Whew.
Revisions are done and off into the ether, but I never thought I’d get there. I’d write something, then delete, write something else, then delete. I had pages of notes and ideas scribbled in my notebook or written in the margins of my manuscript, yet I felt like city folk lost in a Halloween corn maze at the pumpkin farm. I knew where I wanted to go, but there were too many paths.
During the first draft, I just wrote. I wrote for me, the story I wanted to tell, how I wanted to tell it. While my story stayed the same, I needed to revise it so readers would enjoy reading it too.
I had so many decisions to make, sentences to tweak, and useless information to carve out that I froze. For a while, I had no idea why, only that forward progress seemed impossible.
Then I understood my problem.
Revising is like buying a Christmas present for someone you don’t know. Are they a girl, a boy, woman, or man? Do they like toys, booze, Star Trek phasers? What do they need? What makes them laugh? You want to make this mystery person happy, but are worried the Schrodinger’s Cat T-shirt you think is so clever won’t amuse the recipient. So what do you do? You play it safe. You wrap a Kohl’s gift card in some tissue paper and cram it into a generic gift bag. There is something for everybody at Kohl’s, so you know it will get used. Useful, yes. Likely to thrill, no.
I don’t want my book to be a Kohl’s gift card (this is nothing against Kohl’s, I shop there all the time). I want my book to be the Schrodinger’s Cat T-shirt. Some people won’t enjoy it, some won’t get it, but others will love it so much, they will proudly wear it in public.
When I tried to write my story so it appealed to nameless, faceless agents, editors and readers, I couldn’t see the right path. I don’t know their preferences, their pet peeves. Maybe they can’t stand sentences ending in prepositions, or the overuse of semi-colons. Maybe they don’t like happy endings (get your mind out of the gutter) or cake (but really, who doesn’t like cake).
So how did I manage to finish? Just like I did in college when confronted with a new teacher. No, not an all-nighter fueled by Jolt and Cheetos, but by focusing on fundamentals. While every teacher had their own preferences, I didn’t know them until that first paper was graded. Regardless, following common rules got me though; clear arguments supported with research, good grammar and concise sentences. But the ultimate tip, the paper had to make sense to me (I remember a paper on equivocation in MacBeth that I still don’t understand – no wonder I got a D).
A novel is no different; there are universal rules to follow. I cut out as much exposition as possible, found ways to show information through character actions and dialogue rather than tell it through narrative, and removed as much backstory from the beginning as possible. But most importantly, I wrote a story that entertained me, just like I did in the first draft.
So, dear reader, is The Cake Effect done? I hope not. I hope I have many more revisions to go with the guidance of an agent and editor. But I’ve turned it in. I let it go, and its time to move onto the next assignment.
Get more of me on Twitter @aereichert.
Image Credits:
chaospet
