I’ve been staring at my manuscript for a week now. It’s mostly yellow. Not from age or an inexplicable toner accident, but from a highlighting marathon. I can see from across the room exactly where I need to change things in the manuscript. Where I need more action, less telling, more description, a better transition…you get the point.
So I know, boy, do I know. But how?
It dawned on me, I’ve reached the heavy-lifting portion of the process. I’ve designed the building, drawn up the plans, dug the hole, and ordered the supplies. But now I have to build the damn thing. It should be easy, just follow the plans, but it’s not.
I already wrote the thing, so it shouldn’t be that tough, right? It’s all there in black, white, and neon yellow. After staring at the blinding pages for a week, I realized I need to break it, rip it apart like two lions fighting over a gazelle thigh, or Humpty Dumpty after his infamous fall.
I need to take information dumped on the page like a blob of clay and form it into the Venus de Milo, or at least a vague-looking coffee cup. It needs to become something else but be made of the same parts. Back-story I foisted on the reader in chapter 1 should be doled out, revealed like a burlesque dancer’s undergarments, slowly and in pieces.
I thought I completed this step already, but I realized I haven’t. Authors often talk about how they break their novels, or rewrite from the ground up. This is the stage they mean.
I sense a major lesson on writing will be learned, skills earned, craft developed. I will be a better writer when I’m done. I know it. But it’s like when I have five baskets of laundry to fold and put away; daunting and messy, but it has to be done and I’ll feel great when it’s over.
So, dear reader, I’m off to break my novel like a stack of plates at a Greek wedding. Watch out for the shards.
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