Tag: revision

‎(stares hollowly at screen) I think it’s a fourth draft.

Which means I get to collapse for a day, before trying to do some tightening, especially over the final chapters, over the next week. (I like when I finish drafts Friday nights, Saturday being my designated day off anyway.)

As I’ve been working on rewrites, I’ve been thinking about a couple different critique group comments.

The first was jennifer_j_s, who said to me, after reading an earlier draft, “I never cried.”

The second was lnhammer saying, “I did feel a catch in the throat. But not there.” And telling me where he did.

This got me to thinking about something. In my own books, I don’t get a catch in my throat during moments of loss, hard as writing those moments can be. I get a catch in my throat during moments when loss is redeemed.

So, say, in Thief Eyes (scroll over spoilers to read) I don’t feel that catch when Freki or even Haley’s mother die, devastating as those scenes were for me to write. But I do feel it when Haley runs by Freki’s side at the end of the book, and when thinks that now she knows what happened to her mother, and that that’s something, at least. I can think of similar moments in the Bones of Faerie books.

Experience is hugely subjective. When I cry may not be when the reader cries. The reader may not cry at all. But knowing where I cry is important, because it provides me with valuable structural information, though I hadn’t quite articulated that until now.

The point where lnhammer felt that emotional catch in the current book–where, when I thought about it, I felt it too–was a point that I’d been thinking of as something of an epilogue, existing out beyond the story’s denouement–beyond the story’s main inner and outer resolutions.

Except I realized my epilogue wasn’t an epilogue at all, but the thing the entire story was working towards.

This hugely informed my rewrites, of course, moving from the third draft to the fourth. And it’s something I’m continuing to think about, as I spend this next week on final revisions before sending the book off.

But first tonight and tomorrow are for stepping back, and gaining some perspective on same.

And also for trying to finally decide on a title. 🙂

Today I was working on a descriptive passage that’s pretty much an introduction to the landscape of my story, and, curious, went back to see how the details had changed since the first draft. It’s fascinating to me to see all the ways in which these few lines have evolved, so I’m sharing them in case they’re interesting to others too, compressed glimpse-into-process that they are.

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First draft:

By the time we crossed the Arizona state line it was ravens for sure, perched on the telephone poles, glossy wings bright as they winged through the sky, but, well, they didn’t seem any different from the ravens in New Mexico, or Texas, or Oklahoma. Most ravens are just ravens, after all …

We drove up the dirt road into Reddington, the nearest town to Raven’s Butte, in the dust of a June morning, beneath a huge cloudless–and I mean that literally–blue sky … I don’t think I’d realized how blue the sky could really be.

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Second draft (after both a geographic and a pov shift):

He stared out the passenger window of Aunt Marissa’s faded pickup at dusty rolling hills broken up only by green bushes, dying grasses, and a few of the mutant palm trees his aunt called yucca. In the distance, pink-and-tan cliffs reached for the sky, but around them there was only barbed wire, scrubby ranchland. Above, the sky’s deep blue was the only color that didn’t seem washed out by the dust, blue so close and low–who knew the world had so much sky? He scanned that blue, but he didn’t see any ravens.

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Third draft:

He stared out the passenger window of Aunt Marissa’s battered, once-red pickup at dusty brown hills broken up only by stunted trees, dying yellow grasses, and a few mutant palm trees his aunt called yucca. Barbed wire protected tired-looking cows and the occasional ranch house from, well, whatever it was cows needed protecting from. In the distance, faded pink cliffs reached for the sky.

Nate scanned that sky, but he didn’t see any ravens. There should be ravens, so close to the Monument … There should be people, buildings, something more than the endless blue that was the only real color in this place, blue so wide and low he half-thought it would crush him.

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Fourth draft:

He stared out the passenger window of Aunt Marissa’s pickup at a land of twisted gray trees, dying yellow grasses, and dried-out cactus paddles. Barbed wire protected weary cows and the occasional ranch house from, well, whatever it was cows needed protecting from. Buckled brown hills sulked in the distance, like clay thrown down and abandoned to bake in the sun, a few pale green shrubs tossed in for good measure. The blue sky was obscenely bright against the washed-out land, like spilled fingerpaint on faded paper.

Nate scanned that sky, hoping to at least see some ravens, but the blue went on and on.

Right. Spent the past week or so addressing several dozen stray research notes, all of which are now addressed or in the process of being addressed.

Time to focus back in on the story–to immerse myself in writing the next draft, sharpening the descriptions, bringing some of the things behind the words up to the surface, and making decisions about several plot threads, along with deciding just how powerful shapeshifters and rivers both are.

Onwards!

Right. Eighty-one “research this” notes and twenty-four “think about doing this notes,” plus more interweaving of descriptions and emotions, plus the general all-around tightening and improving and strengthening, plus whatever comments from critiquers turn up.

(rolls up sleeves) (takes deep breath) (prepares to dive back in)