We can rebuild him! Faster! Better! Stronger! The King! Of! Spain!

[truepenny]

After you have admitted that the book is currently a plate of dingoes' kidneys (which is apparently the step in my process after "finish the book"), the next thing you have to do is find the things you did right.

These are your bones, your bedrock. These are the things you're going to stand on while you try to figure out why the rest of the book has wobbled and capsized and is now collapsing like a flan in a cupboard.

In the particular case of Corambis, I know the ending is right. No, sorry. I know the climax is right. The ending is still very much a case of Magic Eight-Ball Says Ask Again Later. But I know the solution to my protagonists' several dilemmas is the right one, even though I now have to go back and set up the dilemmas properly. That's okay. It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. And the middle of the book has good stuff in it; whether it's right or not depends on what happens to the beginning and the end, but any scene with bog bodies is a good scene to have, just on general principles.

But the beginning. I've made a list of the things I know are right, and there are five of them. Only three of them are actual scenes; the other two are things that I know happen, but right now they're not happening the right way. The rest of it--and this is the first six or seven chapters--inspires in me a vague, squeamish embarrassment, which is the feeling you get when you know that what you've written is wrong, that you've only been faking the story. (Notice that shift from first person to second, even though I'm obviously still talking about me and my writing and my promise process. [Huh. Would you look at that? Freudian slip.] That would be a distancing technique, and it is another sign that several levels of my brain are very unhappy with the current draft.) So now I take those five things and I stare at them and spin them around and have them do handstands and try to see what the shape is of the story they're giving off. Not the story I've crowbarred them out of, but the story they belong in. The story I'm only now beginning to see, like knocking a hole in a plaster cast (with your crowbar, right?) and seeing the gleam of a bronze elbow.

Comments

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

After you have admitted that the book is currently a plate of dingoes' kidneys (which is apparently the step in my process after "finish the book")

You journal needs to come with a warning. I just scared the cat off my lap by laughing louder than usual.

Question for ya

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

So are you able to pull those good things out of your story as a whole very soon after you have written said story and then set to work with those good book-bones? Because this has been something I have struggled with a LOT. I can't effectively rewrite my own work until I get a big chunk of distance from it (months). If I try to take it apart and throw out the bad stuff right away I end up making mincemeat of it all.

I feel like a brain surgeon working with chain saws.

I envy your ability to know what needs to stay; your talent for finding the bones.

Re: Question for ya

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I can't do it immediately; right after finishing a book, I think it ALL sucks dead donkey dick (Ahem. Sorry. That may be a little more vivid than anybody needed.) I sent the book to my editor on August first and then didn't think about it except in passing for a month and a half. Thoughts occasionally wandered across my mind. I wrote them down and went on to other thoughts. And even after I got the edit letter Wednesday (which was my predetermined signal that I had to start thinking about the book again), it took me until today to get as far as being able to say, "These are the things that work.

It is NOT a speedy process.

Re: Question for ya

[muneraven.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Bog bodies? Bog bodies!

Really? Bog bodies!!!!!!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Really. Bog bodies. Plot-crucial bog bodies, even.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Woo-hooo!

Sorry. I get excited about bog bodies.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously, so do I. Nothing to apologize for.

[april-art.livejournal.com]

Hey, if there are bog bodies, you've sold me! (See? Don't even sweat the rest! It'll work out!) ^___~

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You're so much better at this revision than I am.

I just look at it and wail.

Today, when I was supposed to be revising, I have been to the bank, been grocery shopping, made 18 banana-choc-chip muffins, washed a load of sheets, hand washed three silk shirts and a bra, made packed lunches for Z and R, cooked myself breakfast, cooked dinner for all of us (it's in the oven) and changed (with Protext's excellent and reliable search and replace) "Mitchell" to "Maynard" throughout.

I could fix it, if I could only bring myself to read it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh, what I'm doing has nothing to do with the squamous unspeakable batrachian eldritch horror of actually reading what I've written. I'm working purely from memory.

Don't mention Lisa!

[xenacryst.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good approach. But if your book comes out with a cone on its head, I'll laugh.

Will it have an epilogue?

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Ewww I know that feeling of squeamish embarrassment all too well.

[(Anonymous)]

Dear Truepenny,
concerning your troubles with the newest novel: I'd just like to tell you that reading each of the previous ones has actually made me a happier person. So, thanks to you (and Felix ;)) I am now 3x happier than I was a month ago.

aleksandra
anzha_lyu@gazeta.pl

[darksybarite.livejournal.com]

W00t! to the random Fruvous!