Editing Continues. . .

I can't quite read all the henscratchings -- one of the risks you run when you hand-write corrections and suggestions on a manuscript -- but the GOOD news is, thusfar, I'm pretty sure I've made all those points. Happy day.

Rebuking the Wise Man

Do not reprove the scorner, the writer of Proverbs warns, “lest he hate thee.” Rather, “rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.”

“Give instruction to a wise man,” Proverbs Chapter 9 continues, “and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.”

As you revise your own writing and as you accept revision and criticism from others, be the wise man and be wiser. Be the just man, and increase in learning.

It’s natural for any writer to defend what he or she has written. A lot of time, a lot of labor, and a lot of love go into the stories we create. But we do ourselves, our stories, and our readers a great disservice if we don’t revise, or if we stop revising too soon.

In April 2016, author Obert Skye delivered a talk at TEDx Idaho Falls in which he calls revision “frustratingly magical.”

He imagined as a child sitting down in a warm field to write, and writing a wonderful story on the first try. That, of course, never happened. Instead, he discovered the best stories came to him through revision. "Good ideas can get lost or become hidden or never discovered,” he says, “if they are buried under the laziness and misconception of a job well done."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqK6-ePxPa8

A scorner might say that revision piled upon revision shows a story not worthy of being told in the first place. In some cases they might be right. But to the keen writer, who realizes imagination ought to play second fiddle to the inspiration that comes through revision, wisdom comes.

Skye continues: “Revision is understanding. It is long-suffering. It is inquisitive, it solves things. It is the detective of writing.”

The scorner compares what is written to a human baby: Precious, darling, worthy of protection at all costs.

But truth be told there are some ugly, ugly babies out there.

A friend of the family has a way around saying a person’s baby is ugly. Presented with a homely child, she simply says, “Oh, what beautiful hair.” And the hair can indeed be beautiful, even if the baby it’s attached to is not.

Nathan Shumate, author of the web comic Cheap Caffiene, says recognizing that ugliness is essential for artists and writers.

“Even with my literal babies,” he says, “whose birth I attended in all four instances, I did not think they were beautiful because I loved them. I loved them, yes, but I also acknowledged that they looked like all newborns do: like red, wrinkly turds.”

http://lousybookcovers.com/?p=10780

Maybe this all sounds cruel. But as with the Ugly Duckling, the ugly baby with the beautiful hair, the red, wrinkly turds outgrow their homeliness and become more beautiful as time goes on.

This is what the wise man knows, when it comes time to revise. The wise man looks at what he has written and sees at once the beautiful hair and the wrinkly turdiness of what lies before him.

The wise man knows at revision, the ugliness, the turdiness is replaced – slowly at times – with the stately white feathers of the swan that was once, in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, called a turkey egg, incapable of swimming.

And when he or she considers the job well done, it can be time once again to set that wrinkly turd aside for a while and then look at it with fresh eyes to see again if the hair is more beautiful than the babe who bears it.

The wise man knows, and listens to the hen, even through their own duckling scorn:

"You don't understand me," said the duckling.

"Well, if we don't, who would? [says the hen] Surely you don't think you are cleverer than the cat and the old woman-to say nothing of myself. Don't be so conceited, child. Just thank your Maker for all the kindness we have shown you. Didn't you get into this snug room, and fall in with people who can tell you what's what? But you are such a numbskull that it's no pleasure to have you around. Believe me, I tell you this for your own good. I say unpleasant truths, but that's the only way you can know who are your friends. Be sure now that you lay some eggs. See to it that you learn to purr or to make sparks."

http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheUglyDuckling_e.html

The hen offers a tough love, to be sure – and the duckling tires of it. But when you are a writer, when you are a wise writer who truly revises, it pays to have those friends who will tell you those unpleasant truths. If you’re on the first draft, the third or fourth revision, and are surrounded by people who say you are doing well, expand your circle of friends. Find a few who will honestly tell you that what you’ve created needs more work.

Because it does.

And that’s okay.

As I write Doleful Creatures, I recognize the story’s beauty has evolved. It was an ugly duckling after the first draft. After the tenth draft – though it had grown a bit and started to lose its turdiness and grow into its beautiful hair by then. Now on revision fourteen, I begin to see – begin, note – that had I settled for a job well done (and self-publishing, electronic publishing, lets a job well done be nearly instantly awarded) when if I worked harder, many ideas hidden and undiscovered would come to light. And what a glorious light it is.

Poet Gregory Orr writes of “process[ing] experience” as he writes. “I take what’s inside me – the raw, chaotic material of feeling or memory – and translate it into words and then shape those words into the rhythmical language we call a poem. This process brings me a kind of wild joy. Before I was powerless and passive in the face of my confusion; but now I am active: the powerful shaper of my experience.”

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/21249/

Note the words translate and shape. That is what revision is. Drafting or writing is taking memory or imagination and pressing it through a Play-Doh Fun Factory. Revision is taking the resulting mess and making something of it. Revision allows our brains to look at what exists and see what can be added to make it better – revision triggers our brains into thinking of everything, not just what’s idling on the surface.

And maybe revision means killing that initial vision. Or that beloved character. Or that tone. Or that narration style, Or that scene.

Revision makes us wiser. And yes, sometimes sadder.

But Meredith Wilson has an anthem for revision:

I flinch, I shy, when the lass with the delicate air goes by

I smile, I grin, when the gal with a touch of sin walks in

I hope, I pray, for Hester to win just one more A

The sadder but wiser girl for me!

Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee.

Be that wise man. Revise.

Ten Years As A Ghostbuster

Come the end of the month, it’ll be ten years I’ve worked at the RWMC.

I’m not sure why that feels like an accomplishment. It’s probably because it’s a nice, round number that looks good when you type it.

All that doesn’t matter. I’m just glad I’ve got a job that I like and that pays the bills.

I have to admit part of why I like it is that it’s the public sector. Well, a public/private hybrid. Nevertheless . . .

Not that this job hasn’t expected results. To the contrary – it’s expected a lot of results. But different kind of results than what was required of me in ten years of journalism. Churning out those results, I do NOT miss.

(Also, I’m amazed at how much Ghostbusters sums up my working life.)

So, what have I accomplished in the past ten years?

1.      We moved from Sugar City to Ammon. Don’t know what that proves, but as we’re still able to make a mortgage payment, that’s got to count for something.

2.      I earned a masters degree in English with an emphasis in technical writing, and did not have to go into debt to do it.

3.      Michelle earned that same degree, and we did not have to go into debt to do it. And she got better grades than I did.

4.      We both now teach part-time at BYU-Idaho, which has helped fill in the cracks in our growing budgetary needs. Last year, I earned $18,000 teaching, which is about the same amount I earned the first year as a journalist.

5.      We’ve got three kids who are semi-normal.

6.      I’m actually writing and editing novels, rather than just talking about doing so.

Overall, I’m seeing some improvement in the last ten years. I don’t know how much of this would have occurred had I remained in journalism, but I think I have an inkling:

There have been times, working in this industry, that I’ve felt out of my league. But I also found ways I could contribute and help these intelligent folks get the job done.

Life, as they say, is good. Here’s to another ten years.

A Pun for the Ages

Magpies and Cultural Rot. But in A Good Way

This is the kind of stuff you learn when you’re writing a fantasy novel about magpies.

First, people in England and Scotland are really, really suspicious about them. Or at least those who are the type to get suspicious over things.

When you see a magpie or magpies, better count the number – and then recite the poem to see what the number of magpies foretells:

One for sorrow

Two for joy

Three for a girl

Four for a boy

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a story that remains untold

Eight for heaven

Nine for Hell

And ten for the Devil’s own self.

(There seem to be several variations if Wikipedia is to be believed; for my purposes, I think the one featured here is the most fitting. And since I’m a fantasy author, I can pick the one that fits me best. Neener neener.)

(Peter Max-like art and British cultural rot* brings us this. Eeeeouggghhhh.)

Which led me into this. More evidence that, culturally, the 1960s and 70s were NOT kind to ANYONE on the entire planet. (Also, bear in mind this is a childrens’ program. But enough of that particular rabbit hole.)

Segue: Could I indeed write a science fiction novel set in the 1970s in which aliens bent on destroying the planet arrive and are so shocked and appalled by the poor taste of the 1970s that they leave without destroying anything, figuring the whole planet is just going to rot away by itself? Kind of taking the idea that Indian Love Call=Death to Martians from Mars Attacks! but more better?

So. Lots of stuff to play around with here as I revise (yet again) Doleful Creatures. Certainly, one for sorrow fits Jarrod, bereft and alone, as he is through a good portion of the book. And if I’m remembering right, he and Rebekah have six nestlings – bringing them, at least to heaven – until things invariably go south and leave him in his sorrow.

And that seven line. Well, that’s something fun to play with as well.

And the Devil’s Own Self – now there’s another fun nickname, and a lot more fun to say than Holstein Pheasant. It’s got to be the one said when the sayer really wants to be nasty, so I’m not going to overuse it.

And there’s also this: In a research abstract by Susan Fitzpatrick and Peter Price in which they reveal their study that magpies tend to pair up based on tail quality – those with prettier/longer/undamaged tails tend to mate up, while those with scragglier tails tend to do the same. If I’m reading their research properly, those with the most intact tails more successfully mated as well.

And this is where the good writer decides to lay off research for a while, lest the novel he’s working on descend into magpie ephemera.

Obviously, though, much more usable stuff in the former (sans Peter Max) than the latter.

*Note to any Brits out there reading this. I KNOW the United States has produced its own share of cultural rot on a truly massive scale. You have to agree, though, that pound for pound, the rot you produce usually led to the rot we produce. And your rote is specifically unique to your country. Just see what British television has done to the novels of Terry Pratchett.

Hope

I have a beta reader for Doleful Creatures who has no idea what she’s done.

When she finished reading the book, she said she wanted more hope for Jarrod and Aloysius, my two main characters. And that the beginning needed more of the “magic” of the ending.

So that’s what I’m doing.

And it’s doing wonders.

I hope I’m doing it with character – helping the reader to get to know the characters better as the hope and the magic arrive. That’s my goal, anyway. And it’s coming through simple means: Familial scenes, a tiny bit of philosophy, and the introduction of at least one other character. Plus more definition for what happened in the past, and how it’s driving the future – bits that were missing through thirteen revisions of the novel.

I hope I’m doing what director Peter Weir says he did (and I believe he accomplished it) when he was working on “The Truman Show”:

[The script by Andrew Nicol] was kind of perfect for what it was, but it wasn’t right for me. It’s an odd thing, and the only time I’ve ever had something that I did admire, but wanted to change, if I did it. And that fundamentally came down to one major sticking point for me. For me, Andrew’s draft was like a brilliant speculative science fiction. If I looked at it as a movie, it had to be light where he had it dark. I wanted to make it real, not science fiction. I wanted to make it just the near future, if you like, which it turned out to be.

Not that Doleful Creatures is the near future – but it is an alternative look at a philosophical reality. I hope by adding hope and magic that I can bring that philosophical reality out of the fringe of the book and to the fore.

Editing note: Editing today was hard. I had to cut about 300 words. They had to go. And it hurt to cut them because they were part of the original novel. But they no longer fit. They had to go.