Cut, Rinse, Repeat
Firstly, here's the podcast! (With bonus! art of me as the Baroness, which is possibly the raddest thing that's happened to me this year.)
War Rocket Ajax #2
Secondly, I'm about halfway through my revision of The Witch's Alphabet, and I wanted to talk a little bit about how I revise.
It's all about minimalism for me. I write rambly, disconnected first drafts, and then I go back and connect all of the tissue of the book.
And then I pare it down. And I pare it down more. Revision to me is about sharpening prose, not necessarily changing it. In my perfect world, it's certainly not about adding words, even though they inevitably creep in.
But revision shouldn't be about puffing wordcount, I don't think. For me, it's about sharpening the text until it does exactly what I want to do. A sentence should show character, plot, setting, theme and mobility (the forward motion of the story) in a perfect world. In the real world, I'd say I manage to hit about three out of those five most of the time.
The places where I hit all five are the sentences I remember, when I feel for a moment that I'm Doin' It Rite.
Revision is the place where I'm allowed to be fiddly, to play with word choice and structure, to plant all of the small threads that may get overlooked when I'm trying to lay out the broad over-story in the first draft.
I do enjoy revision, but it also makes me a little crazy
I'm so glad I'm half done.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.
War Rocket Ajax #2
Secondly, I'm about halfway through my revision of The Witch's Alphabet, and I wanted to talk a little bit about how I revise.
It's all about minimalism for me. I write rambly, disconnected first drafts, and then I go back and connect all of the tissue of the book.
And then I pare it down. And I pare it down more. Revision to me is about sharpening prose, not necessarily changing it. In my perfect world, it's certainly not about adding words, even though they inevitably creep in.
But revision shouldn't be about puffing wordcount, I don't think. For me, it's about sharpening the text until it does exactly what I want to do. A sentence should show character, plot, setting, theme and mobility (the forward motion of the story) in a perfect world. In the real world, I'd say I manage to hit about three out of those five most of the time.
The places where I hit all five are the sentences I remember, when I feel for a moment that I'm Doin' It Rite.
Revision is the place where I'm allowed to be fiddly, to play with word choice and structure, to plant all of the small threads that may get overlooked when I'm trying to lay out the broad over-story in the first draft.
I do enjoy revision, but it also makes me a little crazy
I'm so glad I'm half done.
Originally published at Caitlin Kittredge.