NaNoWriMo day 30

Day 30

Well, I gave it my best shot, but didn’t quite make the 50k. I enjoyed making the effort and I am really pleased that, due to NaNoWriMo, my writing is once again a priority in my daily routine. It had been taking a back seat to any number of other activities every day that  my fear was that my current novel would never get finished. Well, having almost doubled the wordcount in November, revitalising the plot and getting to know my characters more intimately, my doubts have been eradicated.

I am almost there, people. The plot is as good as complete, almost every chapter has been worked out in detail. There’s lots of new dialogue and characters meeting each other and driving the plot along. The ending has been written, so I know where all the gaps in the narrative must lead to ultimately. So, I am satisfied.

Will I do it again next year? Lets just wait and see.

NaNoWriMo Day 12

It’s already day 12! Time is flying and I am beginning to wonder how close I will actually come to reaching 50.000 words by the end of the month. 

I had expected to write copious amounts in the weekend and therefore be under less pressure during the week to write a lot. But, as ever, I should not count my chickens before they are hatched. Saturday was a slow day. I had some vague ideas roaming around in my head, but they were just that, roaming and therefore hard to grasp. There were words, sentences, images, emotions but very little structure. Every so often I thought I caught one, but when I started to write, the flow dried up after about three sentences and it was back to mulling, chasing and feeling the words slip through my fingers like quicksand. 

I am not sure how many words I actually managed to get down, but it was not as many as I had hoped.

Sunday was a residue of Saturday’s frustration. Starting in the morning, I wrote two paragraphs, and then ran out of things to say. The weather however, was gorgeous so instead of wallowing in it I decided to take advantage and get out into the fresh air. Strolling along a nearby lake with the autumn sun on my face and observing others some with and some without dogs, some alone and some in couples cheered me up. I was able to evaluate my NaNoWriMo endeavors up to now, and be honest with myself about how important the 50.000 words are to me. 

When I looked at it clearly, I realized that the idea of ‘just getting the words down’ doesn’t always work for me. Oh, I applied it for the first couple of days and had clocked up a decent number of words. However, reading back on what I had written so that I could pick up the threads and write on, I became disillusioned.

Was I surrendering quality to quantity?

What is the point in writing 50.000 words just for the sake of it?

Do I want to have to scrap most of them come December?

I realized that by taking on this challenge I had in fact created an obstacle for myself instead of getting the juices flowing. That happens to me quite a lot. Once the pressure starts to build, I shut down. Creativity falls victim either to competition or to the need to perform. 

So I decided that, despite the word requirement, I was going to throw out all my worries about reaching the 50.000 words and give myself a more important goal: writing this novel in a voice and style that makes me happy and at a pace that the story itself dictates. 

In fact, summing this up I can say that external targets, imposed by others, sometimes hinder my progress rather than encourage me. The motivators that work for me are the internal ones, the ones with intrinsic rather than external rewards. 

Back behind my computer, with the promise of being true to the story, the words began to flow again, and the characters, who had been suffering my performance anxiety, now came back to life.

So, NaNoWriMo, I continue to write on a daily basis, but it is not the end of the world if my achievement at the end of the month is less than 50.000 words. 

Ironically, having decided to let go of the outside pressures and targets and to let the writing come from the right place and at its own pace, I actually clocked up a respectable 2.000 words in a couple of stolen hours before supper!

NaNoWriMo day 7

Having reached my target on Sunday for NaNoWriMo, Monday was a hard day. I ended up only writing about 300 words. And if I thought that was a poor result, yesterday had me writing quickly in my notebook before going to bed, after one of those really chaotic days when not only circumstances are confusing but your mind just won't seem to focus.

Being unable to concentrate on one idea or get control of my thoughts I decided to get back to basics. Basics for me means catching up on chores that I have been putting off. Cleaning the oven, microwave and dealing with other kitchen issues kept me busy all afternoon.

Then at the close of day, just when I thought I had narrowed things down to an approach that would get a new chapter started at least, two potential clients called and before I knew it I was racing against the clock to prepare the evening meal, fully determined to WRITE, WRITE, WRITE for the entire evening.

But, being there for a friend took priority, and hence, the sum total of my writing activities was reduced to a few scribbled notes before going to bed.

Anyhow, I now have two days backlog to catch up on. At least I have some notes to kick start this day 7.

NaNoWriMo day 5

By close of day 4

I had managed to get to the required wordcount to stay on track for the 50k target. Ik was really like pulling teeth yesterday. I should have known Sunday would be complicated. My kids, both in their twenties, were rambling in and out, filling me in on their bits and pieces, watching football on TV, and generally creating a rumble. Add to that that a really good friend had just lost her granny and was exchanging text messages with me which I continued to respond to.
We also have this tradition at my house that Sunday dinner be something special and I wanted to keep it that way. And after dinner we all settle down to watch So You Think You Can Dance, which has to be my favourite show of the week.
Well, with all of that going on, and exchanging posts with NaNoWriMo friends on FB I had my doubts about reaching the required word count. But, when I saw that some of my NaNo friends were already heading for 30k I was more determined than ever to at least achieve the minimum. At one stage I was typing blind while discussing algebra with my daughter - talk about split personality! At another, while fiction and reality merged, my typing almost mirrored the topic of conversation going on in my living room. How bizar is that?
I cooked my Sunday dinner, watched some TV, and at 11 o'clock last night was able to update my word count to well over 6600 words, sticking to the NaNo requirement.
Now I have to keep my fingers crossed that I haven't milked my creativity so much that I discover in a couple of hours that I have nothing to say or write today.
Day 5 here I come!

NaNoWriMo day 4

Day 4

Okay, people, I have checked out the NaNoWriMo site, and there are more like me out there. There's a special category of writer that has been labelled Rebel (Yeeh). That means someone who owns up to working on an existing work, aiming to add 50k words to it by the end of the month. Well, that's me. I have been working on a book for such a long time, and am using this month to finish the first draft. Not as easy as it sounds, given that most of the free flowing ideas have already been written and that it's a struggle to keep up that momentum for the whole of November. But, I am going to do my best.
Today however is a slow day. But, I am going to plod along, not get disheartened or bogged down. My objective is to do justice to the story, and if that takes another 50k words and these are written on time then I shall definitely validate as a bona fide NaNoWriMo achiever.

Become a donor and support literacy

NaNoWriMo day 2 and 3

I was convinced I had such a quiet life (?!?) that sticking to a NaNoWriMo schedule would be absolutely no problem at all. I had even rounded off all other obligations on Thursday. But, isn't it funny how we suddenly have all manner of things to do, important things, things that have to be done NOW, so many that writing gets shifted up the agenda until there are almost no hours left in the day? Well, in my life that is clearly no different. I got up yesterday morning, knowing I had to get my glassses fixed and had planned that in in the morning. But then, instead of just getting on with the writing business when I came back I remembered I wanted to call a translator friend, check out my pals on facebook, call a customer (could have waited until Monday) and the list goes on.
BUT, and here's the good news, when I finally sat down to write, I churned out almost 1500 words within two hours, and you know what, it's not a bad piece of writing.
Before I went to sleep I even wrote down some rough notes on the same chapter and have a kick start for today's writing activities.

NaNoWriMo day 1

 Stick with me. I am participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and plan to journal about my experiences each day. Whether I write or not, I will journal about what motivated and hindered. 

Day one: 

of NaNoWriMo was a busier one than I expected. Started as I had promised myself after breakfast but was interrupted by the telephone after 300 words. A new customer who had found me via my other FB page Write Away, Text and Design. Rush job, but I wanted to do it. Then I had a quick coffee meeting with another networker in the area, and got home at lunch time. Did the translation in the afternoon, interrupted by a regular customer who needed a quick brainstorm. 

Finally just before it was time to make dinner I got to 958 words and by close of day at 20:30 it was 1216.

All in all, I am satisfied.

And now the European Prize for Literature

                                                 Available on bol.com

Nederlandse versie

Just back from Ireland  and as usual with a stock of books bought at the airport Eason´s that always has great bargains and special offers. This time it was the three for two offer. I use such opportunities to be more experimental in my choice of book and perhaps pick an author I have previously not read.

And so I arrived home with three more books. The first of the three I decided to read was a small novel, about 50,000 words - the Man Booker Prize winner The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

Having missed the run up to the award ceremony and never having read anything by him before, I went into this book with zero expectation and entirely unbiased. About thirty pages in, I began to question the Man Booker Jury’s decision, as the story had, up to that point, failed to completely grab my attention. The narrative bordered on the superficial, characters remained two dimensional and it was unclear exactly what the motivation for this novel actually was.

Into part two, and my curiosity is sparked. I find myself grabbing odd moments to read a few pages. Barnes is, by his unusual approach enticing me to read on.

This is a first person narrative. The narrator, Tony, is a divorced man in his sixties, who, by means of an inheritance, is confronted with specific actions in his past.

The other characters in the novel are incomplete, almost caricature, but now I am beginning to get it. They could not be otherwise because the entire premise of the novel is in fact that Tony, the narrator, lacked the insight and empathy to understand those around him, even his closest friends. It is precisely his inability to  truly see and accurately assess situations and the behavior of those involved in them, that is the issue in this story.

The narrator has failed to enrich his emotional world by taking a plunge off the deep end and now, late in life, he realizes that he has structured his entire existence around maintaining his limited viewpoint. To see more, would have upset his equilibrium and his notion of who he was, and who others were in relation to him. The inheritance evokes old memories, old situations, and gives him a second chance as it were, to discover the truth.

But even in this latter phase of his life, having again failed to empathize with his old girlfriend, the same girlfriend he so badly misunderstood in the past, and left alone, the penny finally drops.

It is with a sense of melancholy and regret that the story comes to a close.

The fact that Barnes has managed to keep the reader intrigued and curious, while at the same time creating a narrator with such a limited viewpoint is an amazing feat. I, the reader, see every situation through the eyes of a limited protagonist. His reality is my reality. I believe it completely. Only when the scales partially fall from his eyes and not a second sooner, do they fall from mine.

It is ironical and paradoxical that in a first person narrative with just such a narrator, Barnes displays amazing insight and understanding of human nature.  It is therefore only on finishing the book, and pondering on it, that I truly realized just how great this book really was.

A well-deserved Man Booker Prize Winner.  And now, winner of the European Prize for Literature!

Start again

Don't be like Gaudi! You finished your novel, now move on.

You are still deeply involved with your completed novel, and if you add the disappointment of rejection to your already sombre mood at having to put the characters you’ve spent so long getting to know and love, to rest, then you may be feeling ungrounded, and unfocussed.

How do you counter this? The best way to reconnect with the world and your creativity is to get started on your next project.

But allow for that period of grieving. Take the time to say goodbye to your previous work. Distance yourself from it. Continue to send it out to publishers and agents by all means, but accept that emotionally, it is done. Recognise what you are feeling and integrate it. Denying it, or trivialising it will not help. Just as writing the novel brought you to new levels of awareness, so too will saying goodbye. Every emotion is a valid emotion. And each one has its place in your consciousness.

Completing a novel is a huge achievement. In order to get to this point you learned to take yourself seriously. You faced your demons, listened to the subconscious voices, and embraced them. Well, the completion of the novel, and the farewell to the characters you’ve nurtured for some months, demands the same level of consciousness and the same commitment to your emotional world. Using exactly the same tools as were employed in reaching your authenticity, the journal (posted in the blog archive), the time management, the solitude where appropriate, you can say goodbye.

Say goodbye, accept it, and take the rejection by agents and publishers and remember that these days that does not reflect on the value of your work. These days, self publishing, POD publishing and other avenues for showcasing your work, are acceptable and respectable. If, for you, the novel is only complete when it is out there, then pursue that, but, at the same time, make use of the emotional and psychological space you have created through this mourning phase, to start soaking up new ideas, new inspirations.

If writing a novel took solitude and a retreating into self, then this period should have you reconnecting with the outside world; it should have you observing and participating all at the same time. Your notebook should be close at hand, and all and any observations should be written down. Remember nothing is too silly, too insignificant, or too trivial. As I illustrated way back in my first article (posted in the blog archive), the mundane is only mundane when not used properly. Washing dishes, doing housework, talking to your local grocer, browsing the DIY store, observing fellow drivers while stuck in a traffic jam, can all be incorporated into your novel. Or, think about how you might process the difficulties that you have faced in life. Sometimes writing about them, or using the emotion you felt to drive another story, can take you to the next level in your strive for autonomy and peace of mind, as well as helping you make your writing more significant. Be aware, be fully conscious, because the next novel might be just around the corner.

And the most important thing to remember is, that you can be working this new project, while winding down the old one. My own experience has taught me that moving on and allowing the seed of a new story to take root in your head and heart is probably the healthiest thing you can do while you wait for your previous work to be published. If you ‘get stuck’ on only finding a publisher then being a writer will be a cause for frustration and disappointment. Even self-publishing, though taking time and determination, will not give the same satisfaction and peace of mind that writing itself does. So, combine the two, by all means. Or at least, give yourself permission to do both, even if the new project is no more than jotting down notes, and journaling. This is your mental well-being.

A Widow for one Year

It took a while to get through this one! But I didn't want to give up. It's like that with John Iriving, he is, unfortunately, long winded. However, his wonderful prose make this forgivable. I think the story really came to life for me when Ruth, the main character, hit the streets of Amsterdam. John Irving said in a lecture that his research kept him in Amsterdam for a while, and it was obvious by the revitalised prose, that the visit did him good. The writing and the story stepped up a notch and where I had trouble keeping going for the first half of the book, I found myself staying in bed on saturday and sunday mornings, just so I could read some more! However, where Ruth's story had me captivated, the other story line built around Eddie was harder to believe.
Clearly John Irving and Ruth were one and the same, though writing himself as a woman kept the prose light. Also, where he usually has a wrestler in his storied, Ruth was a strong squash player. Being Ruth, and yet not being Ruth gave Irving permission to push the envelop on female sexuality, and other feminine preconceptions, and reevaluate them.
Fascinating piece of work!

On The Train - another excerpt from Trash Fire

People were staring, she realised. From the next compartment a little boy, tugging at his mother’s sleeve with one hand and pointing at Julie with the other, had brought attention to her. The boy giggled; the mother smiled, though there was no trace of malice in the gently curved mouth. Julie gave the mother a watery smile in return then fumbled in her pocket for a tissue to wipe her wet face.


The man in the seat opposite, as in all the best movies, handed her a large, white handkerchief.

“Keep it,” he told her. “I have plenty more.”

She felt the colour rise to her cheeks. How could she have made such a spectacle of herself? She wiped her face with the hanky, then again like in all the best movies, she blew her nose loudly.

“Thank you,” she said to the man sitting across from her. “Thank you.”

The train rattled along. She leaned her elbow on the window ledge, rested her head on her hand. Her breath was still coming in uneven gasps, and she could feel her eyes burning, and she just knew her nose was like a bright red tomato.

She wasn’t even sure why she cried any more. It had become as natural to her as breathing, or eating. Throughout the day, at unexpected moments, when she was sitting still, the tears would come. Silently at first they trickled down her face, then, as they gathered momentum, her breathing would become uneven, and a sob would escape her. Before long her shoulders would heave and panic would set in. Would it ever end, this grief?

And now the ultimate shame – she had cried in public. On a train to be exact. With a little boy pointing and giggling while his mother looked on sympathetically. And a man, an unknown stranger had given her his crisp, cotton handkerchief.

The train rattled further its rhythm soothing like the rocking of a baby’s cradle. Her breathing steadied; the urge to gulp dissipated. She was able to drag herself back into reality, and thoughts of what lay ahead. She leaned her elbow on the small, silver ashtray next to the window, rested her chin in her hand, the side of her head pressed against the glass. The countryside, with a bright, September sun shining down upon it a green so sharp it hurt the eyes, darted past.

The little boy who had watched her so intently, and pointed when her sobbing had become too extreme, soon lost interest and began to groan in boredom at his mother, and to tug at her sleeve and whinge about not having anything to do. Julie smiled as she heard the mother say in a pinched, tight voice: we’re nearly there, darling. Just be patient. Oh, the lie. They had at least another hour to go. Julie expected that the mother secretly longed to give the little sod a clip or at least yell at him at the top of her lungs. That’s what mothers did when no one was around to catch them. Only in public did they talk in that awful, frustrated voice and pretend they were infinitely gentle. Julie could sigh in relief that she had left her two at home. She was free to close her eyes and speed up the journey by taking a nap. The luxury of it.

The Dreaded Block

When it comes to the writing process there are particular subjects that continue to intrigue me. The most intriguing being the phenomenon “Writer’s Block”. It can happen to anyone, at any time. You can be right in the middle of a novel, and suddenly, despite all the meticulous preparation, and despite being highly motivated, your mind goes blank, and there you sit, in front of your computer screen, scrolling back and forth over what you’ve written, and not one single syllable comes to mind to kick start you into the next phase. Then again it can happen right at the beginning of your novel when you’ve completed your synopsis, plot line and chapter breakdown, and you simply cannot find that suitable opening sentence.

It might even happen that you’ve completed your novel, and want to improve on that rough first draft. You know it needs improvement, you know it could be better, you feel it dragging. And yet, you can’t do a thing. You are stumped!
I have encountered the block at all the above mentioned phases and have come to the conclusion that all stem from the same problem – fear. That deep rooted fear that you just don’t have it in you. It can crop up at any time. Whether you have just started writing, or are putting that novel to bed, fear can return and paralyse you creatively.

I know I have touched on this subject before but it is such a fundamental issue I still feel I need to unravel it some more.

To move on from mediocre to marvellous fiction writing, all our fears must be faced, acknowledged and ultimately, overcome. And I suspect there’s not a single writer who hasn’t faced the fear. Of course by the time authors appear on television or are seen at lectures and signings, they have managed to move on from their fear and insecurity and appear to us perhaps to be brimming with confidence, but don’t be fooled. These authors too, have known that fear, that ‘break out in a cold sweat’ moment when they have thought they had written their last sentence and that the bubble had burst.

Seeing early interviews with J.K. Rowling you can see her fear, her insecurity and her disbelief that her books are selling like hotcakes and this kind of fear might have even prevented her from writing the next Harry Potter. See her in later interviews and she is a lot calmer, a lot more confident. She has overcome her fear and in its place she has found a true belief in her own abilities as a writer. She has the confidence to acknowledge her talent.

So how do we go from fear to self-belief? How do we jump that hurdle successfully at whatever stage it confronts us?

The first step to overcoming fear, and not only in relation to our writing, but in life too, is to recognise it. No use trying to pretend it’s not there, or disguise it as something else, this will only make it’s debilitating effect on us even worse. When fear is denied it transforms into all sorts of crippling alternatives. Those alternatives range from anger, irritation, obstinacy to depression if it is allowed to continue till it reaches chronic proportions. Ignoring fear or over-compensating will not have lasting effective results on ourselves or our writing.

So you’re blocked, and you know fear has reared its ugly head and stolen the words from you. Face it. Say it aloud, or write it down in capital letters. I AM AFRAID. Next, get specific. What are you afraid of, why are you afraid, and what has caused the fear to rise to the surface now?

Fear can be of many things. Fear of failure, of success, of criticism. Which of these is it in your case? Or is it all of these?

Fear of failure – giving in to this will certainly create failure, and will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do nothing and your worst fear is reality. You will have failed. You will not have completed your novel to the best it could be.

Fear of success – giving in to this one is an enormous act of self-sabotage. It is nothing more than a fear of the unknown. And just think about how awful you feel right now with that half-finished novel and know that success can never feel this bad!

Fear of criticism – is the criticism of others any more painful than the amount of self-criticism you are dishing out when you sit at that incomplete work and knock yourself on the head about it? I don’t think so.

In the three situations the first step to overcoming the fear is to get back to just writing for the hell of it, totally and utterly for yourself, and because you wanted to. If you can do this you allow yourself to write any old rubbish for a while until your body and mind are retrained into the practice of writing. You will recover the Writing Process in the pure form it had when you set out on this undertaking. Know you may be writing rubbish initially, and give yourself permission to laugh at your efforts later. If you are feeling really courageous you might even allow some discerning person close to you to read these efforts. That way you will disempower your fears.

If you crash into the wall of writer´s block half way through your novel then it is particularly important to stop and examine how you are feeling, and recognise your fear. Usually at this stage the fear stems from the ensuing dive into the unknown. This is a particularly menacing fear, encompassing not only the fear of success (actually moving on and completing the novel) but also the stomach churning fear that all your careful preparation has been to no avail and that you are ultimately going to fail – fail to complete the novel, or worse still, complete it and discover it is not worthy of the time and effort that went into it.

Have faith, and give yourself permission to turn the unknown corner. Toss aside the notion of the imaginary public, and go on the journey of discovery that your story wants you to undertake, just for you.

It takes courage to write a novel, so be courageous.

Courageous people are not those who do not feel fear, they are those who feel fear and do what they have to do anyway.


AND REMEMBER, NOTHING IS WRITTEN IN BLOOD. IT CAN ALL BE ERASED AND RE-WRITTEN. IT IS ALL YOURS.

Moving On

In the last few posts I have been commenting on the books I have read that have inspired my life, as much as my writing, after having written a lot on my own writing process. The process was written mostly around the birth and growth of my novel, The Cloths of Heaven.
Another novel that I loved writing, and one that was an even more intense emotional journey (if that is possible) is Trash Fire. I hope you enjoy the excerpt included here. It is also one that was written after I had analysed the process and written about it in my previous posts. So, it was also a case of practising what I preached!


MOVING ON
Madeline led her out to the car. Have you ever been in the heart of Connemara before? She asked.
Julie shook her head. Only to Clifden, but then everybody has been to Clifden.
You’ll love our farm. Utterly isolated, but with the advantage of electricity, and good sanitation. We grow our own vegetables, of course, and never eat meat. Bread we bake, though we do buy the flour from the health food store in town.
And Julie did love it. She loved the smell of the peat and the dew in the early morning, fresh and vitalising. She loved the sight of the mauve mist over the black velvet mountains. She loved the feel of the damp, cold grass beneath her naked feet. And when she listened carefully she could hear the bleating sheep on a distant valley and the trickle of the mountain stream. Peace at last.
She helped in the vegetable garden, plucking the weeds from between the onion shoots. She hoed the thick, compacted soil loose so new crops could be planted. She harvested the beans and carrots, the food they would eat in the evenings.
She thought of her own garden, back home. Hers and only hers. The only gardening Dick did was mowing the lawn and then only on the sunniest of days. And because the mowing was his task he had purchased a motor mower for himself. He had wanted to buy one that he could sit on, and steer, so that all he had to do was take care that he drove in a straight line, and gulp beer from a can.
He didn’t. He feared he might look a fool for the neighbours who still pushed their hand mowers and raked the grass into neat piles afterwards. Instead he bought a Flymo with a grass collector and generally took no longer than fifteen minutes to trim their suburban patch of grass. When he was finished he lounged under the parasol in his cushioned recliner and read the paper while drops of perspiration dribbled down his neck and under his white cotton shirt.
And while Dick recovered from his exertion, Julie weeded and thinned and fertilised her vegetable patch at the back of the garden where the sun shone its finest and the hedgerows gave protection from the west wind. She planned to replace the hedgerows next season with some gooseberry bushes that would serve the same purpose but be much more practical. She fancied cultivating a strawberry patch too, and eventually a small vine to creep along the fence that separated her garden from the one next door, on the sunny side of course.
A shadow fell over her. Julie looked up to see Madeline blocking out the sun. She smiled.
You seem to know what you’re doing, Madeline remarked.
I learned it from my mother, Julie said. It’s still a hobby of mine.
The garden, its produce, her grubby hands and nails blackened with soil, all transported her back to when her mother lived, and chattered and tended her vegetables. Past mingled with present. Mother returned to Julie’s mind and heart."
(C) Geraldine Nesbitt 2010

Promise

A while back I went to a lecture. Barbara Kingsolver of The Bean Trees fame was the guest speaker. Her opening remark was a general one, applicable to all her novels. She says that when she begins a new novel, she makes a promise, to herself and to the reader. The novel is successful in her eyes if she has, at its conclusion fulfilled that promise.
So, I thought that now would be a good time to ask that question and to discuss it further.
Now, as we prepare to re-read our first draft, and where necessary, edit it, I think it is of utmost importance to answer the question: Have I kept my promise in this novel? Have I come through, completed the task?
After the lecture I thought about The Cloths of Heaven, the basis for this topic, and asked that question and had to smile, because I had neatly packed the novel between a Prologue and an Epilogue, both incorporating some of the same sentences and scenes. In the Prologue I had asked the question: Was James’ Street secret to be buried forever? And in the Prologue I have uncovered the secrets, given an answer to the question, and tied up the loose ends. What was my promise then, in this novel? The promise was to give an answer to that question and I did. The circle is complete, no loose ends, and a feeling of satisfaction at the novel’s conclusion.
Making a promise when you set out, or asking that question that sparks off the novel, will give the novel its direction, will help you to filter the elements and utilise them fully. So that’s what you do first, when it comes to revising your novel. Ensure you have fulfilled your promise or answered that all-important question.
Once you have established that, you can begin reading and revising. Other elements can now be considered simultaneously with that first question. You will find that there are passages that do not add to the fulfilment of the promise or pivotal question, and at these points you need to ask yourself what they add to the novel, if anything. Maybe they are descriptive of character or place. They might add an extra dimension in perception or be useful in adding clarity to the setting. If they do none of these things, it might in fact be better for the novel as a whole to scrap them. And be ruthless. Pieces of banality will weaken a potentially strong story.
There may be passages where the pace lags, or where you seem to skim over issues. Here you can either trim down or expand. Sometimes the sequence of events needs to be reconsidered in order to maintain the suspense or to heighten the emotional power of a chapter. Sometimes even whole chapters ought to be switched around. Remember, before you decided to write fiction you were widely read, so trust your gut on these matters. When does foreshadowing (hinting at an incident in the future) add to the novel, and when does it spoil the suspense? This is an individual issue, and the answer will vary from novel to novel.
In some psychological thrillers, the victim and the murderer may be revealed in the first chapter, and the purpose of the novel will be to have the investigator discover what we already know. In other novels, the power of the novel lies in keeping the reader in the dark until the last moment, and laying clues that will have the reader constantly guessing ‘whodunnit’. Both forms are equally valid, but once the promise is made, the novel must adhere to that one route. To swap and change within the novel will in fact, break the promise to the reader, and weaken the novel. As a reader you know this, so as a writer, you will ‘feel’ it when you’ve got it right.
In The Cloths of Heaven, one of the characters dies. In my first draft I actually foreshadowed that event with a rogue sentence which simply stated ‘he died’ about two chapters before it in fact, happened. Instead of strengthening this event, I had weakened it, made it banal, and almost made the following chapters, redundant. I took out that one statement, and brought the power back into the prose.
I would recommend that when you are reading that first draft, every time you feel your energy sapping away, just put a mark in the margin, even if you don’t know what’s wrong with the paragraph or sentence or whatever. On a second or third reading, when you’ve trimmed and enhanced other, more obvious faux pas, take the time to examine these again. Chances are, it might just be a badly constructed sentence, or paragraph that is difficult to read. Simplify it. Is it too long? Then split it into two sentences. Does it add to the story or could you do without it? Then scrap it.
Sometimes it’s hard to erase a part of your creation. Sometimes there’s that one, beautiful sentence, the one you fear you may never write again. And yet, it doesn’t fit in. So you have to take it out.
In order to reduce the pain of this process, I have a reserve document, just for these sentences and paragraphs, a place where I put them out to pasture, instead of killing them off completely. I may never look at them again, but just knowing they are there, in case….., makes editing more bearable.