't lost anything, and reassured me that I wasn't completely mad; the story needed work, but it was sound.
I guess what I'm getting at is that you don't have to follow writing advice that doesn't work for you, and you don't have to feel like a bad writer because you don't do what you're told. (I think that last bit was for me. Maybe this whole thing is for me. I seem to have a lot of "writer's guilt.") Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't follow the rules, or who wonders if I'm being "bad" and somehow the writing gods will find out and punish me. (Fundie childhood PTSD, anyone?)
So, tell me; how do you write? Do you think I'm writing wrong?
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