A Writing Post

[mizkit]

An LJ reader emailed me a writing question a few days ago, and gave me the all-clear to use its answer as a blog post, so I’m going to give it a shot. The question (and its surrounding commentary, which I thought was relevant) follows:

I know that some authors find rewriting easier (in some ways) than the initial creative process. Me, I can whip

Comments

[mnarra]

Holy cats -- I can almost certainly revise my #(&)% novel this way.

One. Crisis. At. A. Time.

Catie, you are genius.

[eyelessgame]

Nice. The little self-imposed psych tricks are everything. The same for diets. And software engineering. We are such weird machines.

[ex_kaz_maho]

I am rewriting/revising (M.A.J.O.R. revisions) two manuscripts at the moment. One for my editor - first ever editorial letter! Woot! - and one for my agent.

I feel like I'm running out of steam on revisions, but will spend all of the Xmas/new year holiday working on these. *sigh* Your post came at a perfect time. Cheers. :)

[sixteenbynine]

I've scrapped two entire book-length manuscripts in a row as a rewrite of sorts -- mostly to find a better home for the main character, who I felt wasn't being done justice by the story I'd thought up for him.

If you have to choose between revising for plot and revising for character, pick the latter whenever possible; the latter can almost always be made to drive the former far more efficiently than the revernse.

[hzatz]

You know, that's mostly the way I do major revisions to a piece of software I'm working on. And it's the same interesting puzzle--keeping in my head three versions at once. At least I have a compiler (and occasionally, regression tests) to help me out.