I'm thrilled to announce that I met my November writing goal today, completing the second draft of my current work-in-progress. I must say, the experience taught me a lot, since I've never revised a novel before. In case it proves helpful to others struggling with revising an unwieldy first draft, here are the key lessons I learned:
Know thyself. I am a terrible procrastinator, I'll admit it right now. (Or maybe later.) I set myself a deadline to complete this revision during the month of November. I got through a little more than half the novel and hit a big fat brick wall. The wall didn't move for a good two weeks or more. On Black Friday, after stuffing myself with leftover pumpkin pie, it occurred to me that I had three days left in the month and few other demands on my time. I figured out that if I averaged seven chapters a day, I could still meet the goal; this seemed entirely feasible. I got re-energized (why else do we procrastinate, except that we love the mad dash towards the finish line?) and made it happen.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses as writers. If you're honest with yourself about what they are, you can leverage the former against the latter to avoid your own pitfalls.
Don't give up. Churchill said it best - doesn't he always? "If you are going through hell, keep going." I think he was probably referring to WWII, or possibly the Boer War, but regardless, the adage works here too. While it's not quite as traumatic as war, revising your writing tends to be hellish more often than not. Difficult choices present themselves. I want the work to be phenomenal, but am I going the right way to get there? This is the question.
That big fat brick wall I hit? In the first draft, I'd written some chapters in first person and some in third person. I had to make a narrative choice and stick with it. Guess who deeply questioned that choice just over halfway through the second draft? I agonized for a good two weeks before deciding, "What the hell," and telling myself to just get on with it. If the end result sucked, well, I'd just proved to myself I could take massive amounts of writing and make titchy subject & verb tense changes throughout it. I could always do it again, but I wanted to finish this draft first, maybe to see how it went, maybe just because I'm stubborn, maybe a little of both. By the end of the revision, I felt like I'd made the right choice after all, and even developed cogent-sounding arguments as to why my narrative choice better supported the story. (At least, I'd like to think they sound cogent.)
It's rough, no doubt. When you care this much about something, a bad roadblock can make you question the entire project, and it's tempting to walk away and start anew. I think the key is to not give up midway through your decision; carry it through to the end before you determine if it's unworthy. It's dangerous to try and judge only part of the picture.
Identify the issues before you start fixing things. Granted, things will pop up along the way, and you should address some of those too. But you already know what huge, glaring plot holes you blithely skipped over on that first go-round, or that you were going to have to do some serious web-surfing to write accurately about raising goats in Greece, or what have you. Hopefully, you had at least two or three readers provide you with feedback, and you've read it through yourself (resisting the urge to launch into revision right then, which is so hard, isn't it?). I actually made a list of the issues I wanted to fix and the questions I had to face, so I could approach them more effectively. I'm definitely more of a pantser when it comes to the first draft, but I think the more structured & organized approach to the second draft is what got me through it.
Plan on a next draft. We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we write. (Go ahead, call me Captain Obvious.) You don't have to make it perfect right now, just better. Knowing this helped me a lot. I confess I took refuge in focusing on the technicalities for much of this draft, except for changing and dropping a couple parts of the plot that just didn't feel right - and that I felt capable of fixing there and then. If I ran into something that was still too overwhelming to tackle, I left it for the third draft without even a twinge of guilt. I stayed plenty busy fixing other massive problems, the ones I'd planned on dealing with. Like my mom says, "Eat the elephant one bite at a time."
Showing posts with label revision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revision. Show all posts
30 November 2009
08 November 2009
somewhere between a sigh and a growl
I'm not sure what that noise would sound like, but it's what I'm making right now. Or rather, I keep alternating between sighing and growling, because like I said, I don't quite know how to combine the two. Suggestions?
There are several reasons for my frustration and crankiness, most of which I won't go into here, but one thing that's been bugging the hell out of me is my internal struggle over 1st vs. 3rd person POV in my current WIP.
When I wrote the first draft, I was just focused on getting the words on paper (or the computer screen, whatever) and I wrote some chapters in first person, some in third, as the mood struck me. There was not a lot of thought involved; I just wrote instinctively.
So one of the questions that's preoccupied me for the last year, since I wrote the first draft, is which POV to use. I felt like the story needed a consistent narrative approach. I ended up going with first person, largely because the protagonist undergoes such an emotional/mental journey as she goes through the plot conflicts. She transitions from anti-hero to hero, and during her journey, she makes some choices that most people would probably respond to with a well-deserved "WTF?" So I felt like the first person would heighten the reader's sympathy with her while supporting the tension between her (at times admittedly unreliable) perspective and the rest of the world.
Then, yesterday, I reached the halfway point in my first round of revision. I finished 25 of the 50 chapters (yay!), and felt great about how the story was going. I decided to take a little break, do some stuff around the house, and then read a bunch of articles about writing/revising/character/plot/POV.
That last bit was, I realize now, perhaps a mistake. Okay, definitely a mistake. I read some articles discussing 1st & 3rd-person narration, and the debate I thought I'd settled for myself just raged right up again. Except at this point, I'm halfway through making the novel a consistent POV, and nearly 30,000 words in is really not when one wants to be questioning one's narrative choice.
So, y'know. Little irritated. Part of my frustration is that it seems a lot of writers consider first person to be an "immature" choice of narration, which made me question myself and get all insecure about my writing abilities. But as Nathan Bransford says (not in the linked post, but often), if it works, it works, and I think as long as I'm aware of the possible pitfalls of 1st-person narration - and, even better, avoiding them - it may still be the right choice for this story.
So I'm going to press on with the 1st-person narration, finish the revision, and then go back and reread it carefully and critically. Hell, if I really feel the need, I can always go back and revise the entire book with 3rd-person instead (and won't that be a treat). It could be a useful exercise, and really, it's not like I'm on a particular deadline. I just hoped to get the novel in query-worthy shape sooner rather than later.
But ultimately, the important thing is that the story's told right, and told as well as possible. So if it takes an extra draft, I'm sure the extra work would only improve it. (Sigh. Do I sound constructive? I feel... tired. But I'm trying to convince myself to think positive anyway.) I was already planning to put it through at least two more rounds of revision, so an extra, massively long exercise in POV might not be too much of a detour. We shall see.
In the meantime, once more unto the breach, dear friends. Time to tackle the second half. If you have any thoughts on the pros & cons of 1st or 3rd person, I'd love to hear them!
There are several reasons for my frustration and crankiness, most of which I won't go into here, but one thing that's been bugging the hell out of me is my internal struggle over 1st vs. 3rd person POV in my current WIP.
When I wrote the first draft, I was just focused on getting the words on paper (or the computer screen, whatever) and I wrote some chapters in first person, some in third, as the mood struck me. There was not a lot of thought involved; I just wrote instinctively.
So one of the questions that's preoccupied me for the last year, since I wrote the first draft, is which POV to use. I felt like the story needed a consistent narrative approach. I ended up going with first person, largely because the protagonist undergoes such an emotional/mental journey as she goes through the plot conflicts. She transitions from anti-hero to hero, and during her journey, she makes some choices that most people would probably respond to with a well-deserved "WTF?" So I felt like the first person would heighten the reader's sympathy with her while supporting the tension between her (at times admittedly unreliable) perspective and the rest of the world.
Then, yesterday, I reached the halfway point in my first round of revision. I finished 25 of the 50 chapters (yay!), and felt great about how the story was going. I decided to take a little break, do some stuff around the house, and then read a bunch of articles about writing/revising/character/plot/POV.
That last bit was, I realize now, perhaps a mistake. Okay, definitely a mistake. I read some articles discussing 1st & 3rd-person narration, and the debate I thought I'd settled for myself just raged right up again. Except at this point, I'm halfway through making the novel a consistent POV, and nearly 30,000 words in is really not when one wants to be questioning one's narrative choice.
So, y'know. Little irritated. Part of my frustration is that it seems a lot of writers consider first person to be an "immature" choice of narration, which made me question myself and get all insecure about my writing abilities. But as Nathan Bransford says (not in the linked post, but often), if it works, it works, and I think as long as I'm aware of the possible pitfalls of 1st-person narration - and, even better, avoiding them - it may still be the right choice for this story.
So I'm going to press on with the 1st-person narration, finish the revision, and then go back and reread it carefully and critically. Hell, if I really feel the need, I can always go back and revise the entire book with 3rd-person instead (and won't that be a treat). It could be a useful exercise, and really, it's not like I'm on a particular deadline. I just hoped to get the novel in query-worthy shape sooner rather than later.
But ultimately, the important thing is that the story's told right, and told as well as possible. So if it takes an extra draft, I'm sure the extra work would only improve it. (Sigh. Do I sound constructive? I feel... tired. But I'm trying to convince myself to think positive anyway.) I was already planning to put it through at least two more rounds of revision, so an extra, massively long exercise in POV might not be too much of a detour. We shall see.
In the meantime, once more unto the breach, dear friends. Time to tackle the second half. If you have any thoughts on the pros & cons of 1st or 3rd person, I'd love to hear them!
02 November 2009
Revision's still, deep waters
In the last two days, I've revised eleven chapters of the novel I wrote during last year's NaNoWriMo. Technically speaking, that puts me more than 20 percent of the way through Round 2, which is a lot better than, say, zero percent of the way, or even ten percent. It's important to celebrate these milestones.
I'm starting to get a little nervous, though, because I know the real work is up ahead. It sort of feels like digging around in the yard and not quite knowing where the water line is, just that it's there. One of these days soon, I'm going to reach a certain point in the story and all this force is going to be unleashed.
So far, the revisions mostly involve making all the verb tenses consistent, tightening up sloppy or redundant writing, and smacking the occasional passive voice into action. A lot of it has centered around changing the chapters I wrote from a third-person POV into first-person. (I'm sort of glad I have no idea whether I wrote more chapters in first or third person in Round 1.)
But I worry that I'm taking refuge in technicalities. When I revise my poetry, I tend to get in there with both hands and tear it apart, move words and lines around, pull lines out and write 10-line exercises based on them to get at what I really meant, reassemble the lines and stanzas in different orders - in short, I rip my heart out, play hacky-sack with it for a while, and then put it back in place better-than-new.
Since I've spent a lot more of my life on writing and revising poetry than I have on fiction, I feel a lot safer during the poetry process than I do right now. Don't get me wrong; I go through plenty dark nights of the soul when I'm revising my poems, but y'know, they're just so much shorter than a novel. There's that stage of revision, right before it all comes together, when the entire thing turns into a royal, absolute mess. Then, like pulling the right thread in a cats-cradle, somehow it all magically ties together in a neat, ordered, beautiful way.
When we're talking about a 62,000-word rough draft, though, that absolute mess starts sounding a whole lot messier. In my imagination, it takes on downright scary, Titanic proportions. I know there are plot holes lurking like icebergs, just waiting for me to run into them. I also know I'm going to have to add some word count at some point, for this to be the length of a proper novel, and so far all I'm doing is tightening up the words.
Of course, one of the keys to good writing is for every word to matter, so I don't stress as much about adding to the story. If it's there, it'll come out; if not, it'll just be a short book. Better to be short than to have a lot of useless blather. My hope is that filling in those gaping plot holes will add to the length, too.
I keep telling myself I can make this entire first round of revision about the technicalities, if I want to, and then go through and read it more for the storyline. I can just keep segmenting down the necessary aspects of revision until they're in more manageable pieces - poem-sized, if you will.
But I've never labored for too long under the delusion that I really have control over my writing. Isn't that why we write? The words demand we write them, and we serve as their channel as best we can. Here's hoping I lose some of this control soon, and the story takes over.
I'm starting to get a little nervous, though, because I know the real work is up ahead. It sort of feels like digging around in the yard and not quite knowing where the water line is, just that it's there. One of these days soon, I'm going to reach a certain point in the story and all this force is going to be unleashed.
So far, the revisions mostly involve making all the verb tenses consistent, tightening up sloppy or redundant writing, and smacking the occasional passive voice into action. A lot of it has centered around changing the chapters I wrote from a third-person POV into first-person. (I'm sort of glad I have no idea whether I wrote more chapters in first or third person in Round 1.)
But I worry that I'm taking refuge in technicalities. When I revise my poetry, I tend to get in there with both hands and tear it apart, move words and lines around, pull lines out and write 10-line exercises based on them to get at what I really meant, reassemble the lines and stanzas in different orders - in short, I rip my heart out, play hacky-sack with it for a while, and then put it back in place better-than-new.
Since I've spent a lot more of my life on writing and revising poetry than I have on fiction, I feel a lot safer during the poetry process than I do right now. Don't get me wrong; I go through plenty dark nights of the soul when I'm revising my poems, but y'know, they're just so much shorter than a novel. There's that stage of revision, right before it all comes together, when the entire thing turns into a royal, absolute mess. Then, like pulling the right thread in a cats-cradle, somehow it all magically ties together in a neat, ordered, beautiful way.
When we're talking about a 62,000-word rough draft, though, that absolute mess starts sounding a whole lot messier. In my imagination, it takes on downright scary, Titanic proportions. I know there are plot holes lurking like icebergs, just waiting for me to run into them. I also know I'm going to have to add some word count at some point, for this to be the length of a proper novel, and so far all I'm doing is tightening up the words.
Of course, one of the keys to good writing is for every word to matter, so I don't stress as much about adding to the story. If it's there, it'll come out; if not, it'll just be a short book. Better to be short than to have a lot of useless blather. My hope is that filling in those gaping plot holes will add to the length, too.
I keep telling myself I can make this entire first round of revision about the technicalities, if I want to, and then go through and read it more for the storyline. I can just keep segmenting down the necessary aspects of revision until they're in more manageable pieces - poem-sized, if you will.
But I've never labored for too long under the delusion that I really have control over my writing. Isn't that why we write? The words demand we write them, and we serve as their channel as best we can. Here's hoping I lose some of this control soon, and the story takes over.
01 November 2009
of miscellaneous mind
I've got an amalgam of thoughts jostling each other for space right now.
First, as I delve further into the writing Twitterverse, I keep coming across articles on common topics. One is what-you-should-be-Tweeting or how-to-be-a-successful-Twitter-writer or whatever. Here's my opinion:
Just be yourself.
It's a lot like writing; it's important to speak with your authentic voice. There seems to be a lot of advice to advance your personal brand and be professional and useful and whatever else people want you to be. Apparently people don't want to know what I'm making for dinner or that I'm entertained by my cat snoring. Those people would be well advised not to follow me.
Granted, I do think you should learn from the things that annoy you in others, and not do them yourself. Learn from the things you admire in others, and adapt them to your own strengths.
I like to know both the professional and personal side of people I follow on Twitter; it's much like enjoying a well-developed character in a book. If you're only showing your professional side, you come across as pretty flat. Be a real person. There's only one of you. Tell me who you are.
Granted, I think a key to this is to try and have a sense of humor about it. Whether on Twitter or in real life, genuinely self-absorbed people are just boring. But random glimpses of others' quirks remind me of the notes struck by a really good poem, when I'm grateful to realize just how universal my individual perspective really is.
So, that's my little rant about "how to act on Twitter". In other news, while the rest of the writing world is launching into NaNoWriMo with all the frenzy that writing a novel in a month deserves, I'm throwing myself into NaNoEdMo rather like a dive into an icy pond. In other words, I'm editing the novel I wrote during last year's NaNo. I attempted the same project in May, and got through five chapters in two weeks. This morning, I got through those five chapters again, and yes, through chapter 6 as well. (Hooray! Progress!) Here's hoping that being unemployed will keep me swimming through the murky waters of revision.
Since I'm working on this project, a lot of the links posted by my tweeps are serving as helpful reminders on the craft of writing. I hope they help you too. The agent/publishing/marketing-related links will come later.
My sincere thanks for links and/or writing the actual articles: @inkyelbows, @megancrewe, @motjustes, @ElizabethSCraig, @Quotes4Writers, @AdviceToWriters, @benwhiting, @mystorywriter, @david_hewson, @WritersDigest, @brianklems, @jessicastrawser, @MFAConfidential, Jon Morrow and Stephanie Perkins.
Tips from a master of writing. From @MFAConfidential: Flannery O'Connor's take on the tenets of craft. http://ow.ly/15YolZ
From psych major and YA author @megancrewe: What makes a good story? http://j.mp/3gOhzY
From Elizabeth S. Craig's excellent blog: Different characters have different perceptions. http://short.to/v7hu
From crime writer Andrew Taylor: Getting the Plot Right. http://bit.ly/10vwGX
From Jon Morrow: No one but you is an authority on your writing. http://bit.ly/r3nK3
To become a better writer: Intense, focused practice. http://bit.ly/1NpapO
He's absolutely right about the Facebook/Twitter trap. From @david_hewson: Keeping your writing alive - even when you're not writing. http://ow.ly/x71i
From @brianklems: 4 Tips for Choosing the Right Word. http://ow.ly/xmw7
I'm not quite sure how I ended up on the following blog, but I enjoy the irony of her digressions as she talks about how important it is to stay focused on your plot. Irony aside, good tips on self-editing:
http://naturalartificial.blogspot.com/2009/10/scarf-weather-answers-part-eleven.html
First, as I delve further into the writing Twitterverse, I keep coming across articles on common topics. One is what-you-should-be-Tweeting or how-to-be-a-successful-Twitter-writer or whatever. Here's my opinion:
Just be yourself.
It's a lot like writing; it's important to speak with your authentic voice. There seems to be a lot of advice to advance your personal brand and be professional and useful and whatever else people want you to be. Apparently people don't want to know what I'm making for dinner or that I'm entertained by my cat snoring. Those people would be well advised not to follow me.
Granted, I do think you should learn from the things that annoy you in others, and not do them yourself. Learn from the things you admire in others, and adapt them to your own strengths.
I like to know both the professional and personal side of people I follow on Twitter; it's much like enjoying a well-developed character in a book. If you're only showing your professional side, you come across as pretty flat. Be a real person. There's only one of you. Tell me who you are.
Granted, I think a key to this is to try and have a sense of humor about it. Whether on Twitter or in real life, genuinely self-absorbed people are just boring. But random glimpses of others' quirks remind me of the notes struck by a really good poem, when I'm grateful to realize just how universal my individual perspective really is.
So, that's my little rant about "how to act on Twitter". In other news, while the rest of the writing world is launching into NaNoWriMo with all the frenzy that writing a novel in a month deserves, I'm throwing myself into NaNoEdMo rather like a dive into an icy pond. In other words, I'm editing the novel I wrote during last year's NaNo. I attempted the same project in May, and got through five chapters in two weeks. This morning, I got through those five chapters again, and yes, through chapter 6 as well. (Hooray! Progress!) Here's hoping that being unemployed will keep me swimming through the murky waters of revision.
Since I'm working on this project, a lot of the links posted by my tweeps are serving as helpful reminders on the craft of writing. I hope they help you too. The agent/publishing/marketing-related links will come later.
My sincere thanks for links and/or writing the actual articles: @inkyelbows, @megancrewe, @motjustes, @ElizabethSCraig, @Quotes4Writers, @AdviceToWriters, @benwhiting, @mystorywriter, @david_hewson, @WritersDigest, @brianklems, @jessicastrawser, @MFAConfidential, Jon Morrow and Stephanie Perkins.
Tips from a master of writing. From @MFAConfidential: Flannery O'Connor's take on the tenets of craft. http://ow.ly/15YolZ
From psych major and YA author @megancrewe: What makes a good story? http://j.mp/3gOhzY
From Elizabeth S. Craig's excellent blog: Different characters have different perceptions. http://short.to/v7hu
From crime writer Andrew Taylor: Getting the Plot Right. http://bit.ly/10vwGX
From Jon Morrow: No one but you is an authority on your writing. http://bit.ly/r3nK3
To become a better writer: Intense, focused practice. http://bit.ly/1NpapO
He's absolutely right about the Facebook/Twitter trap. From @david_hewson: Keeping your writing alive - even when you're not writing. http://ow.ly/x71i
From @brianklems: 4 Tips for Choosing the Right Word. http://ow.ly/xmw7
I'm not quite sure how I ended up on the following blog, but I enjoy the irony of her digressions as she talks about how important it is to stay focused on your plot. Irony aside, good tips on self-editing:
http://naturalartificial.blogspot.com/2009/10/scarf-weather-answers-part-eleven.html
05 April 2009
(snow inspired) or, my life in parentheses
So, yes, I realize the last several posts on here have followed this theme of snow. I am somewhat obsessed with snow, I admit it. And consequently am quite happy to have a snowy afternoon, the house to myself, a good beer (Boulder's Mojo Rising) and the time to write.
Ah, Nature, she is a fickle muse (a la the Tick: "Gravity, she is a harsh mistress"), much less dependable than music. When a story's influenced by a song, I can just play the song or create a whole playlist that supports that mood, like I did with 'Mississippi'. When it's location, I can travel to there (or I can't, and just don't work on that piece for a while). But when a story's weather-inspired, nature torments me in the worst way sometimes.
Once again I'm editing my snow-inspired story, and I think I keep getting distracted at the same place every time I go through it. It happened again today (well, I do have Braveheart on the TV, which is pretty damn distracting). But not before I noticed that (hey, is that Stephen Fry?) Right! Back to the blogging thing. Um, yes - got distracted, but not before I noticed that the story's rather disjointed over the course of a couple chapters. The problem is, since I keep consistently flaking out during that part of the story, I'm having a hard time fixing it. D'oh!
Evidently I'm in quite the parenthetical mood (you might expect me to ask if you noticed, but I give you more credit for intelligence than that).
Hmm... it stopped snowing. I could deal with fixing the difficult-to-fix thing another day. Tempting. (Plus, I'm kinda hungry.)
Here, have a poem:
Ah, Nature, she is a fickle muse (a la the Tick: "Gravity, she is a harsh mistress"), much less dependable than music. When a story's influenced by a song, I can just play the song or create a whole playlist that supports that mood, like I did with 'Mississippi'. When it's location, I can travel to there (or I can't, and just don't work on that piece for a while). But when a story's weather-inspired, nature torments me in the worst way sometimes.
Once again I'm editing my snow-inspired story, and I think I keep getting distracted at the same place every time I go through it. It happened again today (well, I do have Braveheart on the TV, which is pretty damn distracting). But not before I noticed that (hey, is that Stephen Fry?) Right! Back to the blogging thing. Um, yes - got distracted, but not before I noticed that the story's rather disjointed over the course of a couple chapters. The problem is, since I keep consistently flaking out during that part of the story, I'm having a hard time fixing it. D'oh!
Evidently I'm in quite the parenthetical mood (you might expect me to ask if you noticed, but I give you more credit for intelligence than that).
Hmm... it stopped snowing. I could deal with fixing the difficult-to-fix thing another day. Tempting. (Plus, I'm kinda hungry.)
Here, have a poem:
what to do
what to do when the words won’t come?
I could tie my tongue around a tree and
climb it. I could tear out my eyes
replace them with prisms
refract – reflect –
a new point of view.
All the noises blend into harmony at one
point.
Can’t pin it on a map, no signs mark this road
so I hope to trip over it, flip a page
glance up at just this instant
see it hesitate, flash out of view –
not even a color, just a sense of color light refracted,
gone. I stand breathless struck & ringing
31 March 2009
Ava revisited
I've had this little idea percolating in my brain for a few weeks now, and just last night I decided it was time to graduate it to a medium-sized idea. Or possibly more. Yes, I think it's getting to be about time to edit my novel.
(If you're new to this blog, I wrote a book - on here - in November as part of the NaNoWriMo.) I think May would be a good month for the editing project. April is a whole day shorter, and I really wouldn't be able to work on it until April 5th. It's hard to give up five days on a project of this size.
I don't know why I feel so strongly about blitzing through the editing of this in a month. Of course, it won't exactly be blitzing - at least, not at the level at which I wrote the damn thing. 62,000 words in a month; sheer insanity. I really found the concrete (and unforgiving) timeframe to be a big help when I was writing the story originally, so I guess I'm just hoping I can force myself to be super-focused and productive again.
There will probably be a lot of cringing going on as I reread it. I just posted it raw, almost zero editing, chapter by chapter. I'm sure there's some terrible writing in there. Equally sure, however, that there's some pretty decent writing somewhere in there too... If you want to check out the raw version, here's chapter 1.
(If you're new to this blog, I wrote a book - on here - in November as part of the NaNoWriMo.) I think May would be a good month for the editing project. April is a whole day shorter, and I really wouldn't be able to work on it until April 5th. It's hard to give up five days on a project of this size.
I don't know why I feel so strongly about blitzing through the editing of this in a month. Of course, it won't exactly be blitzing - at least, not at the level at which I wrote the damn thing. 62,000 words in a month; sheer insanity. I really found the concrete (and unforgiving) timeframe to be a big help when I was writing the story originally, so I guess I'm just hoping I can force myself to be super-focused and productive again.
There will probably be a lot of cringing going on as I reread it. I just posted it raw, almost zero editing, chapter by chapter. I'm sure there's some terrible writing in there. Equally sure, however, that there's some pretty decent writing somewhere in there too... If you want to check out the raw version, here's chapter 1.
13 December 2008
ugh...
So, all that blase talk below about round 2 being easier than round 1 was clearly delusional. Since each round has a couple phases - putting the poems in an order, letting it sit for 12-24 hours, going back and reading through and identifying what transitions don't work - I really spoke too soon. Or maybe I just shouldn't have read through them last night, when I was exhausted and trying to de-stress from a long day. For whatever reason, it was rather painful. I nearly gave up, found myself wondering why I even bothered to write. You have to learn to ignore those kinds of thoughts if you want to be a writer, I think.
But it reminded me of when I was in college studying with Suzanne Gardinier, who is an amazing teacher, and showed me how to really take a poem apart & put it back together. There's always a 'dark night of the soul' period in that process, too, right before it comes together beautifully & so satisfyingly. So I'm going to trust to that experience and hope this sonuvabitch comes together in the very near future. (It better, since I've only got about five days to my deadline.)
Update: I just went into round 3, and it is totally coming together! Very exciting.
For today's poem, I just flipped through the pages blindly and chose one. It ended up being rather fitting, since it's supposed to snow later.
winter poem
snow falls.
the clouds hide the stars.
but in the streetlight
a thousand stars
fly towards earth.
the wind's icy teeth
rakes through my bones.
i am alone
but comforted
by the world's desolate cries.
But it reminded me of when I was in college studying with Suzanne Gardinier, who is an amazing teacher, and showed me how to really take a poem apart & put it back together. There's always a 'dark night of the soul' period in that process, too, right before it comes together beautifully & so satisfyingly. So I'm going to trust to that experience and hope this sonuvabitch comes together in the very near future. (It better, since I've only got about five days to my deadline.)
Update: I just went into round 3, and it is totally coming together! Very exciting.
For today's poem, I just flipped through the pages blindly and chose one. It ended up being rather fitting, since it's supposed to snow later.
winter poem
snow falls.
the clouds hide the stars.
but in the streetlight
a thousand stars
fly towards earth.
the wind's icy teeth
rakes through my bones.
i am alone
but comforted
by the world's desolate cries.
11 December 2008
Round 2
Well, I survived the first round of trying to order the poems in my manuscript, and have moved on to round 2, accompanied by a ton of editing and attention to titchy little details. (Dictionary.com is trying to tell me titchy is not a word. That's ridiculous.) Round 2, I'm glad to report, was significantly less painful than round 1.
Here's the poem for today; I wrote this while studying archaeology in Ireland, about 10 years ago.
Tongue of Stone
yes and even bones decay in this earth,
dissolve in patient soil, below immense
megaliths, unyielding: portals, the key lost,
tongue held. we dig under stone bellies,
two clay beads, a gold torc, a cup, a pot. we smell
soft fragments of bone, unearthed. but our tongues
seek songs, and we beg the stones for sheet music.
six thousand years ago we wrote it ourselves
with ripped and callused hands, hands weary of silence.
we faced our tombs west, to daily drink the sunset. northeast
for the sunrise. we covered the threshold in white quartz
and it blazed a holy fire in the sun. then one by one
we sealed them off, walked away with a lullaby.
place your hand on the stone. feel it breathe.
learn to listen like stone. step lightly as you circle;
try to remember, seeing from all sides but one.
the stone laughs. poor humans – do you not
cry yourselves to sleep, eradicable as you are?
walk on , two-legger. someday you too shall curl
beneath me, cradled in my womb, waiting
as I wait. time will find you searching darkly
for the passage, the slow birth of death. learn
to wait. one day I shall light the torches for you,
mark the path leading deep to our mother’s womb.
there lie the questions you’ve forgotten how to ask.
and when eons from now your children beg me for answers
I shall sing to them
how you thought; what you loved; your forgotten name;
yes and even as your bones decay below me.
Here's the poem for today; I wrote this while studying archaeology in Ireland, about 10 years ago.
Tongue of Stone
yes and even bones decay in this earth,
dissolve in patient soil, below immense
megaliths, unyielding: portals, the key lost,
tongue held. we dig under stone bellies,
two clay beads, a gold torc, a cup, a pot. we smell
soft fragments of bone, unearthed. but our tongues
seek songs, and we beg the stones for sheet music.
six thousand years ago we wrote it ourselves
with ripped and callused hands, hands weary of silence.
we faced our tombs west, to daily drink the sunset. northeast
for the sunrise. we covered the threshold in white quartz
and it blazed a holy fire in the sun. then one by one
we sealed them off, walked away with a lullaby.
place your hand on the stone. feel it breathe.
learn to listen like stone. step lightly as you circle;
try to remember, seeing from all sides but one.
the stone laughs. poor humans – do you not
cry yourselves to sleep, eradicable as you are?
walk on , two-legger. someday you too shall curl
beneath me, cradled in my womb, waiting
as I wait. time will find you searching darkly
for the passage, the slow birth of death. learn
to wait. one day I shall light the torches for you,
mark the path leading deep to our mother’s womb.
there lie the questions you’ve forgotten how to ask.
and when eons from now your children beg me for answers
I shall sing to them
how you thought; what you loved; your forgotten name;
yes and even as your bones decay below me.
05 December 2008
progress
It is happening, slowly but surely... at this point, I've cut some of the weaker poems that were in the manuscript, and done some major edits on the ones I want to keep. I've figured out which newer pieces I want to include and a general idea of where I want them - in which section, at least, though not all in a specific order. In fact, it's all progressing a lot faster than I expected, really.
One difficult decision was to leave the poetry dealing with our daughter's death out of this manuscript. The manuscript as it originally stands is more about one's relationship to the world & others & oneself, and I think including the poems about Abigail would distract from that focus. Plus, a lot of the poetry deals with romantic relationships, and if this is the First Year, then jumping ahead to a child's death isn't all that thematically appropriate. I figure I have enough poems to create a book just about Abi, though, so it's not like I won't be putting them out there in the world. Tough decision, though.
Over the weekend - which is shaping up to be a busy weekend, since I have to work tomorrow for my regular job, and also have some freelance articles coming due soon - I'm going to create a PDF of the work as it is now so I can start messing around with the order of the poems. I remember during my senior year at Sarah Lawrence, determining the order of the poems was really challenging. So this could be the part where the process slows down a bit...
For today's poem, I just closed my eyes and picked one. It ended up being one I wrote this past February.
if the night be wild or calm
for death
comes to us all
and how feeble the hand
that once strong, unshaking
held back the unwanted news
warded the glancing blow
now lets the walls of time
batter past it, through it,
collapsing even the fiercest heart
and what leave you behind
or do the sands of time
draw thick to swirl and obscure
the pictures of your life
how look you to the future
through blind eyes, the eyes of art
and legend, silvered eyes to reflect
the soul of the looker?
do you sing with a voiceless mouth now,
beat your fingers muffled on the door
so that only the dogs may hear, and leap
and bark while their owners sigh?
or do those who would hear
bend their heads to a sighing wind
and hark the ancestral song
with a beating heart and glad, glad eyes?
for you too, and no less I
shall lie in the cold calm ground
or sigh as ashes in the wild wind
and shall we be sung
and shall we sing for ourselves?
One difficult decision was to leave the poetry dealing with our daughter's death out of this manuscript. The manuscript as it originally stands is more about one's relationship to the world & others & oneself, and I think including the poems about Abigail would distract from that focus. Plus, a lot of the poetry deals with romantic relationships, and if this is the First Year, then jumping ahead to a child's death isn't all that thematically appropriate. I figure I have enough poems to create a book just about Abi, though, so it's not like I won't be putting them out there in the world. Tough decision, though.
Over the weekend - which is shaping up to be a busy weekend, since I have to work tomorrow for my regular job, and also have some freelance articles coming due soon - I'm going to create a PDF of the work as it is now so I can start messing around with the order of the poems. I remember during my senior year at Sarah Lawrence, determining the order of the poems was really challenging. So this could be the part where the process slows down a bit...
For today's poem, I just closed my eyes and picked one. It ended up being one I wrote this past February.
if the night be wild or calm
for death
comes to us all
and how feeble the hand
that once strong, unshaking
held back the unwanted news
warded the glancing blow
now lets the walls of time
batter past it, through it,
collapsing even the fiercest heart
and what leave you behind
or do the sands of time
draw thick to swirl and obscure
the pictures of your life
how look you to the future
through blind eyes, the eyes of art
and legend, silvered eyes to reflect
the soul of the looker?
do you sing with a voiceless mouth now,
beat your fingers muffled on the door
so that only the dogs may hear, and leap
and bark while their owners sigh?
or do those who would hear
bend their heads to a sighing wind
and hark the ancestral song
with a beating heart and glad, glad eyes?
for you too, and no less I
shall lie in the cold calm ground
or sigh as ashes in the wild wind
and shall we be sung
and shall we sing for ourselves?
04 December 2008
poetry blitz!
I'm blitzing through my poetry, an odd sensation if there ever was one. I've been having fun working on the manuscript, though I'll feel better about my time constraints once I get a little more progress under my belt. I'm nearly done going through for the first time, making tiny revisions to most of the poems, marking some for replacement & so on.
Kind of exciting that most of the poems only need tiny revisions, actually. It's felt great to read some of these and not want to change a thing, too.
Anyway, once I'm done going through this first time, I need to look at my other poems and see which ones I want to include. I have no idea how difficult that will be. It sounds a little daunting, but what the hell. (Update: it was actually quite easy & didn't take long. Now I have to figure out where to integrate which poems; now that's difficult.)
Eventually, yes, I'll get back to Peggy-O, but deadlines approacheth. In the meantime, I wanted to share this poem from The First Year. I've always liked it. I wrote it about - oh, hell, do I even want to count? - probably 11 or 12 years ago, about a guy I was dating. (And broke up with a few months later.)
Our Hands
A sinner heaves a stone and shatters
my ribcage of glass; you gather me together
hand me a bouquet of my intestines,
crowned by my shaking heart. It is
summer, and hot. My hands languid like
dying flies, brushing the air off my skin.
You kiss my fingertips one by one.
When my fingers fall off you stoop.
You gather and arrange them in a vase.
They are like dried flowers, useless, lovely.
When my fingers fall off you hold my hand.
You talk of days to come as embers fade,
twist, curl in the grate. I shift, settle.
Days are getting cold, quick; nights colder still.
Silence; the memory of goldenrods
fills the room to the ceiling. Winter.
Here ghosts of roses absorb the space
behind my eyes, stinking up the house,
crowding out the Queen Anne’s Lace
I wear for a crown. Flower guides list me
as a common weed. Outside, forsythia and
wisteria bar the door, our watchdogs laid bare.
I pause at the window, sneak a glance out.
God help us both if you hire a gardener.
Been shaking your head for weeks now.
Come spring, you teach me to braid dandelions.
I forgot the long-lost art; you coax it
back to my grasp, silent, jealous.
What I give I give. What you give, I steal.
Cut off my hands if you can catch me at it.
When the snow thaws the dams tense, waiting:
for the point at which they take no more.
You come to me in my mind, empty-handed,
eyes burst open. I clutch at flower stalks,
at my hair; heap my arms full of iris and
orchids, one callalily for memory’s sake.
Then hold my hand as I tell you what my
lonely fingers seek; why I love wisteria;
why I love.
Kind of exciting that most of the poems only need tiny revisions, actually. It's felt great to read some of these and not want to change a thing, too.
Anyway, once I'm done going through this first time, I need to look at my other poems and see which ones I want to include. I have no idea how difficult that will be. It sounds a little daunting, but what the hell. (Update: it was actually quite easy & didn't take long. Now I have to figure out where to integrate which poems; now that's difficult.)
Eventually, yes, I'll get back to Peggy-O, but deadlines approacheth. In the meantime, I wanted to share this poem from The First Year. I've always liked it. I wrote it about - oh, hell, do I even want to count? - probably 11 or 12 years ago, about a guy I was dating. (And broke up with a few months later.)
Our Hands
A sinner heaves a stone and shatters
my ribcage of glass; you gather me together
hand me a bouquet of my intestines,
crowned by my shaking heart. It is
summer, and hot. My hands languid like
dying flies, brushing the air off my skin.
You kiss my fingertips one by one.
When my fingers fall off you stoop.
You gather and arrange them in a vase.
They are like dried flowers, useless, lovely.
When my fingers fall off you hold my hand.
You talk of days to come as embers fade,
twist, curl in the grate. I shift, settle.
Days are getting cold, quick; nights colder still.
Silence; the memory of goldenrods
fills the room to the ceiling. Winter.
Here ghosts of roses absorb the space
behind my eyes, stinking up the house,
crowding out the Queen Anne’s Lace
I wear for a crown. Flower guides list me
as a common weed. Outside, forsythia and
wisteria bar the door, our watchdogs laid bare.
I pause at the window, sneak a glance out.
God help us both if you hire a gardener.
Been shaking your head for weeks now.
Come spring, you teach me to braid dandelions.
I forgot the long-lost art; you coax it
back to my grasp, silent, jealous.
What I give I give. What you give, I steal.
Cut off my hands if you can catch me at it.
When the snow thaws the dams tense, waiting:
for the point at which they take no more.
You come to me in my mind, empty-handed,
eyes burst open. I clutch at flower stalks,
at my hair; heap my arms full of iris and
orchids, one callalily for memory’s sake.
Then hold my hand as I tell you what my
lonely fingers seek; why I love wisteria;
why I love.
03 December 2008
The First Year
And now, we interrupt this ballad-fairy tale-whatever it is already in progress to bring you something completely different....
I'm working on poetry this morning, trying to whip this manuscript of mine into something resembling shape. I created it during my senior year in college, while I was doing an independent study in poetry with Joan Larkin and Kate Johnson. Then I refined it a few years later, when I submitted it to the Yale Younger Poets contest. Now it's been nearly eight years since I first put it together, and I have a ton more poems worth integrating into it, which is great because there were some weaker poems in there originally that I needed to fill space.
Still, at times it's sort of like going back through your middle school yearbook. I cringe at the occasional turn of phrase or maudlin sentiment. But, it's much, much better than the middle school nostalgia trip because I can actually fix the lame crap in my writing.
I can tell it's been a while since I really concentrated on poetry, because when I first started looking at the poems in The First Year, I almost felt afraid to change them, like the roof would cave in or something equally dramatic. I was sitting there trying to decide if I should change a word or tab some lines over or whatever, and I would find myself speculating about it for five minutes instead of actually trying it. As long as you're smart about saving your versions, you can always get the original way back, and the only way to really improve and edit poetry (at least for me) is to really tear it apart and start messing around with it, trying different line breaks or punctuation or whatever the case may be. Actually, the editing process has always been one of the things I love most about writing poetry, which I guess is why it felt so funny to be momentarily paralyzed.
Anyway. Back to it. Cheers. Here, have a poem - this is the first one in The First Year.
she prays
let the birds shit on my head and bring me good fortune.
let the heron fly low over pine trees, o gods
let me round the curve just before it disappears.
let me be kind to the flowers & shameless as leaf-pummeling rains.
let me dance in the rain as if I am already dead.
let the music lead the way into the night’s mazes;
let me come out the other side.
let the sun rise for the first time tomorrow, and turn the sky to ashes.
let us collect the ashes and return them to the water where our loved ones rest.
o gods, let me live amazed; pores gasping, eyes wide.
I'm working on poetry this morning, trying to whip this manuscript of mine into something resembling shape. I created it during my senior year in college, while I was doing an independent study in poetry with Joan Larkin and Kate Johnson. Then I refined it a few years later, when I submitted it to the Yale Younger Poets contest. Now it's been nearly eight years since I first put it together, and I have a ton more poems worth integrating into it, which is great because there were some weaker poems in there originally that I needed to fill space.
Still, at times it's sort of like going back through your middle school yearbook. I cringe at the occasional turn of phrase or maudlin sentiment. But, it's much, much better than the middle school nostalgia trip because I can actually fix the lame crap in my writing.
I can tell it's been a while since I really concentrated on poetry, because when I first started looking at the poems in The First Year, I almost felt afraid to change them, like the roof would cave in or something equally dramatic. I was sitting there trying to decide if I should change a word or tab some lines over or whatever, and I would find myself speculating about it for five minutes instead of actually trying it. As long as you're smart about saving your versions, you can always get the original way back, and the only way to really improve and edit poetry (at least for me) is to really tear it apart and start messing around with it, trying different line breaks or punctuation or whatever the case may be. Actually, the editing process has always been one of the things I love most about writing poetry, which I guess is why it felt so funny to be momentarily paralyzed.
Anyway. Back to it. Cheers. Here, have a poem - this is the first one in The First Year.
she prays
let the birds shit on my head and bring me good fortune.
let the heron fly low over pine trees, o gods
let me round the curve just before it disappears.
let me be kind to the flowers & shameless as leaf-pummeling rains.
let me dance in the rain as if I am already dead.
let the music lead the way into the night’s mazes;
let me come out the other side.
let the sun rise for the first time tomorrow, and turn the sky to ashes.
let us collect the ashes and return them to the water where our loved ones rest.
o gods, let me live amazed; pores gasping, eyes wide.
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