a natural talent...

[nephele]

In my case, one of my natural talents seems to be my strange ability to injure myself in my sleep. Woke up this morning to discover I'd managed to put my back out during the night. This after a weekend of non-strenuous activities that included dinner with friends, going to the movies, and reading. Yes. So today I spent a good amount of time away

Comments

[green_knight]

No matter how good you are or how much thought went into your story before you started to type, a first draft is not a finished manuscript. It's just a finished draft.

You rang?

The thing I needed to learn is that when you're dealing with a first or zeroeth draft (the rougher cousin of a first draft) polishing isn't enough. Small adjustments - a better word here, a paragraph cut there - are the last stage of the process. What I needed was re-vision - to take this rough story I had and to look at every detail of it - the flow, the descriptions, the structure, the events and their order - *everything*. What I see too often are drafts which can be summarised as 'rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic' - a much more polished product, yes, but still fundamentally flawed.

Some of 'em are in a trunk under my bed.

[snowwhite22]

Amen sister. I hear that.

Hear hear!

[nuj]

I've been judging short story entries in a publisher contest, and at least a third of the entries came in at the last minute. Regardless of how soon or late they came in, though, it's amazing how many people really, really needed more time on their stories. Even the rare top-quality stories needed (and didn't get) a good proofreading before they were submitted.

I have high respect for editors and agents already, but seeing a sampling of what you deal with every day really reinforces it. How you maintain any optimism at all is a mystery. :)

An off-ender

[anonymous]

Oh, I hear you, and I count myself amoung the off-enders -- always in a`rush, always pushing away those embryonic characters struggling in my brain to give birth to my NEXT novel. Finish the first (second, third...seventh), will you? I always end up revising multiple times but usually after I've achieved a period of creative quietude where emerging characters aren't quite so strident.

On top of that, I invest so much in beginnings perhaps I skew the fabric in the middle? Maybe I should start with the ending and then work towards the opening. Hmm...here, I ponder. Jane