Would you mind discussing the "white-page rewrite" a bit? Is that exactly what it sounds like...blank page, blinking cursor?
Pretty much. I did the white-page rewrite after I'd written the sequel, and writing the sequel taught me a lot about voice and narrative pacing, so I had some new insight into what it was I was trying to do.
The plot stayed roughly the same (which was a necessity imposed by the existence of the sequel, but which I think turned out to be a virtue, because otherwise who knows where we would have ended up). Especially in the beginning, it was a matter of looking at a given scene, figuring out what it was doing that was necessary (as opposed to things it was doing that were self-indulgent or dead-ends or simply ineffective), and then rewriting from scratch. The rewriting uniformly involved including more details, both in world-building and in character development, and more and more frequently as the process went on, entire new scenes. The ur-manuscript (I call it that because I really hate the title I came up with) is roughly the same length as Mélusine, although it covers the events of both Mélusine and The Virtu.
The principal and most critical thing that happened in the rewrite was that I learned to think things through. For example, in the passage I used in this post, it's only in the third version that Mildmay refuses to talk to Ginevra in a crowded bar. Which is an obvious and sensible precaution, but one that didn't occur to me until I sat down and really thought about what I was writing, instead of thinking with my genre conventions. And it was the process of white-page rewriting that made me do that thinking.
I should probably also mention that I began the rewrite in September '01. The first half of it, Mélusine, was finished (by which I mean I delivered the ms to my editor) in February '04. The second half ... *ahem* The second half will be done at the end of this month, or my editor will be very cross with me. This kind of rewriting is not an efficient process, and if you hurry it, you lose the value, because hurrying will make you default right back to the version you're trying to escape. It's also hellishly draining--but I have to say, in my case it was worth it.
no subject
Pretty much. I did the white-page rewrite after I'd written the sequel, and writing the sequel taught me a lot about voice and narrative pacing, so I had some new insight into what it was I was trying to do.
The plot stayed roughly the same (which was a necessity imposed by the existence of the sequel, but which I think turned out to be a virtue, because otherwise who knows where we would have ended up). Especially in the beginning, it was a matter of looking at a given scene, figuring out what it was doing that was necessary (as opposed to things it was doing that were self-indulgent or dead-ends or simply ineffective), and then rewriting from scratch. The rewriting uniformly involved including more details, both in world-building and in character development, and more and more frequently as the process went on, entire new scenes. The ur-manuscript (I call it that because I really hate the title I came up with) is roughly the same length as Mélusine, although it covers the events of both Mélusine and The Virtu.
The principal and most critical thing that happened in the rewrite was that I learned to think things through. For example, in the passage I used in this post, it's only in the third version that Mildmay refuses to talk to Ginevra in a crowded bar. Which is an obvious and sensible precaution, but one that didn't occur to me until I sat down and really thought about what I was writing, instead of thinking with my genre conventions. And it was the process of white-page rewriting that made me do that thinking.
I should probably also mention that I began the rewrite in September '01. The first half of it, Mélusine, was finished (by which I mean I delivered the ms to my editor) in February '04. The second half ... *ahem* The second half will be done at the end of this month, or my editor will be very cross with me. This kind of rewriting is not an efficient process, and if you hurry it, you lose the value, because hurrying will make you default right back to the version you're trying to escape. It's also hellishly draining--but I have to say, in my case it was worth it.