Rewriting tips
The hard rewrite: read a section of the thing you need to revise, open up a blank sheet and rewrite the thing from scratch. If you have the time, I recommend this. Note: I can write 10 pages (single spaced) in a day with a minimum of effort. Being able to write quickly is necessary for this kind of tip. The advantage here is that you say things the way you want to say them and lose all the hee-hawing over what you want to say. This is what it would look like if you could organize and write at the same time. The best way to perform this kind of revision is to actually delete the file first draft, preferably through a crashed hard drive.
Your interesting point: No, it isn't. You know those things you say that don't really fit, but you like them, and you can make them fit? f'ing get rid of them. Tangents are for senile professors. Stay on topic! Writers come to believe that every word that they put on the page is sacred. Man, it isn't. Half of it is not witty, and the worst part is it looks like you're trying to be witty, and there's nothing worse than trying to look witty and not succeeding, actually not knowing that you're succeeding is worse. It ruins all the witty things you do manage to say...and the easiest way to not look witty is to just start saying things that don't have very much to do with what you're talking about because you think they sound cool.
Read aloud: No seriously. Read it aloud. Many people say, read it aloud so that you can hear the tough spots in your prose, and I think that's great, but you know what? Read it aloud 5 or 10 times so that it BORES you. That way, you get some sense of what your scenes read like to people who are hitting them for the first time. You may find that you can read a 10 page scene for 5 pages and then you want to skip to the end. Okay, it's too long. Simple as that.
Look, the plain and simple truth here is that editors are mean. Professional editors are ruthless. Send an article to a journal and it is, 9 times out of 10, read by some bitter grad student who can't get their work in the journal and is now forced to read crap by the professor who has given them the job and so they work tirelessly, from the inside, to change things to make the climate better for their work, which sucks.
Commercial editors want nothing that they haven't seen before on a bestsellers list, except that they don't want that. They want Twilight and Harry Potter, but not Twilight and Harry Potter. You need to be both derivitive and original, and they want NOTHING else. Don't fool yourself, these people are out to make money.
Forget about unprofessional editors...people who just happen to be in charge of approving your work. God only knows by what criteria they operate. You can get attacked because you don't boldface and underline main points.
But then, how do good novels get put on the shelf...Nepotism. Remember your Primo Levi, "To He Who Has, All Shall Be Given." Nothing makes success like success. Someone's uncle runs a literary journal and they publish a poem, and Whallah! you're published.
I'm not bitter. That's not the point here. My point is this: there are a lot of good writers out there (too many of them, if you asked me), and a lot of proof that being good has nothing to do with success. I would be more supportive of people who write hack. However, if you're going to try to turn skill into success then you are going to have to know that being good simply isn't good enough. You have to be a monster. You have to be good, striving for genious, with a desire to attack your own work like Godzilla v. Tokyo. Nothing less will do. And even then, you're either going to have to get lucky or know someone.
And you have to be mofo confidant. It isn't that you have something to say, it's that most people have NOTHING to say. If they did, they'd be interested in learning how to say it. You are the sage, the shaman, the bodhisatva if that's your gig. God (goddess, It, Shub-Niggurath the black goat of the woods with a thousand young) has given you the tablets to take down off the mountain, and damn it all, it's your job to write better so that someone will follow your new religion lest they burn eternally. You are responsible for their soul, and no, you didn't get it right the first time.
Hope that helps.
Your interesting point: No, it isn't. You know those things you say that don't really fit, but you like them, and you can make them fit? f'ing get rid of them. Tangents are for senile professors. Stay on topic! Writers come to believe that every word that they put on the page is sacred. Man, it isn't. Half of it is not witty, and the worst part is it looks like you're trying to be witty, and there's nothing worse than trying to look witty and not succeeding, actually not knowing that you're succeeding is worse. It ruins all the witty things you do manage to say...and the easiest way to not look witty is to just start saying things that don't have very much to do with what you're talking about because you think they sound cool.
Read aloud: No seriously. Read it aloud. Many people say, read it aloud so that you can hear the tough spots in your prose, and I think that's great, but you know what? Read it aloud 5 or 10 times so that it BORES you. That way, you get some sense of what your scenes read like to people who are hitting them for the first time. You may find that you can read a 10 page scene for 5 pages and then you want to skip to the end. Okay, it's too long. Simple as that.
Look, the plain and simple truth here is that editors are mean. Professional editors are ruthless. Send an article to a journal and it is, 9 times out of 10, read by some bitter grad student who can't get their work in the journal and is now forced to read crap by the professor who has given them the job and so they work tirelessly, from the inside, to change things to make the climate better for their work, which sucks.
Commercial editors want nothing that they haven't seen before on a bestsellers list, except that they don't want that. They want Twilight and Harry Potter, but not Twilight and Harry Potter. You need to be both derivitive and original, and they want NOTHING else. Don't fool yourself, these people are out to make money.
Forget about unprofessional editors...people who just happen to be in charge of approving your work. God only knows by what criteria they operate. You can get attacked because you don't boldface and underline main points.
But then, how do good novels get put on the shelf...Nepotism. Remember your Primo Levi, "To He Who Has, All Shall Be Given." Nothing makes success like success. Someone's uncle runs a literary journal and they publish a poem, and Whallah! you're published.
I'm not bitter. That's not the point here. My point is this: there are a lot of good writers out there (too many of them, if you asked me), and a lot of proof that being good has nothing to do with success. I would be more supportive of people who write hack. However, if you're going to try to turn skill into success then you are going to have to know that being good simply isn't good enough. You have to be a monster. You have to be good, striving for genious, with a desire to attack your own work like Godzilla v. Tokyo. Nothing less will do. And even then, you're either going to have to get lucky or know someone.
And you have to be mofo confidant. It isn't that you have something to say, it's that most people have NOTHING to say. If they did, they'd be interested in learning how to say it. You are the sage, the shaman, the bodhisatva if that's your gig. God (goddess, It, Shub-Niggurath the black goat of the woods with a thousand young) has given you the tablets to take down off the mountain, and damn it all, it's your job to write better so that someone will follow your new religion lest they burn eternally. You are responsible for their soul, and no, you didn't get it right the first time.
Hope that helps.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
7:29 AM
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