editing/revising/rewriting
Jul. 20th, 2006 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyThere is one reassuring thing about having to rewrite the ending of this book, namely that it's exciting. I'm psyched. I haven't been psyched about this book in years.
And I'm deeply relieved, because I was starting to wonder if my enthusiasm was permanently busted.
And I think it shows the difference between rewriting and revising.
Let's take a terminology break. Here's how I'm using these words:
EDITING is cleaning up on the sentence level. You know, punctuation, grammar, whoa nelly that sentence has five dependent clauses nested in it, maybe we should separate that out a little. Moving paragraphs around. Making hooks hookier. That kind of thing.
REVISING is actually changing what you wrote. (This is where most college students in English classes sit down by the roadside and refuse to go on.) It's work on the content level (ideas), rather than the form level (sentence structure, grammar, etc.). It involves a lot of saying, What was I thinking? and it frequently hurts. The relief it brings is the relief of popping a blister, not the relief of having worn the sensible shoes in the first place.
And REWRITING is when you say, I didn't like that baby anyway, and throw the whole bathtub out. This is where you tear free entirely of the old framework--revising is about trying to straighten things out and reinforce with duct-tape, a major rehaul, but not a new engine. Rewriting is a brand new engine. Rather than having the characters do the same thing in a different way, you let them try doing a different thing.
I find rewriting can be incredibly liberating, because it means you can stop trying to fit widget A and gizmo B together as you've been doing for the past FIFTEEN THOUSAND YEARS and throw them both at the wall. You can pick a new widget and a new gizmo, and you've got a much better idea of what shapes they need to be and what they need to do when you spin them.
It feels clean, rewriting does, whereas revising is dirty.
I'm enjoying myself. And that's something to celebrate.
And I'm deeply relieved, because I was starting to wonder if my enthusiasm was permanently busted.
And I think it shows the difference between rewriting and revising.
Let's take a terminology break. Here's how I'm using these words:
EDITING is cleaning up on the sentence level. You know, punctuation, grammar, whoa nelly that sentence has five dependent clauses nested in it, maybe we should separate that out a little. Moving paragraphs around. Making hooks hookier. That kind of thing.
REVISING is actually changing what you wrote. (This is where most college students in English classes sit down by the roadside and refuse to go on.) It's work on the content level (ideas), rather than the form level (sentence structure, grammar, etc.). It involves a lot of saying, What was I thinking? and it frequently hurts. The relief it brings is the relief of popping a blister, not the relief of having worn the sensible shoes in the first place.
And REWRITING is when you say, I didn't like that baby anyway, and throw the whole bathtub out. This is where you tear free entirely of the old framework--revising is about trying to straighten things out and reinforce with duct-tape, a major rehaul, but not a new engine. Rewriting is a brand new engine. Rather than having the characters do the same thing in a different way, you let them try doing a different thing.
I find rewriting can be incredibly liberating, because it means you can stop trying to fit widget A and gizmo B together as you've been doing for the past FIFTEEN THOUSAND YEARS and throw them both at the wall. You can pick a new widget and a new gizmo, and you've got a much better idea of what shapes they need to be and what they need to do when you spin them.
It feels clean, rewriting does, whereas revising is dirty.
I'm enjoying myself. And that's something to celebrate.
