Ah, Revision!

Day.....I don’t know which, of revising book one. Big time. Sort of. In rejecting my novel, and explaining why, an agent made me cringe. Not that her rejection was particularly scathing – it wasn’t – but because I said, inside, aw, I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to address that! Silly, lazy me; write as well as you can, cliché is cliché (are you writing this down?), and clutter is still clutter.

So, my main character is gaining some parents; and, in the process, the plot is tightening and focusing. And some major revisions are forthcoming. That scene where the news arrives? Completely irrelevant. Perhaps the entire visit home is as well. So far, it’s been rather painless; change some dialogue here or there, delete a line or two, shazaam: new plot. Tomorrow, it gets worse; storm clouds are gathering, and they’re in the form of chapter three.

Is it going to be worth it? Heck yeah. I may have started writing this novel just to write a novel, but it has gone way beyond that now. This isn’t genre fantasy, dagonnit, this is literature. And it’s important. So I take a month or two and rewrite a couple thousand words, maybe fifty; if the end product is published, I call that a win. When I marry my girl, it’s for life; whatever needs to be tweaked, whether it’s my nose, my elbow, or my back – and especially if it’s my mind – it’s worth it. Because she’s important. So if I need to tweak some things – whether it’s a scene, a chapter, or the main character – to make this novel live, it’s worth it because it’s important.

And that’s just the way she rolls. I’ll keep you updated, as I had before (or intended to, if anything worth updating had ever happened) at the end of the week. In between – well, this is the itinerant me. But I would expect some more on coffee and writing.

See you Wednesday.