Work in Progress Wednesday #25

Last week my plan was to start writing my ever so bright and shiny new work in progress. That didn't happen though because my old WIP came tip-toeing up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Excuse me, but I don't think we're quite done yet."

It was so terribly polite that regardless of how much I wanted to tell my old WIP to take a hike - I simply couldn't.

So what prompted my old WIP to come out of (semi)retirement? Well, mostly it was the comments I received last week while taking part in the query contest over at Miss Snark's First Victim.

While the query itself received mostly positive comments, the first 250 of my manuscript didn't fare quite as well. The bulk of the criticism was focused on the use of present tense, and too many flashbacks. So, yeah, I had a problem with both the present and the past - not good.

The reason I used present tense was because while writing my first draft it just wanted to be written that way. At the time that seemed like a good reason to write it that way, but now I have to question whether that really was reason enough to write in a style that I now realize is HATED (like the kind of white-hot hate that I usually reserve for the synopsis) by many people.

Although I like the sense of immediacy present tense gave my WIP, it could also be restrictive - not allowing for a whole lot of foreshadowing, or "in retrospect" type moments. So, now I am considering going back and rewriting the whole 101,000 word manuscript into past tense.

Yuck.

The whole too many flashbacks was an easier fix - I just moved that info a little further back into the chapter, and think that it works just as well, if not better, having moved back slightly.

Of course, into this mixture I have also spent an inordinate amount of time endlessly obsessing over my firsts. The first sentence. The first paragraph. The first page. The first chapter.

In the space of a week, I have gone wwwaaaayyyyy beyond second-guessing myself. At a conservative estimate, I'd say I'm now somewhere around bazillionth guessing myself.

Anyway, since I am chasing my tail until I am dizzy, I am going to post a few two alternate beginnings here in the hopes of receiving a bit of guidance from some of my faithful readers out there.

OLD PRESENT TENSE BEGINNING

I’m pushing a vacuum, trying to shake the hangover still lingering four days after my Christmas Day drinking binge, when I first see it.

It is the bracelet sitting on my employer’s dresser. As far as I’m concerned though, the bracelet might as well be underneath a tinsel covered tree, all wrapped up with a pretty bow and my name on top. I know immediately that it is mine.

Usually, I’m not much for Christmas. I guess you could say it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, which was maybe why I felt compelled to drink so much of the moonshine my uncles gave me as a Christmas gift. It was the only gift I received. And it wasn’t wrapped in ribbons and bows. No, it was just two mason jars tucked into a brown paper lunch bag and left on my front doorstep.

NEW PAST TENSE BEGINNING

My uncles call it the Moby Dick rule, even though they’ve never read that book, or any other one. The rule is simple: always steal anything you can, except, never steal what your heart wants. Each of my uncles has his own story that proves the rule: a ‘69 Mustang Boss in metallic blue, a gold Rolex, and a pair of cowboy boots with a silver lightening bolt running down the side. Each item led down a different path of personal ruin.

Never one to obey my heart’s demands, I thought this rule didn’t apply to me - turns out I was wrong. I was pushing a vacuum, trying to shake the hangover still lingering four days after my Christmas Day drinking binge, when I first saw my own white whale.


Any and all opinions are welcome! I'd also love to hear everyone's thoughts on the use of present tense.

And work in progress Wednesdays are not just about me, so don't forget to tell me what you've been up to this past week as welll!

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If you want to participate in WIP Wednesday, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.

For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.

Feel free to also make use of the lovely little WIP Wednesday logo as well!

Forever Tinkering?

I read a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend that got me thinking. The article was entitled: Tinkering With the Ideal.

The article began by referencing the new Broadway revival of "West Side Story", which has had huge changes made to it by none other than Arthur Laurents, the man who wrote the original book for the show. I first heard about these changes from my husband, who listened to a piece discussing it on NPR way back in December.

Basically, Arthur Laurents felt that the show was no longer relevant to the youth of today and decided that some big changes needed to be made to update it. These weren't little changes just for show, but big ones like having Maria sing 'I Feel Pretty' in Spanish. In fact, all the Jets speak Spanish in this version of the show. There are other changes too, all with the goal of making the show grittier and more realistic.

The New York Times and other reviews have been mixed, but that isn't really the point. The point is that Arthur Laurents made the choice to change a 52 year old show that is considered a classic.

The WSJ article goes on to discuss other artists that couldn't stop tinkering, like an artist who made little changes to his painting after it was already hanging in the gallery, or a composer revising some of his most famous works so that he could earn Western royalties on them.

The example that most caught my attention though was the one about writers making changes to their works. W.H. Auden and Henry James are the two authors whom the article provides as examples.

Here is the Henry James example given from his novel "The Portrait of a Lady" initially published in 1881, and revised by him 25 years later for a new collection of his works.

This is the original:

"His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free."

And this is the new version:

"His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and
stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing
in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his
face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one
with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water
following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned she was
free."

Which version do you prefer as a reader and/or a writer?

Personally, I like the added details towards the end of the revised example, in the second last sentence, but the rest of it doesn't do much for me.

More than just questioning the tinkering of others, this article also made me consider how long the tinkering on my own works might last. Right now, at the very beginning of rewriting my novel, and struggling to just make it through my first read through, the thought of continuing to make changes twenty-five or fifty years from now sounds awful.

At the same time, I know myself. I cannot go back and read something that I wrote years ago without seeing something that I want to change. Sometimes, it's just a tweak of a few works, and other times it is a huge change brought about by some sudden epiphany. Mabye these are the types of changes that can only be made once we have the distance of years, when we can see past our affection for the original idea.

The other question this begs is: if tinkering, rewriting, and revising is an endless process then how do we know when our writing is ready to submit and send out there into the world?

My thought is that you make the work as good as you possibly can right now. Use your best sense of what works, along with beta readers, and while it may never be perfectly perfect, there should be a point where it has reached a certain amount of polish and completeness.

Now what do you think? Did West Side Story need to be changed? What about the Henry James story? And in your own writing are you an endless tinkerer? And when do you know that it's the point to stop the revising and just put it out there already?

Work In Progress Wednesday #005

Today is not just WIP Wednesday, but also between birthdays day. Whose birthdays you ask? My husband Andy's b-day was yesterday on St. Patrick's day and my own b-day is tomorrow (Which is on the lesser known Feast of St. Joseph day. Poor St. Joseph, there is just no competing with green beer.).

And now... on to the Work in Progress Wednesday fun!

If anyone else out there in the blogosphere wants to join in on the fun, simply post your own WIP Wednesday entry on your blog and leave a link to it in the comments below. Or if you don't have a blog, feel free to report your progress directly into the comments box.

For more detailed information concerning what all this nonsense is about please consult the original Work in Progress Wednesday posting.

So, after finishing the first draft of my WIP aka Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea aka BTDATDBS. Um, yeah... I'll probably just continue to refer to at it as my WIP. Anyway, after finishing the first draft last week I was going to wait a week before starting on rewrites. But then Saturday night my husband was at a friend's bachelor party and my WIP started calling to me. I could not resist, and I started rewriting chapter one.

Now Annie in comments a few weeks ago mentioned that this was a fairly short time to let a work sit before jumping back in for rewrites, and I agree. When the words are fresh on the page, it is hard to have the distance to really see what is and is not working. The thing is that I wrote chapter one all the way back in July of 2008, so those words are way past their sell-by date.

Also, helping with the distance factor is my ability to quickly forget. (Sure, some people would call it a memory problem, but that's so negative.) As I've been writing I've submitted the first ten chapters or so to my online crit group, and as I've looked at some of their comments and then back at what I wrote there have been times when I've been like, "Wow, I don't even remember writing that."

The final reason though that I feel comfortable jumping into revisions so soon is that these are only Level 1 revisions.

Now you may be asking - What are Level 1 revisions? And do I need some sort of special clearance to work on them?

Level 1 revisions are... well they're kind of like this thingy:

This thingy is actually called a street roller (I found this out after much Googling trying to find an image of something that I did not know the actual name of. It was challenging to say the least.) Now I am not in construction, so I could be totally wrong about this, but I think this machine kind of smooths the blacktop and makes it all even.

And that's basically what I want to do with my Level 1 revisions, because right now crap is just all over the place. Despite the fact that I did kind of outline and plot the darn thing out, there were still elements and characters and just stuff that changed once I got into things.

Lady Glamis a few weeks ago at The Innocent Flower blog discussed this process as "working in layers", which is also a good (and less convoluted) way to think about it. I am specifically referring to her point #4 towards the end of the post where she talks about:

My first layers are polishing up the plot holes and character inconsistencies. Things that bugged me the whole way through the first draft that I kept telling myself I'd go back and fix later.

Ah. Isn't it nice when someone else's words say so well what you want to say, but can't think how to?

Anyway, I have a whole list of things that I've figured out after a scene was written, but afraid of losing my forward momentum I instead mentally filed them away (Or being aware of my super-forgetting powers I usually often recorded them on the same Word document where I keep plot points and character arcs.) to be taken care of during this Level 1 revision stage.

Really my end goal is to make my WIP pretty enough that I can ask some people to beta read it, without wasting their time with things that I already know need to be fixed. After I get my WIP back from betas, I'll take some time to absorb their comments (comments, especially the negative ones, are kind of like soup. They're always better the second day.) and then go in for Level 2 revisions.

So, that's been my week in writing. What about you? Anyone else working on rewrites, and if so what Level are you at? And if not in rewrites, where is your WIP?