Please tell me it's pretty, please don't tell me it's ugly. Look, the ears are symetrical and the eyes are such a pale blue. The hair is so fine and blonde and the skin so soft and pink. The sentences are balanced, the words well chosen and the plot finely honed. Please tell me you like it.
For years I have been telling my students that sending out short stories for publication is like showing your baby to the world and asking for kindness. Your writing is so personal, and so close to your heart, that sending them out is like leaving your baby at the creche for the first day and hoping the other children will play with them.
Okay, maybe I'm going a little over the top, but it is nerve wracking!
In the last couple of weeks I have had a story I am particularly fond of rejected. Entitled 'Palimpsest' it was written as a flash fiction, but then honed to make sure all the layers could be read, one through the other. I sent it out in Februrary and it has only just come back, so - with so long to dwell on it - I had innured myself to the possibility of disappontment. It still stings, as all rejections do.
However, at almost the same time the lovely people at Bugged - the eavesdropping project I have waffled on about in previous posts - have accepted a different story, also written as flash fiction and entitled 'The Four' for publication in their anothology which comes out in mid-October. And that eases the sting and warms the heart. They liked my child enough to put his photo in the gallery!
Surrounding these two events I have been researching and reading and editing and rewriting and sending out stories to a variety of places. Over a dozen have gone out in the last week. I know most of them will come back to me to be sent out once again for adoption. But some of them - I hope! - will find good homes where they can grow and prosper. I will, of course, keep you posted.
In amongst all this story work, I have also been working on my novel. I have re-read it, and given it to my girlfriend to read and comment on too (Thanks, Kath!). If you think it's bad having someone read a story, ask them to read a novel. This is far more personal than asking for compliments for your baby. This is asking for your soul to be evaluated. Thankfully, it seems to pass muster (the book, that is, I can't comment on my soul), and now I am onto the work of rewriting and reworking into the second draft. After that, and maybe some more tinkering, it will be time to send that out into the world too. You'll know when that happens as I will be online every five minutes, sharing my worries.
Sometimes I ask why I put myself through this torment, but it's the age old thing. If I write a story and show it to no-one then it might as well not have been written. Only when a story is shared and read does it really exist. And so, it's not so much sending the child out into the world, having a manuscript accepted is the very act of birth itself, giving life to something new.
So, I shall go back to my gestation and let you know as and when the brood increases. I shall push and I shall do my best to remember my breathing. If you'll just hold my hand, mop my brow, and ignore the screams, I think we can get through this.
Showing posts with label rewriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rewriting. Show all posts
Monday, 6 September 2010
Monday, 16 August 2010
Adventures in Rewiring
Take the thick wire and follow it through walls, under floorboards, round the various sockets and light-fittings. Then, once you know its length and path, yank it out and replace it with a thicker, dual-core wire which will work better and not send the house up in smoke. Done that? Good. Now do it with the other 96 wires, make sure none of them take a wrong turn or will short-circuit the others, and you're done.
No, I've not changed jobs and ditched writing altogether in favour of a life as an electrician, but it seemed like an apt analogy for the job I am currently undertaking. After a hiatus of 18 months, I am returning to my novel, Endless Days, with its twisty-turny fragmented storyline (and a disintegrating narrative voice, don't forget that - like pulling the wires through crumbly dry-rot), and attempting to rewrite, edit and generally sort the damn thing out.
I started the book way back in the beginning of 2007. I ground to halt around May of that year, with just 11,000 words done. Following some personal interruptions, I picked it up again in early 2008 and finally finished the 100,000 words in January 2009. Since then more personal interruptions have stopped me returning to it - or wanting to - but now I've been drawn back to it.
I did wonder, last year, if I would ever return to it. Maybe it was dead and maybe it was better to leave it like that. But a couple of months ago, on a long car journey, I suddenly discovered that I was thinking about it and wondering if that section from chapter 30 might not make a better opening. And should my epilogue be my prologue? And should I change the narrative voice? If so, how? And on, and on... And so I find myself with the block of paper in my hand, setting out to trace all the conduits and see if I can't get the lights on again.
Rewriting is always a strange thing, but doing it with something which has lain fallow for so long is very strange, as it seems familiar but it no longer feels like your words. In some ways that is good, as you can be more objective and so hack and trim without a care. In other ways it's strange, as you discover things you had forgotten and start to feel a little abstracted from it, like you are floating above the work and looking down at it with detached interest but none of the emotional connection which made you write it in the first place.
All that notwithstanding, I am currently in the reading phase, and despite the problems with those first 11,000 words, which seem to belong to a different book, I am enjoying it. The distance means I can read it like any old book and enjoy it for what it was. At the moment, I am not trying to work out how to solve the problems, I am letting the little guy who lives in the back of my brain work on those, as he does on so much else. Instead I am just taking it in, soaking in it, letting it diffuse through my pores and fill me up again. Then it will be out with the pliers, the wire-trimmers and we'll start restringing those cables.
I will update on the process as I go along, and let you know every time I electrocute myself or black out the whole block. Hopefully, by the end, the house will still be standing and the lights will be blazing. Here's hoping.
PS. Ever noticed how easy it is to write the word 'rewiring' when you mean 'rewriting'...?
No, I've not changed jobs and ditched writing altogether in favour of a life as an electrician, but it seemed like an apt analogy for the job I am currently undertaking. After a hiatus of 18 months, I am returning to my novel, Endless Days, with its twisty-turny fragmented storyline (and a disintegrating narrative voice, don't forget that - like pulling the wires through crumbly dry-rot), and attempting to rewrite, edit and generally sort the damn thing out.
I started the book way back in the beginning of 2007. I ground to halt around May of that year, with just 11,000 words done. Following some personal interruptions, I picked it up again in early 2008 and finally finished the 100,000 words in January 2009. Since then more personal interruptions have stopped me returning to it - or wanting to - but now I've been drawn back to it.
I did wonder, last year, if I would ever return to it. Maybe it was dead and maybe it was better to leave it like that. But a couple of months ago, on a long car journey, I suddenly discovered that I was thinking about it and wondering if that section from chapter 30 might not make a better opening. And should my epilogue be my prologue? And should I change the narrative voice? If so, how? And on, and on... And so I find myself with the block of paper in my hand, setting out to trace all the conduits and see if I can't get the lights on again.
Rewriting is always a strange thing, but doing it with something which has lain fallow for so long is very strange, as it seems familiar but it no longer feels like your words. In some ways that is good, as you can be more objective and so hack and trim without a care. In other ways it's strange, as you discover things you had forgotten and start to feel a little abstracted from it, like you are floating above the work and looking down at it with detached interest but none of the emotional connection which made you write it in the first place.
All that notwithstanding, I am currently in the reading phase, and despite the problems with those first 11,000 words, which seem to belong to a different book, I am enjoying it. The distance means I can read it like any old book and enjoy it for what it was. At the moment, I am not trying to work out how to solve the problems, I am letting the little guy who lives in the back of my brain work on those, as he does on so much else. Instead I am just taking it in, soaking in it, letting it diffuse through my pores and fill me up again. Then it will be out with the pliers, the wire-trimmers and we'll start restringing those cables.
I will update on the process as I go along, and let you know every time I electrocute myself or black out the whole block. Hopefully, by the end, the house will still be standing and the lights will be blazing. Here's hoping.
PS. Ever noticed how easy it is to write the word 'rewiring' when you mean 'rewriting'...?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)