Almost later (revelations observed while working on line edits)
So, being without Facebook for a few days finally nudged me into thinking about how I communicate with people online. And I realized that I’ve been defaulting to boiling down a lot of my thoughts to fit in 140 characters or a couple of lines. And that's fine, for a lot of what I’m thinking, but not all. So, I'm going to maybe use this space more than I originally thought. 😉
I’m about 2/3 through with my line edits from my editor, and past the worst of the hard-thinking questions she so casually drops in the margins like grenades. During this round of revisions, I’ve had a few revelations:
1. My main character (and maybe I) love the words just, really, even, at least and kinda. (And yes, kinda is too a word). My editor has suggested cutting surprisingly few of them, but I kinda wanted to just trim a few on my own because, even if nothing else, I at least wanted to be really sure I didn’t over-use them. 😉
2. Mycharacters have really grown and evolved from their early draft selves. They’ve become more decisive, more complicated and more volatile with every draft – they’ve grown up. A few lines that confused my editor in this draft were clearly orphans from earlier drafts, when my main character especially seemed younger, less decisive, and too quick to doubt himself. And his best friend lacked the fierce courage she has now. They’ve grown up, and so has their relationship – and the sparks and anger and frustrations are all sharper and brighter and more fun (at least for me – not so much for them).
3. I’m an obsessive researcher. Maybe too obsessive sometimes. I sort of knew this before this round of edits, but this round cemented it. When a few innocent questions sent me into 5 and 6 hour research binges, obsessively double and triple checking details of backstory that I’d already worked out, I realized I had to step away from the computer for a little while. But it was the reason for the frantic searching that surprised me the most (see # 4, below).
4. It’s almost later. No, really, all those things I said I’d do/check/double check/etc. later? Well, later is almost here.
I’m not one of those writers who hates revision – I actually like revision. A lot. But working on the line edits, I was finding it harder and harder to efficiently revise. And I think this past week I figured out why.
When I was writing the book, I had no idea what I was doing. No, really, I had never completed an original piece of fiction this long, or finished any of the wips I’d started in the past, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. But I learned a great deal while I was writing this book – some just from the perseverance and process, but also from allowing accomplished writers to critique it as I wrote. Now, not everyone benefits from critique in draft stage – but I was lucky enough to hook up with a small group of experienced writers, who are also experienced at critiquing, and their critique as I wrote really catapulted me through the draft and helped me learn to trust my reader.
Once I had a draft, I was euphoric. And started revising. I revised a number of times, before and after signing with my agent. And then we sold the book to Candlewick, and I did a big picture round of revisions for my editor.
She was overall happy with the revisions, and we were heading on to line edits. Great! Terrific! I rock!
Then I got her line edits – and panicked. But I read through them – and they looked fine, doable, a relief, really. I was euphoric again. Until I really dug into them.
Then simple questions in the margins started causing me hours of anxious researching, hunting for absolute confirmation of small, even really irrelevant details. I spent six hours trying to confirm the career progression of a character – when not one detail of it is actually mentioned in the story – just to confirm that he could have been where I thought he was at a point in time three years before the book even starts. Six hours.
In the amount of time it took me to work through the line edits for the first quarter of the book, I should have been done with all of the line edits. There weren’t really that many comments and none of the line edits are really all that problematic. So, what was going on?
Well, I realized a couple of days ago that what was tripping me up is that it’s almost *later*. You know, later. All those small doubts and fears that I was able to shove in a corner of my brain to consider later? I need to consider them soon, if not now. And that is terrifying.
This just went from my book to My Book. Soon, there will be no more time for changes. No more time to just check that small detail one more time. No more time…
That no more time fear was making me drag my feet, terrified I’d miss something, or forget to check something, or forget to double check it, and…ruin the book forever. Yes, I was being melodramatic. Yes, I was being counter-productive. Yes, I was – and still sort of am – obsessing. But the reality is this book, that I’ve been working on for a while, is actually going to be a book, on a shelf, with a cover and everything. And I don’t want to screw it up.
Wouldn’t the lazy student, who wrote her papers the night before they were due, who drove her teachers crazy by never proofreading, who never worried about the “small stuff” – wouldn’t she be dumbfounded at the level of fact checking, proofreading and obsessing I’m doing now.
If there was one positive to the Facebook snafu, it was that I was so frustrated by dealing with the mystery of my disappearance, that I forgot to obsess over the impending Book-ness of my book. In two days I sailed through a good chunk of my line edits, and I’m on pace to finish them up sometime next week (houseguests later this week will give me some much deserved and needed time off).
And as I work on the last third or so, I’m going to try to resist the urge to obsessively fact check every little thing, even things I’ve fact checked five times before, and trust myself, like I’ve been learning to trust my reader.
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