Revision Archives - Page 5 of 10

When Life Disrupts Your Revision Routine

March 2, 2017 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I printed out my 100,000 word sci-fi manuscript last week, fully intending to start the final big revision this week. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you plan.

My daughter has been home from school for 2 days. She was sick enough to not go to school, but not sick enough to stop her wanting to play and run around. It’s been hard to get anything done, and forget about the concentration needed to edit! So the manuscript still sits on the table, untouched.

My daughter went back to school this morning, but did I jump into revision? No. Two nights of shattered sleep wiped me out. So I took a nap for 3 hours instead of the 1 hour I had intended! But it was just as well, because between the headache and the fuzzy brain, none of my edits would have been as sharp as I needed.

Tomorrow, assuming no relapse and a daughter in school, I will separate out the 3 points-of-view of my manuscript and begin the process of revising each one. I will sharpen conflict and tension in each scene, make sure I use enough sensory detail, and ensure that the character voice is consistent.

I am not a person who likes change. Routines help keep my anxiety in check, and keep me feeling productive. When life disrupts my plans, it makes me irritated and anxious. But life often has other plans for us. So instead of diving into the revision of my sci-fi novel, I spent the days reading to my daughter, playing games like Monopoly, Sleeping Queens, and Candyland, and helping her build a fort in the upstairs foyer.

And that’s not so bad.

How do you deal with detours in your writing process?

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Beta Readers: A Vital Part of the Process

August 11, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

I met with most of my beta readers this week for my middle grade manuscript The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone. My daughter’s wonderful school librarian put together an amazing local team of readers—4 kids, 2 teachers, a librarian, and a mom of middle grade kids. I also have 2 other incredible teachers and authors reading it. I am so excited to get their feedback!

Yes, I said excited. I know many writers get butterflies when they send their manuscript babies out to beta readers. Some writers are downright terrified. And I agree, when you let your work out into the world, even in beta, it can be scary. You’re opening yourself up to criticism, to the possibility that people won’t love your story as much as you do. Sometimes writers even see criticism at this stage as a failure on their part.

But I am strange—I love honest feedback. I think it comes from how my writing process evolved in a collaborative model with my best friend Donna Hanson Woolman. Then when I got my Master of Arts in English, my advisor was a blunt yet positive critiquer. Of course, if the criticism is personal or nasty in nature, I don’t like that any more than the next writer, but in this post I am talking about thoughtful and honest feedback.

I enjoy the red pen on my manuscript because of my mindset. I am confident that Pharaoh’s Stone is a good book. Its plot is solid, its characters rounded, and the prose is clean. I have read enough middle grade—both published and from an agent’s slush pile—to know my book is good. I am excited to get my beta readers’ feedback because I know that their feedback will get the book from good to great.

That’s how we writers have to approach any constructive feedback—as a way to make our manuscripts better. A challenge to dig deeper and raise our craft higher. After working so long and hard on our stories (I’ve been with Pharaoh’s Stone for 11 years), we can lose the objectivity we need to make the final adjustments that will make our work shine.

That’s why beta readers are such an important part of our writing process. They bring fresh eyes, fresh brains, and a fresh perspective. I am so lucky to have an enthusiastic team reading my book, and I am so grateful to all of them for making the time and effort to help me.

Do you use beta readers? Where does their feedback fit into your process?

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The Art of Second-Guessing

May 5, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

My massive revision of Veritas (a YA sci-fi) is moving apace. Some chapters fight me hard—I have so much to revise and add that I virtually (and sometimes literally) rewrite them. But some chapters I tweak. Perhaps add a sentence or a few phrase. Those chapters provide a break for me, but when I get several “tweak” chapters in a row, I start second-guessing myself.

After struggling with a chapter that knocks me down, talks back to me, and generally kicks me around, when I get a tweak chapter I feel like I must be missing something. I mean, it can’t be that easy. Not when the last chapter was so hard. There must be some glaring mistake I am not seeing.

So I scrutinize and I poke and I prod, but I end up back where I started. I think this chapter is all right. But am I right? Second-guessing.

Luckily, this is where critique partners come in. They will look at my chapters, the fighters and the tweaks, and tell me if I’ve missed something. If weaknesses hide beneath the polished surface. They will tell me what doesn’t ring true, what doesn’t feel real, and what knocks them out of the story. Hopefully, this revision will have fixed most of those things.

Once I get their feedback, I will no longer second guess myself. Until then, I will continue to plod through the revision. I’ve just finished chapter 36…of 83. So there is plenty of second-guessing ahead for me!

What about you? Do you find yourself wondering what you’ve missed when revisions seem “too easy”?

Break It Down to Avoid a Breakdown

March 10, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

If you read my post about all the hats we writers wear, you can see how overwhelming our tasks can be, and also see why so many authors get burnt out. With so many tasks to accomplish, how can we do it without having a mental breakdown? Simple: break it down.

Marketing is a huge task, and ideally all the many moving parts should combine into an overarching whole. But if I look at the marketing plan as a whole it seems un-doable. Mind-shattering—especially for a deep introvert like me. So I break it down.

Breaking down is not a new concept to any writer. We do this all the time when we write, particularly when we revise. Trying to fix everything in every chapter on one pass is impossible—we would inevitably miss something. So we break down the editing into multiple passes. We do one for structure, one for chronology, one for character arc, one for dialogue, one for grammar, etc. We take a huge, overwhelming task and break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Marketing is another mammoth task that can paralyze me with its sheer magnitude. So I have to break it down. I choose one or two tasks a day to accomplish. One day I might contact possible reviewers. The next I might work on my email list. The following day I might update my website. And every day I carve out a little bit of time for the big social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. (although I admit Facebook is where I spend most of my time).

When I break it down that way, it doesn’t seem as overwhelming. Also, since the marketing is the hardest (emotionally) task for me, knowing I have only one or two tasks to complete in a day makes it easier. Otherwise my well-honed procrastination skills would kick in and I’d push it off forever.

Breaking down large tasks creates a longer To-Do list, but it also gives me a sense of accomplishment because I can check tasks off the list quickly. That sense of immediate gratification is nice—especially with the marketing, where sometimes you don’t see the impact of your efforts for weeks. Plus, since I often have to grab small amounts of time to work, having smaller tasks allows me to get more done in the scattered work environment I have at the moment.

So that’s how I avoid having a mental breakdown over the huge tasks—I break them down and tackle the pieces one at a time.

Do you break down larger tasks into smaller ones?

Editing Multiple Projects at Once: When It Rains…

January 21, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

It pours. Or in my case, when it snows, it blizzards. We are getting some snow this weekend, and predictions range from 5 inches to several feet. So we will see if this will turn into Snowmaggedon 2016, or be a big bust!

I like to tackle creative projects one at a time (with the exception of when I am burnt out on one story and jump to another for relief). With much less writing time, I prefer to be able to keep the creative part of my brain in one world, one story—it makes my writing time more efficient, since my mind has chewed over the story while I’ve been running around doing life-y stuff.

However, I don’t always have the luxury of focusing on one story at a time, and this is one of those times. I am in the middle of a major revision of a YA manuscript, and my middle grade adventure manuscript has come back to me from my co-authors. So now I have two manuscripts to work on—in very different genres, very different voices.

My YA, Veritas, is a science fiction narrated from three different points of view. My MG, The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone, is an adventure story set in 1922 Philadelphia, narrated by a 12-year-old boy. How can I keep them straight, creatively speaking?

One thing to my benefit is the stage of the writing process for each of them. Curse is in a final proofread/copyedit before I send it out to readers. Veritas is in what I call 3rd draft stage, where I am still working on story, character, and depth. Because the stories are not in the same stage of development, I can switch gears between them a little more easily—copyediting does not call for the same creative muscle as deep revision.

The other thing I do to keep them apart in my mind is that I never work on one directly after the other. In my new work day schedule, I have writing time reserved in the morning (9-11 am), and again after my daughter goes to bed at night (9-11pm). By doing one in the morning and one in the evening, I leave enough time in between to “surface” from one world before diving into the other.

This seems to be doing the trick, although I wonder if it would be the same if I was in, say, drafting mode for both stories.

When you’re working on multiple projects at a time, how do you keep from having them bleed into one another?

Stay warm, people, and if you are in the path of the snowstorm, stay safe!

Focus Forward

December 31, 2015 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

As 2015 draws to a close, I have a lot to be thankful for. My family is healthy and happy. I am comfortable in my life. And my first novel, THE WITCH OF ZAL, debuted from Evil Jester Press!

Now 2016 looms large ahead, and my focus is turning to the future. What do I want to accomplish in 2016? I decided to keep it simple and focus only on things I could control, because to do otherwise is an invitation to stress and frustration.

So what are these goals?

Create and implement a new marketing plan for THE WITCH OF ZAL.

Finish revising and polishing at least 2 of my works-in-progress.
- THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOH’S STONE is close to finished—one more go over and sending it out for proofreading. So I should easily reach this goal.
- VERITAS. This WIP is in a monster revision right now, and I feel that I have been procrastinating because of the magnitude of the task. Once I begin, I will be able to chip away, and there is no reason I can see that I should not finish this by the end of 2016.
- THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS has been complete for a year or more, and has made the rounds of some agents. The feedback I received showed that I have some work to do on this book, but I have not yet looked to see how large a task fixing the issues would be. It is possible that this, too, can be done by the end of 2016, but I consider this a stretch goal.

When one of the manuscripts above is ready, I will send it out to agents. With luck, I will find one that connects with my work.

And that’s it!

Three things.

I can do that.

What are you looking forward to in 2016?

The Editing Puzzle

December 10, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

My smartphone has a game on it called Move It! by AI Factory. The game is a spatial relations game, where you have pieces of various shapes on a board, and you have to move them around until you can guide a red square into the upper right hand corner. The game is fun, frustrating, and highly addictive.

Move It! is a lot like editing—at least the stage of editing where I am now. I have a WIP that I just finished putting through my critique group. I have reams of helpful suggestions that I cannot wait to get moving on—but there is so much work to be done, I find myself faced with a plethora of pieces scattered on a board of unknown dimensions.

Move It! specifies a target number—the least moves required to clear the board. Alas, my editing does not come with a target number.

My editing notes include checking for conflict in each scene, making sure Scene A leads logically to Scene B, noting my character goals for each scene. I need to follow character arcs, plot arcs, goal arcs. I have 3 POV characters, so I plan to separate their scenes out and listen to voice, check for character consistency, and make sure they are three-dimensional.

I also want to check continuity, symbolism, and rhythm. My ending needs some help, and the entire book needs a language overhaul because it sounds too middle grade and it’s YA. And of course there’s the nitty gritty of grammar, punctuation, and formatting.

Even with the target number, your game can run away with you. I had one game with a target of 72 moves and ended up with 265. I’m hoping to avoid that problem while editing, but you never know because when you change one story piece that changes them all.

At this moment, I am looking at the board, wondering how I can move those manuscript pieces in the most efficient way to get my book to the final position. I’m a bit overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

How you begin in Move It! sets you up for success or failure. A false start will get you to 265*. A good start narrows your available moves until only the successful path is left open to you.

Let’s hope I choose the right starting move with my manuscript.

How do you organize a huge editing project like this?

*My current score on that target 72 game is 76.

Learning to See

October 8, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

We all know how hard it is to see mistakes in our own writing. Sometimes even when someone points it out to us, we still can’t “see” it. We can see the mistakes where they flagged them, but we can’t see the same mistakes elsewhere in the manuscript.

I’ve struggled with this in my own work. For months, my critiques have included “boring verbs,” “generic description,” and “telling rather than showing.” With my brain, I understood what the critiques meant. Where the critquers marked passages, I saw the problems. But I could not see the problems where they had not flagged. I knew the same problems must exist in every scene, yet try as I might, I could not see them for myself.

How frustrating!

The reason those critiques are problematic is that generic, telling, boring words do not create a visceral connection with the reader. Instead of pulling the reader into the world of the story, making the reader feel what the character feels, the reader feels as if someone is reciting the story to them. This distance between the reader and the story is not what you want as a writer.

Still, the critiques kept coming in. I kept studying what they had to say. Then just this past week, something weird happened. As I prepared this month’s submission for critique, I said to myself, “That’s a blah verb.”

A little while later, I said, “Wow, that’s really generic.”

And then, “Geez, that’s totally telling.”

Wait…what?

Could I finally be “seeing” what my (incredibly patient) critique partners have been pounding into me for months? Maybe. I hope so.

The other part of the equation, of course, is: If I am seeing the problems, do I have the skill to fix them? Can I dig deeper, stretch farther, and make that elusive connection with my readers?

This possible breakthrough has me very excited, and I can’t wait to see if this marks another step up the ladder in my writing.

Have you ever suddenly “seen” flaws in your writing when you were not able to see them before?

Writing Longhand: A generational divide?

April 9, 2015 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Last week, I talked about changing my writing process because my current process wasn’t working well anymore. One of the changes I made was returning to longhand for some of my writing. I outlined the reasons for this last week, but the two main reasons are:

1) Longhand writing engages my creativity in a different way than typing.

2) I do not get hung up on the typed words on the page.

It’s been shown that writing longhand does engage different parts of your brain than typing on a screen. I know that the writing I produce is significantly different writing longhand vs. on screen. For me, there is something soothing about the feel of smooth paper under my hand as I write. I love the feel of the pen sinking into the paper. Watching my words appear on the page when handwriting is a creative thrill that I do not get when typing. Perhaps it is akin to artists seeing their drawing or painting come to life from their fingertips.

I know that once I type something, my brain has trouble revising it with sufficient depth. I get stuck on the words on the page. I grew up in a time prior to computers (we got our first PC when I was in high school), so I remember vividly that when you typed up your final paper on a typewriter that was it. NO CHANGES. And all of my life, those black words on a white page have signified a final printed product—a newspaper, a magazine, a book. So I wonder if I have subconsciously equated the black-on-white Times New Roman of my computer screen as somehow a “finished” product. I do not have this revision paralysis problem with longhand pages—crossouts, arrows, and numbered citations abound. It’s very freeing.

What surprised me last week was that a number of writers mentioned to me that they, too, were considering a return to longhand writing as part of their process. All of us were my age or older—in other words, we teethed our writing on pen and paper. Perhaps this indicates that our brains are wired to be more artistic when returning to our creative roots. Or that we’re all technologically exhausted and crave something simpler. Or something else—what do you think?

It also got me wondering about younger writers these days—writers who grew up on computer screens and keyboards. Would this impulse to go longhand ever arise in them? So I am asking the younger generation out there: Have you ever tried to write longhand? Did you find a difference in how and what you wrote? Would you ever consider mixing longhand writing into part of your process?

Revising My Writing Process

First Draft of Veritas Finished

January 22, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Last week I completed my first draft of my YA science fiction novel Veritas. Yes, I still have a long way to go before it’s ready to be seen by publishing professionals, but I still got as excited as a kid in a toy shop!

Why?

Because even though it’s only 70,000 words and I know I have a lot of world-building to add and a lot of revision to do, it is finished. As in, there is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Character arcs exist. Plot arcs exist. It hangs together as a whole. And finishing any creative act is always something to celebrate—because a very large portion of people who start creative projects never finish.

So that’s one reason I am celebrating. Another is that I actually prefer the revision phase to the drafting stage. Some writers are the opposite. But I like having something to work with, something to mold. As a video editor, the most painful part of any project was finding the music and visuals needed. Once I had them, I flew! It’s the same with my writing. Whatever’s there, no matter how bad, can be worked with. I can polish, demolish, rebuild, whatever. And I can see what story I actually ended up telling—because it’s not always the one I set out to tell in the beginning. So I can see the whole picture and weave all the details into a tight mesh.

The last reason is something of a personal milestone. This is the very first novel I have written from idea to finished draft since my daughter was born 5 years ago. All the other novels I’ve worked on in that time, I had first drafts completed before her birth, and spent the ensuing years editing and polishing. I had no idea how long it would take me to write a complete first draft from scratch. In this case, it was just shy of nine months. It would have been shorter except that I do have a book with a publisher and I had to stop several times to do edits for that book in that timeframe.

But now I know approximately how long it takes me to write a book with my daughter around (it will go faster once she’s in school full time), and more importantly, I know I can still finish! I spent a significant portion of the last few years in a creative wasteland, so just getting the idea for Veritas was huge. To actually finish it?

Enormous.

Do you get giddy when you finish your first drafts? How do you celebrate/reward yourself?

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