The Art of Revision

Writing is rewriting…if you fall in

love with the vision you want of your

work and not your words, the rewriting

will become easier. __ Nora Deloach

 This is harder to do than it sounds.

I must apologize for being so neglectful of posting here recently.  The last few months I’ve been rewriting my WIP and finding it challenging, to say the least.

To keep this concise, I’ve fiddled around with the second chapter, cutting this, inserting that, moving things around, making changes to the information and moving that around.  I’ve tried to get into my character’s head, listen to what she’s hearing, and feel what she’s feeling.

I’ve rewritten this particular chapter numerous times and finally decided it would work best if I combined it with another chapter further in the book.  Eventually, after two months of this business, I told myself I have to be satisfied at some point because I could go on revising forever.  That’s out of the question because I have many more chapters to rewrite, so it’s now in the hands of two gals who are good enough to read it for me, for which I’m grateful.

I’m now working on chapter three and finding myself up against another struggle.  I wonder sometimes if we really know what we’re in for when we decide to sit down in the first place and write a story.

It still comes down to the fact that for me writing is all magic.  I can’t seem to stop my mind from spinning tales.  Every story starts out with an idea in my head, something I can see from start to finish--up to a point.  Nothing is ever set in concrete because once I start writing it, sometimes that changes, as my characters tend to take over.  One of my favorite parts is writing the rough draft because I can let my imagination go wild and throw everything to the wind as long as I follow my main points I set out beforehand.

The rewriting is a tough one, to polish it all out into one beautifully written story that will keep a reader from becoming bored.  This isn’t an easy task when there are so many things to keep in mind during the polishing process.

If you find me absent at times, now you know why.