Deborah J. Ross's Blog, page 118
June 29, 2015
Guest Blog: Steven Harper on Greek Mythology and Sexual Abuse
Several years ago, I realized I wasn't dealing with my son's autism diagnosis very well. Too much rage, too much helplessness. Just too much. So I started seeing a counselor, and I saw her for several years.During that time, I decided I wanted to write about Ganymede, the teenager who was kidnapped by Zeus to serve as his cupbearer on Olympus. Zeus sees Ganymede on the earth below, decides he's the coolest kid ever, changes into an eagle, and snatches Ganymede up to Olympus. Zeus then persuades Hebe to make Ganymede immortal, then dumps Hebe as his cupbearer and gives that exalted position to Ganymede.
Only two and a half stories about Ganymede have survived--the story of his kidnapping, a mention in the Iliad about Zeus giving Ganymede's father a set of horses in payment for the loss of his son (that's the half), and a story in which Ganymede loses a game of dice against Eros, and gets mad at him. That's it.
When I got older and read the actual material instead of the summaries and children's versions, I learned that Ganymede was more than Zeus's cupbearer. Zeus also took Ganymede to his bed. This was part of Greek culture--a powerful man would often serve as a mentor/teacher/second father/love interest to a teenaged male. Usually the parents went along with this: "Good news, son! Your uncle has offered to be your mentor!" So Ganymede was a mythological parallel to this mortal custom.
The stories, however, never went into what it was like. What was it LIKE for Ganymede to be
snatched away from his family and friends and suddenly make into the cupbearer and lover of the king of gods? You have the ultimate mentor, but it wasn't anything you'd asked for. Your culture
teaches you that being taken to this guy's bed is a good thing, or at least something you can put up with because all of us men went through it, but how do you =really= handle it? I ended up using my therapist as a resource here. She had counseled many survivors of sexual assault and was an expert. I told her about the book and said my theory was that a teenager in Ganymede's position would have a lot of mixed feelings.
Sexual assault victims often feel shame because our society has (incorrectly) decreed that victims of sexual assault have done something wrong, that they're bad people who have become further soiled. But Ganymede's culture says that being chosen as a mentee is an honor and a duty, and if you're chosen by the king of gods himself, you must be an amazing person.
And yet . . .
Ganymede at a stroke loses his family, his friends, and his home. He changes from a mortal into an immortal. He is thrust into a group of powerful people who see him as a pawn in a greater game that Ganymede himself doesn't quite understand. He's at the beck and call of Zeus, who does some pretty dreadful things. And he'll be a teenager for the rest of his immortal life.
Some major mixed feelings there.
My counselor agreed. "This would be way too complex for it to be one-sided," she said (or my notes
say she said). "He would love it one moment and hate it the next. There would likely be periods of great sadness and great happiness until he adjusted. You can love and hate someone--people do that all the time, especially when it comes to sex, or to someone you're =supposed= to love but aren't sure you do, or with someone you think you love but don't understand why. Don't be afraid to show that between Ganymede and Zeus."I set out to explore this in DANNY. Or at least, partly. Half the book is set in ancient Greece and half the book is set in modern America. Danny tells Ganymede's story while he tells his own, and the two overlap in strange ways. It's the most complicated, layered novel I've ever written, with plenty of shout-outs to lovers of Greek mythology.
Available at Book View Cafe: http://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/danny/
Steven's Blog: http://spiziks.livejournal.com
Steven's web page: http://www.stevenpiziks.com
June 27, 2015
Cataract Journey 2: Choices
With my diagnosis of cataracts (in both eyes), I began to consider my alternatives. The simplest, which is to do nothing and rely on eyeglasses for increasingly inadequate visual correction, was not very appealing, especially since lens replacement surgery was now “medically necessary.” Medicare, like most insurance plans, covers only the bare minimum: a single focus (“monofocal”) artificial replacement lens, usually for distance, with the natural lens being removed and the new one inserted by scalpel. Monofocal lenses give most people excellent distance vision, although they do not correct for astigmatism, and usually require the use of glasses for reading and intermediate distance work.These are not the only lenses available. Lenses can be toric (astigmatism correcting), or can correct for more than one distance. Multifocal lenses can provide a full range of vision (or so the literature says), including presbyopia, the difficult in reading that comes with age, but they can also result in halos around street lights and other visual difficulties at night. They also don’t come in all powers of correction. Accommodative lenses can correct for distance and intermediate vision, which means that glasses may be needed for reading; they flex like a normal, healthy lens. Even more technological innovations are in the works, especially as baby boomers age and demand better solutions.
Then there are choices as to how the surgery is done, the traditional scalpel, or femtosecond lasers. The benefits of the laser are that it is more precise and it can correct mild astigmatism at the same time. (Astigmatism arises when the cornea is shaped like a football instead of a soccer ball, resulting in multiple focal points; in pain speech, everything, near or far, is blurry.)
My first reaction was that the price of the special lenses and the laser surgery was beyond my budget. I considered going with just what Medicare would cover, which would mean using glasses for reading or computer work, and also to correct my astigmatism. I hadn’t even considered that I might be able to see clearly without glasses (except for really close-up stuff like removing splinters, where it makes sense to use magnification). Once I started to imagine that possibility, especially in view of the likelihood that I will have this surgery only once in my lifetime, I saw how I was automatically giving privilege to money over quality of life. I allowed myself to consider what I wanted, instead of the cheapest alternative. I had to practice saying, “You’re worth it,” and “You deserve the best,” things I had said so many times to other folks but rarely to myself.
My husband, dear soul, immediately agreed with me. I talked with our financial advisers about how big a bite this might take out of our retirement funds. Then, when least expected, we got a windfall from a couple of sources. I joked that the universe wanted me to be able to see clearly. I remembered a line from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: “Leap and the net will appear.” This wasn’t exactly leaping, not with all the number juggling and planning, but I appreciated the reminder to dream beyond limitations.
The next step was a series of precise measurements of my eyeballs and a discussion about what plan would give me the best visual outcome. I knew I wanted the laser surgery because it would correct my astigmatism and offer the possibility of a special lens. My ophthalmologist recommended the accommodative lenses, which he felt might give me good reading vision as well as midrange and distance, with less risk of problems driving at night. An additional advantage to this combination is that if there is any “fine tuning” by LASIK necessary, that will be included in the fee.
I’m scheduled for August, one eye at a time with 2 weeks in between, and I have a huge bag of different kinds of eye drops and a complicated regimen to follow, beginning 3 days before the first surgery. The interval will be difficult, as I will still need correction in the non-surgical eye, so I’m hoping my optometrist can pop out the lens on the surgical side and things won’t look too, too weird. But I’m prepared in the event that they do.
Stay tuned!
June 25, 2015
Revision Round Table 3: Kari Sperring, Marie Brennan
So you've finished your novel -- but have you? That first draft needs work, but where to begin? In
this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.
Kari Sperring:Ah, revisions.
I’m revising a book right now, and, as a result, my instinctive response to any question about revisions is ‘revisions are the worst. Apart from writing the first draft. That’s the worst, too.’ When it comes to writing, I definitely tend to the Eeyore. Whatever I’m doing right now is the hardest thing, the most uncontrolled, unfocused, worrisome thing.
I’m a very ill-disciplined writer. For preference, I write without an outline – and if I do outline, it tends to consist of a handful of possible scenes plus notes on theme and feel. My desk is littered with scraps of paper on which I have scrawled ideas for future scenes and plot-turns, many of them only semi-legible and usually out of order. Whether or not I get to them is very random: it depends on what turn the book takes and on what I remember. None of which helps when it comes to revising.
With both Living With Ghosts and the book I’m currently working on, I wrote a complete first draft and then rewrote the book from scratch, ending up with a different plot, new characters, and a different outcome. Quenfrida didn’t enter LWG until draft 2. Nor did Joyain. The first draft of the current project seemed to consist mainly of walks and conversations. This new one is full of riots and acts of sabotage, and one of the protagonists is currently disembodied. It’s not the book it was, and I hope it’s better for it, but right now – as always seems to be the case with me and revisions – it feels vast and sprawling and random, a morass of scenes and ideas galloping off in nine different directions, and me in the middle trying desperately to get the whole thing back under control.
But revisions are crucial. I’m a slow writer, as well as a messy one, and my early drafts are littered with plot wisps and abandoned meanders, as I go through and discard ideas. Revising not only lets me find these and excise or complete them, it lets me see where the book needs expansion and reinforcement, even if I don’t always know how to do that, exactly. There is always a Perfect Book, hovering just out of reach over the words and chapters. Despite the drafting and redrafting I did on LWG, it didn’t really come properly into focus until it and I landed on the desk of my editor at DAW books, Sheila Gilbert. I had put it in a drawer for a decade, I had reworked it at least 6 times, but even then I remained too close to it. Sheila saw things I had missed, and showed me how to make my workmanlike draft into, I hope, a good one. A good editor is worth their weight in rubies and should be celebrated from the mountaintops. Right now, the revisions I’m working on – the new book has the working title A Fire of Bones – have been informed and tuned by Sheila’s keen eye, and once again, I think the book is better for it.
Even though, as I write them, as I write this, my brain is telling me that revisions are, like first draft, the worst.
Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to discover that the company had been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian instead and as Kari Maund has written and published five books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history and co-authored a book on the history and real people behind her favorite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She’s been writing as long as she can remember and completed her first novel at the age of eight (twelve pages long and about ponies). She’s been a barmaid, a tax officer, a P.A. and a university lecturer, and has found that her fascinations, professional or hobby-level, feed and expand into her fiction. Living With Ghosts, her first novel, evolved from her love of France and its history, ghosts, mysteries, Celtic culture, strange magic, sharks, and sword-fights: The Grass King’s Concubine, has even found a creative role for book-keeping. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner Phil (who helps design the sword-fights) and three very determined cats, who guarantee that everything she writes will have been thoroughly sat upon. She’s currently at work on her third and fourth novels at once, because she needs more complications in her life. She can be found at http://www.karisperring .com, on Facebook (Kari Sperring), Twitter (@karisperring) and on Live Journal as la_marquise_de_.
~~o~~
Marie Brennan:There are two core statements that sum up my view of revision:
1) It's a spectrum, and2) It's an iterative process.
By the first, I mean that revising a story can mean anything from fiddling with commas all the way up to throwing out the text and starting over -- though I tend to refer to the latter as "rewriting" rather than "revision." There are no clear boundaries between these levels, either, and I rarely do just one at a time: even if I'm going through trying to cut down a scene for better pacing, I'll add bits here and there to make the text flow better, or delete a paragraph and replace it with something else to fix an issue of characterization. (The main exception is when I'm going through page proofs for a book before publication. Then I have to limit myself to only the smallest of prose changes, for purely logistical reasons.)
By "iterative," I mean that revision often proceeds in multiple stages, and is almost never completely done. There are always more changes I could make, little places (or big ones) where I could improve the story later on. I've only written one story in my career where I feel there is nothing else I can do to polish it -- but the story in question is only 376 words long. At lengths beyond that, perfection is impossible to attain.
It's hard for me to say what my revision process looks like, because lately it's been changing. For years I would write my way through the book from beginning to end; then I would print it out (in a format I call the miniscript) and go through two rounds of edits. The first was the "chainsaw edit," done with a red pen, and aimed at macro-level issues like pacing, continuity, characterization, and so forth. The second was the "line edit," done with a green pen, and aimed at polishing the prose. Straightforward, relatively efficient, and it served me well.
But of course it wasn't really that simple. I would often start off a session by reading through the previous night's work (or multiple nights' worth), and of course I would tweak things as I did so. Sometimes I'd realize that what I'd written really didn't work, and then I had to delete it and replace it. One of my novels didn't even get a miniscript edit right away, though I printed it out for posterity; I knew the first draft was sufficiently bad that the only way to approach the process was to open a new file and start the book over again. With later books, I found myself having to pull out entire strands of plot and replace them before I could move forward in the story, or running close enough to my deadline that I had to start revision while still writing the end of the book. The fourth Memoir of Lady Trent is the first novel in my career I didn't print a miniscript for, because I wound up doing 90% of the revision onscreen before I was done with the draft.
It will probably get a miniscript soon, though, because I'll be revising the book again, this time with editorial feedback. And fundamentally, I read differently -- better -- when the text is on the page than when it's on the screen. I am not enough of a scientist to tell you why this is, but I pay closer attention to the page, see things that would slip past if they were just pixels. This is why I still have a copy-edited manuscript mailed to me, rather than handling everything through Track Changes. (Well, that and the fact that I don't use Microsoft Word, and would rather open my veins with a rusty spoon than start.)
I don't claim my approach to revision is the best, in terms of either results or efficiency. Other people have methods for single-pass revision, or always polish as they go, or habitually throw out their first draft and redo the entire book. If there's one habit I would recommend to every writer, though, it's reading your text out loud. I do this with all short stories, and I even try to do it during copy-edits for novels, because there is nothing else in the world that will make you as aware of your words. You'll find the places where your sentence structure is awkward, where you overuse a particular word or create a distracting rhyme. You'll spot errors that would glide right under your radar in silent reading. And while you're at it, you'll probably improve your ability to perform readings for an audience -- a useful skill for a writer to have.
Fundamentally, though, there's only one rule: make it as good as you can in the time you have.
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She has most recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the Memoirs of Lady TrentA Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, and two more to come). She is also the author of the Onyx Court historical fantasy series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire), the doppelganger duology of Warrior and Witch, the urban fantasy
Lies and Prophecy
, and more than forty short stories.
When she’s not obsessing over historical details too minute for anybody but her to care about, she practices shorin-ryu karate and pretends to be other people in role-playing games (which sometimes find their way into her writing).
this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.Kari Sperring:Ah, revisions.
I’m revising a book right now, and, as a result, my instinctive response to any question about revisions is ‘revisions are the worst. Apart from writing the first draft. That’s the worst, too.’ When it comes to writing, I definitely tend to the Eeyore. Whatever I’m doing right now is the hardest thing, the most uncontrolled, unfocused, worrisome thing.
I’m a very ill-disciplined writer. For preference, I write without an outline – and if I do outline, it tends to consist of a handful of possible scenes plus notes on theme and feel. My desk is littered with scraps of paper on which I have scrawled ideas for future scenes and plot-turns, many of them only semi-legible and usually out of order. Whether or not I get to them is very random: it depends on what turn the book takes and on what I remember. None of which helps when it comes to revising.
With both Living With Ghosts and the book I’m currently working on, I wrote a complete first draft and then rewrote the book from scratch, ending up with a different plot, new characters, and a different outcome. Quenfrida didn’t enter LWG until draft 2. Nor did Joyain. The first draft of the current project seemed to consist mainly of walks and conversations. This new one is full of riots and acts of sabotage, and one of the protagonists is currently disembodied. It’s not the book it was, and I hope it’s better for it, but right now – as always seems to be the case with me and revisions – it feels vast and sprawling and random, a morass of scenes and ideas galloping off in nine different directions, and me in the middle trying desperately to get the whole thing back under control.
But revisions are crucial. I’m a slow writer, as well as a messy one, and my early drafts are littered with plot wisps and abandoned meanders, as I go through and discard ideas. Revising not only lets me find these and excise or complete them, it lets me see where the book needs expansion and reinforcement, even if I don’t always know how to do that, exactly. There is always a Perfect Book, hovering just out of reach over the words and chapters. Despite the drafting and redrafting I did on LWG, it didn’t really come properly into focus until it and I landed on the desk of my editor at DAW books, Sheila Gilbert. I had put it in a drawer for a decade, I had reworked it at least 6 times, but even then I remained too close to it. Sheila saw things I had missed, and showed me how to make my workmanlike draft into, I hope, a good one. A good editor is worth their weight in rubies and should be celebrated from the mountaintops. Right now, the revisions I’m working on – the new book has the working title A Fire of Bones – have been informed and tuned by Sheila’s keen eye, and once again, I think the book is better for it.
Even though, as I write them, as I write this, my brain is telling me that revisions are, like first draft, the worst.
Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to discover that the company had been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian instead and as Kari Maund has written and published five books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history and co-authored a book on the history and real people behind her favorite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She’s been writing as long as she can remember and completed her first novel at the age of eight (twelve pages long and about ponies). She’s been a barmaid, a tax officer, a P.A. and a university lecturer, and has found that her fascinations, professional or hobby-level, feed and expand into her fiction. Living With Ghosts, her first novel, evolved from her love of France and its history, ghosts, mysteries, Celtic culture, strange magic, sharks, and sword-fights: The Grass King’s Concubine, has even found a creative role for book-keeping. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner Phil (who helps design the sword-fights) and three very determined cats, who guarantee that everything she writes will have been thoroughly sat upon. She’s currently at work on her third and fourth novels at once, because she needs more complications in her life. She can be found at http://www.karisperring .com, on Facebook (Kari Sperring), Twitter (@karisperring) and on Live Journal as la_marquise_de_.
~~o~~
Marie Brennan:There are two core statements that sum up my view of revision:
1) It's a spectrum, and2) It's an iterative process.
By the first, I mean that revising a story can mean anything from fiddling with commas all the way up to throwing out the text and starting over -- though I tend to refer to the latter as "rewriting" rather than "revision." There are no clear boundaries between these levels, either, and I rarely do just one at a time: even if I'm going through trying to cut down a scene for better pacing, I'll add bits here and there to make the text flow better, or delete a paragraph and replace it with something else to fix an issue of characterization. (The main exception is when I'm going through page proofs for a book before publication. Then I have to limit myself to only the smallest of prose changes, for purely logistical reasons.)
By "iterative," I mean that revision often proceeds in multiple stages, and is almost never completely done. There are always more changes I could make, little places (or big ones) where I could improve the story later on. I've only written one story in my career where I feel there is nothing else I can do to polish it -- but the story in question is only 376 words long. At lengths beyond that, perfection is impossible to attain.
It's hard for me to say what my revision process looks like, because lately it's been changing. For years I would write my way through the book from beginning to end; then I would print it out (in a format I call the miniscript) and go through two rounds of edits. The first was the "chainsaw edit," done with a red pen, and aimed at macro-level issues like pacing, continuity, characterization, and so forth. The second was the "line edit," done with a green pen, and aimed at polishing the prose. Straightforward, relatively efficient, and it served me well.
But of course it wasn't really that simple. I would often start off a session by reading through the previous night's work (or multiple nights' worth), and of course I would tweak things as I did so. Sometimes I'd realize that what I'd written really didn't work, and then I had to delete it and replace it. One of my novels didn't even get a miniscript edit right away, though I printed it out for posterity; I knew the first draft was sufficiently bad that the only way to approach the process was to open a new file and start the book over again. With later books, I found myself having to pull out entire strands of plot and replace them before I could move forward in the story, or running close enough to my deadline that I had to start revision while still writing the end of the book. The fourth Memoir of Lady Trent is the first novel in my career I didn't print a miniscript for, because I wound up doing 90% of the revision onscreen before I was done with the draft.
It will probably get a miniscript soon, though, because I'll be revising the book again, this time with editorial feedback. And fundamentally, I read differently -- better -- when the text is on the page than when it's on the screen. I am not enough of a scientist to tell you why this is, but I pay closer attention to the page, see things that would slip past if they were just pixels. This is why I still have a copy-edited manuscript mailed to me, rather than handling everything through Track Changes. (Well, that and the fact that I don't use Microsoft Word, and would rather open my veins with a rusty spoon than start.)
I don't claim my approach to revision is the best, in terms of either results or efficiency. Other people have methods for single-pass revision, or always polish as they go, or habitually throw out their first draft and redo the entire book. If there's one habit I would recommend to every writer, though, it's reading your text out loud. I do this with all short stories, and I even try to do it during copy-edits for novels, because there is nothing else in the world that will make you as aware of your words. You'll find the places where your sentence structure is awkward, where you overuse a particular word or create a distracting rhyme. You'll spot errors that would glide right under your radar in silent reading. And while you're at it, you'll probably improve your ability to perform readings for an audience -- a useful skill for a writer to have.
Fundamentally, though, there's only one rule: make it as good as you can in the time you have.
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She has most recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the Memoirs of Lady TrentA Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, and two more to come). She is also the author of the Onyx Court historical fantasy series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire), the doppelganger duology of Warrior and Witch, the urban fantasy
Lies and Prophecy
, and more than forty short stories.When she’s not obsessing over historical details too minute for anybody but her to care about, she practices shorin-ryu karate and pretends to be other people in role-playing games (which sometimes find their way into her writing).
Revsion Round Table 3: Kari Sperring, Marie Brennan
So you've finished your novel -- but have you? That first draft needs work, but where to begin? In
this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.
Kari Sperring:Ah, revisions.
I’m revising a book right now, and, as a result, my instinctive response to any question about revisions is ‘revisions are the worst. Apart from writing the first draft. That’s the worst, too.’ When it comes to writing, I definitely tend to the Eeyore. Whatever I’m doing right now is the hardest thing, the most uncontrolled, unfocused, worrisome thing.
I’m a very ill-disciplined writer. For preference, I write without an outline – and if I do outline, it tends to consist of a handful of possible scenes plus notes on theme and feel. My desk is littered with scraps of paper on which I have scrawled ideas for future scenes and plot-turns, many of them only semi-legible and usually out of order. Whether or not I get to them is very random: it depends on what turn the book takes and on what I remember. None of which helps when it comes to revising.
With both Living With Ghosts and the book I’m currently working on, I wrote a complete first draft and then rewrote the book from scratch, ending up with a different plot, new characters, and a different outcome. Quenfrida didn’t enter LWG until draft 2. Nor did Joyain. The first draft of the current project seemed to consist mainly of walks and conversations. This new one is full of riots and acts of sabotage, and one of the protagonists is currently disembodied. It’s not the book it was, and I hope it’s better for it, but right now – as always seems to be the case with me and revisions – it feels vast and sprawling and random, a morass of scenes and ideas galloping off in nine different directions, and me in the middle trying desperately to get the whole thing back under control.
But revisions are crucial. I’m a slow writer, as well as a messy one, and my early drafts are littered with plot wisps and abandoned meanders, as I go through and discard ideas. Revising not only lets me find these and excise or complete them, it lets me see where the book needs expansion and reinforcement, even if I don’t always know how to do that, exactly. There is always a Perfect Book, hovering just out of reach over the words and chapters. Despite the drafting and redrafting I did on LWG, it didn’t really come properly into focus until it and I landed on the desk of my editor at DAW books, Sheila Gilbert. I had put it in a drawer for a decade, I had reworked it at least 6 times, but even then I remained too close to it. Sheila saw things I had missed, and showed me how to make my workmanlike draft into, I hope, a good one. A good editor is worth their weight in rubies and should be celebrated from the mountaintops. Right now, the revisions I’m working on – the new book has the working title A Fire of Bones – have been informed and tuned by Sheila’s keen eye, and once again, I think the book is better for it.
Even though, as I write them, as I write this, my brain is telling me that revisions are, like first draft, the worst.
Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to discover that the company had been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian instead and as Kari Maund has written and published five books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history and co-authored a book on the history and real people behind her favorite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She’s been writing as long as she can remember and completed her first novel at the age of eight (twelve pages long and about ponies). She’s been a barmaid, a tax officer, a P.A. and a university lecturer, and has found that her fascinations, professional or hobby-level, feed and expand into her fiction. Living With Ghosts, her first novel, evolved from her love of France and its history, ghosts, mysteries, Celtic culture, strange magic, sharks, and sword-fights: The Grass King’s Concubine, has even found a creative role for book-keeping. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner Phil (who helps design the sword-fights) and three very determined cats, who guarantee that everything she writes will have been thoroughly sat upon. She’s currently at work on her third and fourth novels at once, because she needs more complications in her life. She can be found at http://www.karisperring .com, on Facebook (Kari Sperring), Twitter (@karisperring) and on Live Journal as la_marquise_de_.
~~o~~
Marie Brennan:There are two core statements that sum up my view of revision:
1) It's a spectrum, and2) It's an iterative process.
By the first, I mean that revising a story can mean anything from fiddling with commas all the way up to throwing out the text and starting over -- though I tend to refer to the latter as "rewriting" rather than "revision." There are no clear boundaries between these levels, either, and I rarely do just one at a time: even if I'm going through trying to cut down a scene for better pacing, I'll add bits here and there to make the text flow better, or delete a paragraph and replace it with something else to fix an issue of characterization. (The main exception is when I'm going through page proofs for a book before publication. Then I have to limit myself to only the smallest of prose changes, for purely logistical reasons.)
By "iterative," I mean that revision often proceeds in multiple stages, and is almost never completely done. There are always more changes I could make, little places (or big ones) where I could improve the story later on. I've only written one story in my career where I feel there is nothing else I can do to polish it -- but the story in question is only 376 words long. At lengths beyond that, perfection is impossible to attain.
It's hard for me to say what my revision process looks like, because lately it's been changing. For years I would write my way through the book from beginning to end; then I would print it out (in a format I call the miniscript) and go through two rounds of edits. The first was the "chainsaw edit," done with a red pen, and aimed at macro-level issues like pacing, continuity, characterization, and so forth. The second was the "line edit," done with a green pen, and aimed at polishing the prose. Straightforward, relatively efficient, and it served me well.
But of course it wasn't really that simple. I would often start off a session by reading through the previous night's work (or multiple nights' worth), and of course I would tweak things as I did so. Sometimes I'd realize that what I'd written really didn't work, and then I had to delete it and replace it. One of my novels didn't even get a miniscript edit right away, though I printed it out for posterity; I knew the first draft was sufficiently bad that the only way to approach the process was to open a new file and start the book over again. With later books, I found myself having to pull out entire strands of plot and replace them before I could move forward in the story, or running close enough to my deadline that I had to start revision while still writing the end of the book. The fourth Memoir of Lady Trent is the first novel in my career I didn't print a miniscript for, because I wound up doing 90% of the revision onscreen before I was done with the draft.
It will probably get a miniscript soon, though, because I'll be revising the book again, this time with editorial feedback. And fundamentally, I read differently -- better -- when the text is on the page than when it's on the screen. I am not enough of a scientist to tell you why this is, but I pay closer attention to the page, see things that would slip past if they were just pixels. This is why I still have a copy-edited manuscript mailed to me, rather than handling everything through Track Changes. (Well, that and the fact that I don't use Microsoft Word, and would rather open my veins with a rusty spoon than start.)
I don't claim my approach to revision is the best, in terms of either results or efficiency. Other people have methods for single-pass revision, or always polish as they go, or habitually throw out their first draft and redo the entire book. If there's one habit I would recommend to every writer, though, it's reading your text out loud. I do this with all short stories, and I even try to do it during copy-edits for novels, because there is nothing else in the world that will make you as aware of your words. You'll find the places where your sentence structure is awkward, where you overuse a particular word or create a distracting rhyme. You'll spot errors that would glide right under your radar in silent reading. And while you're at it, you'll probably improve your ability to perform readings for an audience -- a useful skill for a writer to have.
Fundamentally, though, there's only one rule: make it as good as you can in the time you have.
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She has most recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the Memoirs of Lady TrentA Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, and two more to come). She is also the author of the Onyx Court historical fantasy series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire), the doppelganger duology of Warrior and Witch, the urban fantasy
Lies and Prophecy
, and more than forty short stories.
When she’s not obsessing over historical details too minute for anybody but her to care about, she practices shorin-ryu karate and pretends to be other people in role-playing games (which sometimes find their way into her writing).
this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.Kari Sperring:Ah, revisions.
I’m revising a book right now, and, as a result, my instinctive response to any question about revisions is ‘revisions are the worst. Apart from writing the first draft. That’s the worst, too.’ When it comes to writing, I definitely tend to the Eeyore. Whatever I’m doing right now is the hardest thing, the most uncontrolled, unfocused, worrisome thing.
I’m a very ill-disciplined writer. For preference, I write without an outline – and if I do outline, it tends to consist of a handful of possible scenes plus notes on theme and feel. My desk is littered with scraps of paper on which I have scrawled ideas for future scenes and plot-turns, many of them only semi-legible and usually out of order. Whether or not I get to them is very random: it depends on what turn the book takes and on what I remember. None of which helps when it comes to revising.
With both Living With Ghosts and the book I’m currently working on, I wrote a complete first draft and then rewrote the book from scratch, ending up with a different plot, new characters, and a different outcome. Quenfrida didn’t enter LWG until draft 2. Nor did Joyain. The first draft of the current project seemed to consist mainly of walks and conversations. This new one is full of riots and acts of sabotage, and one of the protagonists is currently disembodied. It’s not the book it was, and I hope it’s better for it, but right now – as always seems to be the case with me and revisions – it feels vast and sprawling and random, a morass of scenes and ideas galloping off in nine different directions, and me in the middle trying desperately to get the whole thing back under control.
But revisions are crucial. I’m a slow writer, as well as a messy one, and my early drafts are littered with plot wisps and abandoned meanders, as I go through and discard ideas. Revising not only lets me find these and excise or complete them, it lets me see where the book needs expansion and reinforcement, even if I don’t always know how to do that, exactly. There is always a Perfect Book, hovering just out of reach over the words and chapters. Despite the drafting and redrafting I did on LWG, it didn’t really come properly into focus until it and I landed on the desk of my editor at DAW books, Sheila Gilbert. I had put it in a drawer for a decade, I had reworked it at least 6 times, but even then I remained too close to it. Sheila saw things I had missed, and showed me how to make my workmanlike draft into, I hope, a good one. A good editor is worth their weight in rubies and should be celebrated from the mountaintops. Right now, the revisions I’m working on – the new book has the working title A Fire of Bones – have been informed and tuned by Sheila’s keen eye, and once again, I think the book is better for it.
Even though, as I write them, as I write this, my brain is telling me that revisions are, like first draft, the worst.
Kari Sperring grew up dreaming of joining the musketeers and saving France, only to discover that the company had been disbanded in 1776. Disappointed, she became a historian instead and as Kari Maund has written and published five books and many articles on Celtic and Viking history and co-authored a book on the history and real people behind her favorite novel, The Three Musketeers (with Phil Nanson). She’s been writing as long as she can remember and completed her first novel at the age of eight (twelve pages long and about ponies). She’s been a barmaid, a tax officer, a P.A. and a university lecturer, and has found that her fascinations, professional or hobby-level, feed and expand into her fiction. Living With Ghosts, her first novel, evolved from her love of France and its history, ghosts, mysteries, Celtic culture, strange magic, sharks, and sword-fights: The Grass King’s Concubine, has even found a creative role for book-keeping. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her partner Phil (who helps design the sword-fights) and three very determined cats, who guarantee that everything she writes will have been thoroughly sat upon. She’s currently at work on her third and fourth novels at once, because she needs more complications in her life. She can be found at http://www.karisperring .com, on Facebook (Kari Sperring), Twitter (@karisperring) and on Live Journal as la_marquise_de_.
~~o~~
Marie Brennan:There are two core statements that sum up my view of revision:
1) It's a spectrum, and2) It's an iterative process.
By the first, I mean that revising a story can mean anything from fiddling with commas all the way up to throwing out the text and starting over -- though I tend to refer to the latter as "rewriting" rather than "revision." There are no clear boundaries between these levels, either, and I rarely do just one at a time: even if I'm going through trying to cut down a scene for better pacing, I'll add bits here and there to make the text flow better, or delete a paragraph and replace it with something else to fix an issue of characterization. (The main exception is when I'm going through page proofs for a book before publication. Then I have to limit myself to only the smallest of prose changes, for purely logistical reasons.)
By "iterative," I mean that revision often proceeds in multiple stages, and is almost never completely done. There are always more changes I could make, little places (or big ones) where I could improve the story later on. I've only written one story in my career where I feel there is nothing else I can do to polish it -- but the story in question is only 376 words long. At lengths beyond that, perfection is impossible to attain.
It's hard for me to say what my revision process looks like, because lately it's been changing. For years I would write my way through the book from beginning to end; then I would print it out (in a format I call the miniscript) and go through two rounds of edits. The first was the "chainsaw edit," done with a red pen, and aimed at macro-level issues like pacing, continuity, characterization, and so forth. The second was the "line edit," done with a green pen, and aimed at polishing the prose. Straightforward, relatively efficient, and it served me well.
But of course it wasn't really that simple. I would often start off a session by reading through the previous night's work (or multiple nights' worth), and of course I would tweak things as I did so. Sometimes I'd realize that what I'd written really didn't work, and then I had to delete it and replace it. One of my novels didn't even get a miniscript edit right away, though I printed it out for posterity; I knew the first draft was sufficiently bad that the only way to approach the process was to open a new file and start the book over again. With later books, I found myself having to pull out entire strands of plot and replace them before I could move forward in the story, or running close enough to my deadline that I had to start revision while still writing the end of the book. The fourth Memoir of Lady Trent is the first novel in my career I didn't print a miniscript for, because I wound up doing 90% of the revision onscreen before I was done with the draft.
It will probably get a miniscript soon, though, because I'll be revising the book again, this time with editorial feedback. And fundamentally, I read differently -- better -- when the text is on the page than when it's on the screen. I am not enough of a scientist to tell you why this is, but I pay closer attention to the page, see things that would slip past if they were just pixels. This is why I still have a copy-edited manuscript mailed to me, rather than handling everything through Track Changes. (Well, that and the fact that I don't use Microsoft Word, and would rather open my veins with a rusty spoon than start.)
I don't claim my approach to revision is the best, in terms of either results or efficiency. Other people have methods for single-pass revision, or always polish as they go, or habitually throw out their first draft and redo the entire book. If there's one habit I would recommend to every writer, though, it's reading your text out loud. I do this with all short stories, and I even try to do it during copy-edits for novels, because there is nothing else in the world that will make you as aware of your words. You'll find the places where your sentence structure is awkward, where you overuse a particular word or create a distracting rhyme. You'll spot errors that would glide right under your radar in silent reading. And while you're at it, you'll probably improve your ability to perform readings for an audience -- a useful skill for a writer to have.
Fundamentally, though, there's only one rule: make it as good as you can in the time you have.
Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. She has most recently misapplied her professors’ hard work to the Memoirs of Lady TrentA Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, and two more to come). She is also the author of the Onyx Court historical fantasy series (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lie, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire), the doppelganger duology of Warrior and Witch, the urban fantasy
Lies and Prophecy
, and more than forty short stories.When she’s not obsessing over historical details too minute for anybody but her to care about, she practices shorin-ryu karate and pretends to be other people in role-playing games (which sometimes find their way into her writing).
June 18, 2015
Revision Round Table 2: Judith Tarr, Elizabeth Moon
So you've finished your novel -- but have you? That first draft needs work, but where to begin? In
this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.
Judith Tarr:
How do you approach revising a book? I prefer to revise than to write first draft. Revision is my reward for slogging through the draft. Since I do most of my "prewriting" either in notes or in my head, and generally have my plot either outlined or again, clear in my head, my drafts tend to be very spare but pretty much complete. My editor will usually tell me to expand; I've never had to cut, I've always had to add. Sometimes a lot.
Of cuss the editorial letter can make me say bad words, because in my dreams I submit a perfect draft that needs no more than a light waft of proofreading before it bursts out upon the world. In reality, if I'm lucky, I don't have to add or change much. If I'm not...well, there was that time I had to rewrite the whole thing with a different but much more appropriate protagonist. Or the time I had to add 50,000 words. Or...
What makes revision different from polishing or rewriting, or is there a difference? Revision for me is what I do after I've received outside input. Usually that's the editorial letter. I don't use beta readers in general; have pulled in a reader once in a while for expert advice or clear-eyed input, but mostly it's just me and my ms. until it meets its editor.
Do you work things out in your head, work only from the manuscript (and if so, on the computer or a printed hard copy), some combination of both? I work on the computer with my editorial letter in hand, with however many passes the ms. needs. Picky stuff first (wording, clarifications, continuity notes, etc.). While I'm going through to get the small stuff cleared up, the back of my mind is mulling over the big stuff: expansion of character roles, plot elements, worldbuilding notes, and so on. Those get done in waves as I can handle them.
I try to find the spot where a change or expansion has the maximum effect. A change in a word or a line at the exact right place can resonate through the whole ms. That's the dream change.
Or, doing the minimum required to make the book work according to my vision and the editor's input. It's the lazy writer's technique, and if I do it right, it makes a huge difference to the quality of the work.
Do you write out takes, read sections aloud?
Nope. I try to make every word count. No exploratory drafts. Sometimes I'll have an outtake in draft, when I go off in the wrong direction, but by the time the editor sees it, I'll be adding rather than subtracting.
Reading existing text aloud doesn't work for me, though I'll often speak the words as I type draft or revision.
What advice, if any, would you give a beginning writer? No one's work is perfect. No one's. Expect to revise. Embrace it. Stay true to your idea, don't let it be gutted by wrongheaded input, but also be open to what your editor has to say. She's probably right--or if she's not, what she has to say might show you how to make your work better anyway.
In connection with this: Let your draft be as messy as it needs to be; just get it on the page in the way that best serves the project and your individual process. Revision is where you worry about cleaning it up and making it shine.
What's been the most useful thing another writer has taught you?Every process is different. Every writer has her own individual way of getting a project written and revised. There's no wrong way to do it--just a whole lot of different ways to make it happen.
Judith Tarr has been a World Fantasy Award nominee for her Alexander the Great novel, Lord of the Two Lands, and won the Crawford Award for her Hound and the Falcon trilogy. She also writes as Caitlin Brennan (The Mountain’s Call and sequels) and Kathleen Bryan (The Serpent and the Rose and sequels). Caitlin published House of the Star, a magical-horse novel. When she is not working on her latest novel or story, she is breeding, raising, and training Lipizzan horses on her farm near Tucson, Arizona.
~~o~~
Elizabeth Moon:
How do you approach revising a book? As re-vision--as re-seeing the work in light of what I wanted to accomplish and what's actually on the page, so that its gaps can be filled, its flaws corrected, and so on.
From there, it's a process based on my mother's advice about building something: first concentrate on the design, then the construction, and finally the finish (finishing out, giving it "curb appeal.") Just as, in building a house, you don't start by painting one side of dry wall panels before you know whether a room will have two windows or three, I don't bother with the later stages until the first ones are complete.
Design/structural means making sure the story makes sense as a story, and the kind of story I was trying to write. (IOW, the story has a good arc and doesn't switch gears from a madcap adventure to a blistering social commentary in the last chapter. That's the next book.)
Writers who outline well solve these problems in the outline, but I can't outline, so I look at things like "story arc" and "character arcs" and whether things happen in the right order at this stage. If it's a multi-viewpoint book, this is where entire viewpoint sections are moved as needed to provide the best flow for the reader, the best "Story" shape.
I try (not always successfully!) to do the design/structural revisions during the original several drafts, ending with the "main draft" that will go on to the next stages. Once I have the parts of the story in order, it's time to look at construction-level stuff: the actual writing.
What I'm looking for in this are paragraph level gaps or sources of confusion or boredom for readers. I want to make sure all the parts are sound in themselves and connect with each other smoothly. Infodumps, unwanted repetitions, character "breaks," messy clumps of writerly enthusiasm all meet the Chainsaw of Correction. Sentences out of order within a paragraph, consequences before actions (embarrassing how many times I do that in draft!) meet the Comb of Untangling. Rough or nonexistent transitions get troweled into place and then faired in smoothly to prevent reader-jouncing confusions.
At this point, the finishing work starts--and I hand off some of the work to a couple of good nit-pickers. While they nit-pickers are looking for misspellings, grammatical errors, continuity problems…I'm reading it aloud for flow, listening to the word-music (is it too legato for that scene? Too staccato for that? Is the beat too regular? Does it really express the POV's internal state?) and other details that make it shine.
What makes revision different from polishing or rewriting, or is there a difference? Rewriting is what an editor asks me to do. It derives from the editor's vision, not my original vision--and requires merging the editor's view of the book with mine. Starting with 24 hours of internal whining and bitching and moaning before I'm ready to agree that yes, chapter 23 sucks rocks and we all missed that, and yes, that lovely passage in chapter 31 is totally ear-candy and self-indulgence just like the alpha reader said, and I ignored, hoping to sneak it past the editor. But no, you can't make me take out the puppy: he's going to bite a villain at a critical moment later in the story. (Three whole volumes later, as it turned out, but he did.) (And thank all relevant deities for editors who catch what others have missed.)
For me, polishing is the final stage of revision.
Do you work things out in your head, work only from the manuscript (and if so, on the computer or a printed hard copy), some combination of both? Always from the manuscript, and usually a combination of digital and paper. Whenever something gives me trouble I print it out. I scribble notes to myself on paper. And at times resort to models.
Do you write out takes, read sections aloud? Sometimes both, but always read sections aloud. The out-take writing is usually to clarify something about a character's motivation.
What advice, if any, would you give a beginning writer? Nobody has to know what you actually wrote, as long as what you end up with works. Write freely; revise as much as it needs.
What's been the most useful thing another writer has taught you?
If you can't figure out what's wrong--read it out loud again. The answer's in there.
Elizabeth Moon, a Texas native, is a Marine Corps veteran with degrees in history and biology. She began writing stories in childhood but did not make her first fiction sale until age forty. She has published twenty-three novels, including Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark, three short-fiction collections including Moon Flights in 2007, and over thirty short-fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines. Her latest book is Kings of the North (second book of Paladin's Legacy) a return to the world of The Deed of Paksenarrion, and the third in that group, Crisis of Vison, is due out in 2012. The first book of Paladin's Legacy, Oath of Fealty, is now in paperback also. In non-writing hours, she enjoys nature photography, gardening, cooking, Renaissance style fencing, messing about with horses, and music, including singing in a church choir. And wasting time online, of course...
this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.Judith Tarr:
How do you approach revising a book? I prefer to revise than to write first draft. Revision is my reward for slogging through the draft. Since I do most of my "prewriting" either in notes or in my head, and generally have my plot either outlined or again, clear in my head, my drafts tend to be very spare but pretty much complete. My editor will usually tell me to expand; I've never had to cut, I've always had to add. Sometimes a lot.
Of cuss the editorial letter can make me say bad words, because in my dreams I submit a perfect draft that needs no more than a light waft of proofreading before it bursts out upon the world. In reality, if I'm lucky, I don't have to add or change much. If I'm not...well, there was that time I had to rewrite the whole thing with a different but much more appropriate protagonist. Or the time I had to add 50,000 words. Or...
What makes revision different from polishing or rewriting, or is there a difference? Revision for me is what I do after I've received outside input. Usually that's the editorial letter. I don't use beta readers in general; have pulled in a reader once in a while for expert advice or clear-eyed input, but mostly it's just me and my ms. until it meets its editor.
Do you work things out in your head, work only from the manuscript (and if so, on the computer or a printed hard copy), some combination of both? I work on the computer with my editorial letter in hand, with however many passes the ms. needs. Picky stuff first (wording, clarifications, continuity notes, etc.). While I'm going through to get the small stuff cleared up, the back of my mind is mulling over the big stuff: expansion of character roles, plot elements, worldbuilding notes, and so on. Those get done in waves as I can handle them.
I try to find the spot where a change or expansion has the maximum effect. A change in a word or a line at the exact right place can resonate through the whole ms. That's the dream change.
Or, doing the minimum required to make the book work according to my vision and the editor's input. It's the lazy writer's technique, and if I do it right, it makes a huge difference to the quality of the work.
Do you write out takes, read sections aloud?
Nope. I try to make every word count. No exploratory drafts. Sometimes I'll have an outtake in draft, when I go off in the wrong direction, but by the time the editor sees it, I'll be adding rather than subtracting.
Reading existing text aloud doesn't work for me, though I'll often speak the words as I type draft or revision.
What advice, if any, would you give a beginning writer? No one's work is perfect. No one's. Expect to revise. Embrace it. Stay true to your idea, don't let it be gutted by wrongheaded input, but also be open to what your editor has to say. She's probably right--or if she's not, what she has to say might show you how to make your work better anyway.
In connection with this: Let your draft be as messy as it needs to be; just get it on the page in the way that best serves the project and your individual process. Revision is where you worry about cleaning it up and making it shine.
What's been the most useful thing another writer has taught you?Every process is different. Every writer has her own individual way of getting a project written and revised. There's no wrong way to do it--just a whole lot of different ways to make it happen.
Judith Tarr has been a World Fantasy Award nominee for her Alexander the Great novel, Lord of the Two Lands, and won the Crawford Award for her Hound and the Falcon trilogy. She also writes as Caitlin Brennan (The Mountain’s Call and sequels) and Kathleen Bryan (The Serpent and the Rose and sequels). Caitlin published House of the Star, a magical-horse novel. When she is not working on her latest novel or story, she is breeding, raising, and training Lipizzan horses on her farm near Tucson, Arizona.~~o~~
Elizabeth Moon:
How do you approach revising a book? As re-vision--as re-seeing the work in light of what I wanted to accomplish and what's actually on the page, so that its gaps can be filled, its flaws corrected, and so on.
From there, it's a process based on my mother's advice about building something: first concentrate on the design, then the construction, and finally the finish (finishing out, giving it "curb appeal.") Just as, in building a house, you don't start by painting one side of dry wall panels before you know whether a room will have two windows or three, I don't bother with the later stages until the first ones are complete.
Design/structural means making sure the story makes sense as a story, and the kind of story I was trying to write. (IOW, the story has a good arc and doesn't switch gears from a madcap adventure to a blistering social commentary in the last chapter. That's the next book.)
Writers who outline well solve these problems in the outline, but I can't outline, so I look at things like "story arc" and "character arcs" and whether things happen in the right order at this stage. If it's a multi-viewpoint book, this is where entire viewpoint sections are moved as needed to provide the best flow for the reader, the best "Story" shape.
I try (not always successfully!) to do the design/structural revisions during the original several drafts, ending with the "main draft" that will go on to the next stages. Once I have the parts of the story in order, it's time to look at construction-level stuff: the actual writing.
What I'm looking for in this are paragraph level gaps or sources of confusion or boredom for readers. I want to make sure all the parts are sound in themselves and connect with each other smoothly. Infodumps, unwanted repetitions, character "breaks," messy clumps of writerly enthusiasm all meet the Chainsaw of Correction. Sentences out of order within a paragraph, consequences before actions (embarrassing how many times I do that in draft!) meet the Comb of Untangling. Rough or nonexistent transitions get troweled into place and then faired in smoothly to prevent reader-jouncing confusions.
At this point, the finishing work starts--and I hand off some of the work to a couple of good nit-pickers. While they nit-pickers are looking for misspellings, grammatical errors, continuity problems…I'm reading it aloud for flow, listening to the word-music (is it too legato for that scene? Too staccato for that? Is the beat too regular? Does it really express the POV's internal state?) and other details that make it shine.
What makes revision different from polishing or rewriting, or is there a difference? Rewriting is what an editor asks me to do. It derives from the editor's vision, not my original vision--and requires merging the editor's view of the book with mine. Starting with 24 hours of internal whining and bitching and moaning before I'm ready to agree that yes, chapter 23 sucks rocks and we all missed that, and yes, that lovely passage in chapter 31 is totally ear-candy and self-indulgence just like the alpha reader said, and I ignored, hoping to sneak it past the editor. But no, you can't make me take out the puppy: he's going to bite a villain at a critical moment later in the story. (Three whole volumes later, as it turned out, but he did.) (And thank all relevant deities for editors who catch what others have missed.)
For me, polishing is the final stage of revision.
Do you work things out in your head, work only from the manuscript (and if so, on the computer or a printed hard copy), some combination of both? Always from the manuscript, and usually a combination of digital and paper. Whenever something gives me trouble I print it out. I scribble notes to myself on paper. And at times resort to models.
Do you write out takes, read sections aloud? Sometimes both, but always read sections aloud. The out-take writing is usually to clarify something about a character's motivation.
What advice, if any, would you give a beginning writer? Nobody has to know what you actually wrote, as long as what you end up with works. Write freely; revise as much as it needs.
What's been the most useful thing another writer has taught you?
If you can't figure out what's wrong--read it out loud again. The answer's in there.
Elizabeth Moon, a Texas native, is a Marine Corps veteran with degrees in history and biology. She began writing stories in childhood but did not make her first fiction sale until age forty. She has published twenty-three novels, including Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark, three short-fiction collections including Moon Flights in 2007, and over thirty short-fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines. Her latest book is Kings of the North (second book of Paladin's Legacy) a return to the world of The Deed of Paksenarrion, and the third in that group, Crisis of Vison, is due out in 2012. The first book of Paladin's Legacy, Oath of Fealty, is now in paperback also. In non-writing hours, she enjoys nature photography, gardening, cooking, Renaissance style fencing, messing about with horses, and music, including singing in a church choir. And wasting time online, of course...
June 16, 2015
Cataract Journey Side Note: Lunar Haloes
Over on APOD, I see this beautiful image:
And its description: Rings like this will sometimes appear when the Moon is seen through thin clouds. The effect is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar Coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye.
And I am so relieved that this is a real phenomenon, and not further proof that I need cataract surgery. I don't see multiple colored rings, but a soft halo the same color as the object (white, in the case of the Moon).
And its description: Rings like this will sometimes appear when the Moon is seen through thin clouds. The effect is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar Coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye.
And I am so relieved that this is a real phenomenon, and not further proof that I need cataract surgery. I don't see multiple colored rings, but a soft halo the same color as the object (white, in the case of the Moon).
June 13, 2015
Cataract Journey 1: Diagnosis
For some years now, maybe a decade, I’ve complained about my “old eyes.” I’ve never had good vision without corrective lenses. I think I started wearing glasses in 3rd grade. I remember getting contact lenses in 1960. They were hard lenses, of course, and required a long period of getting used to, all the while putting up with light sensitivity and scratchy, red eyes. They did, however, get me out of having to play softball – which I was so bad at, it was embarrassing – in high school; the first windy day blew so much dust into my eyes, the school let me switch to swimming. For some reason, maybe the steepness of my corneas, the lenses stayed put in water. As a result, I learned to swim.For a long time, hard (“rigid gas-permeable”) lenses were a great solution for me. I don’t have issues about handling my eyes, and best of all, they gave me great correction. My brain thought the world had sharp edges. And so it went for many years.
Eventually I ran into one situation or another where I needed glasses. For some strange reason, hospitals want you to take your contacts out. So I got them, even though years would go by without using them. And then, of course, I’d need a different prescription. I got a pair just for reading in bed, part of my night time ritual.
Fast forward a number of decades. Dry, scratchy eyes became more of a problem, especially when working at the computer, and often it seemed as if the lenses couldn’t quite settle (and give me good correction), no matter how many times I blinked. I’d take them out and clean them, and sometimes that would help. Driving at night became more tiring. I could no longer see the night sky clearly, and I was pretty sure I’d been able to, once upon a time.
Eventually, my eyes decided they’d had it with contacts. After a painful bout with “contact lens over-wear,” I was never able to wear them for more than a few hours every day. Then I lost one (a very rare occurrence for me) and decided that was the universe’s way of shutting the door. I got new glasses, both for intermediate (computer, piano) distance and far distance. Night driving got even more difficult, and I noticed I was staying home rather than tackling the twisty mountain roads in my area on rainy nights. Street lights appeared surrounded by soft haloes that did not change when I took my glasses off. Often it would seem that the lenses were dirty or smeared, but they looked okay when I checked. Although my distance glasses corrected me enough so I could drive safely, I had trouble reading street and highway signs at a distance.
During a routine annual visit with my optometrist, I complained about my various visual difficulties. I’d been writing off so much as “these old eyes” or the challenge of getting good correction for someone as horrendously near-sighted as I am (and astigmatic, to boot). “You’ve got cataracts,” he told me. “They’re not severe, but Medicare might pay for the surgery. Here’s my referral.”
Cataracts?
Suddenly, everything made sense. I felt elated to find an explanation for the deterioration of my vision. But were my cataracts “ripe” enough to justify surgery? A month later, I hied myself over the hills to the specialist. The materials his office sent me explained a few things:Cataracts are an inevitable part of aging. Everyone who lives long enough will get them.Cataracts are a clouding of the eye’s lens, treated by replacing the lens with an artificial one. That artificial lens can correct visual problems!Once upon a time, it was thought that you had to wait until you were practically blind to qualify for the surgery, but this is no longer the case.
Not only do I have cataracts in both eyes, one worse than the other, but I have choices. While Medicare pays for only the medically necessary monofocal (usually distance) replacement lenses, there are elective extras available to me: multi-focal or accommodative lenses, laser instead of scalpel surgery, methods for treating my (mild) astigmatism. I’ll talk about these in the next installment.
The painting is by George Cope, 1879.
June 11, 2015
Revision Round Table 1: Patricia Rice, Rosemary Edghill
So you've finished your novel -- but have you? That first draft needs work, but where to begin? In this round table series, I asked professional authors how the approach revision -- not polishing, but truly re-visioning a story.Rosemary Edghill: "How do you approach revising a book? What makes revision different from polishing or rewriting, or is there a difference? Do you work things out in your head, work only from the manuscript (and if so, on the computer or a printed hard copy), some combination of both? Do you write out takes, read sections aloud? What advice, if any, would you give a beginning writer? What's been the most useful thing another writer has taught you?"
I consider revision to be a collaboration between the writer and the editor, as distinct from polishing and rewriting. When you're polishing, you're making the best book you can make with only yourself to please. Revision involves shaping your book to someone else's vision. The trick is to do it without breaking it.
I work entirely on computer, which has advantages and disadvantages. There are a number of formatting tricks you can use (in Word 2003, which is what I work in) to make the book fresh to your eyes, including formatting it as if it is already a page of printed book text. While you're writing the book, you focus on story: for the revision, you're keeping your eye on transparency, reader accessibility, and narrative flow. Setting a manuscript up in book form gives you a much clearer idea of (frex) how far apart two pieces of information (that you expect the reader to retain and combine) are placed.
Another Word 2003 advantage (probably available in other programs, but Word is what I know) is the "Track Changes" function, where you can see the revision on the page with the new text inserted and the old text X'd out. I use that a lot when I'm trying to track down doubled or repeated paragraphs (an artifact of being able to cut and paste) or to see how a global replace is going to affect things.
Which comes back to why I'm doing all this in the first place: my editor has asked me to. Your editor may love your book and your series, but she loves it in a different way than you do: from the outside. She hasn't been living in your head with you and your characters for all the weeks and months (and years, if you're writing a series) that you have. And even so, she's still had a more intimate experience with your book than many of your readers will. The entire point of your collaboration with your editor is to produce a work that is full of suspense instead of confusion, and excitement rather than ...more confusion.
Your editor (and your revision guidelines) wear a second hat, of course: to fit the book you've written into the niche your publisher has marked out for your title. With that in mind, the majority of revisions I have been asked to make have been for length: three books ago, I was asked to cut 1000 pages from a 1600 page manuscript (SPOILER: I did it, and when you read the book, you'll never notice those cuts. Promise).
So what do I do? First I make the easy fixes (typos, inconsistencies, shortening my run-on sentences, removing semicolons, ellipses, and parentheses with savage brutality), and then I go on to the things that are going to affect structure (removing three subplots is going to put a great big honking hole in your story, you know). At that point, the book is in about the same state a half-flipped house is: it's been gutted (in a good way), and all the structural defects have been removed (like that fireplace in the kitchen, and the bathtub in the middle of the living room), and it's time to make it all pretty.
At that point I do a top-down read through, doing my best to see the book from outside. Sometimes a revision seems hard but turns out to be easy (like excising a scene which doesn't really affect anything) and sometimes it looks easy but turns out to be hard (fixing the weather in one scene once required rewriting the entire chapter). Sometimes new bridging material has to be written to make the cuts flow together. Sometimes all you have to do to make it work is to do even more cutting.
I don't remember who gave me the best piece of revising (and writing) advice I've ever gotten, but here it is:
"The first draft's for you. The last draft's for everybody else."
Rosemary Edghill describes herself as the keeper of the Eddystone Light, corny as Kansas in August, normal as blueberry pie, and only a paper moon. She says she was found floating down the Amazon in a hatbox, and, because criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, she became a creature of the night (black, terrible). She began her professional career working as a time-traveling vampire killer and has never looked back. She's also a New York Times Bestselling Writer and hangs out on Facebook a lot.
~~o~~
Patricia Rice: Since I edit and revise the whole time I draft, I need serious distance after I'm done. I prefer having trusted critique partners read over the material and tell me places they think I ran astray. By the time they're done, the book fog has lifted and I have new direction.
I think of "editing" as a process of correcting errors--some maybe large. "Revising" is a more global level of "this character isn't developed" or "this plot ain't workin'."Â Revising almost always has to be done on a computer because the revision works its way through the whole draft. Revising may be realizing I pulled back on the conflict and require that entire scenes be thrown out, replaced, or reworked. I usually end up with four or five drafts before I can do the real editing. Some of the revision process is the middle-of-the-night brainstorm. Much of it is is asking myself questions or following the guidance of my critiquers in hunting down problems.
If I'm at editing stage, then reading aloud or printing the pages will help me "see" details that I can't see when I'm in the midst of the revision thicket.
I'm willing to procrastinate at any level!
With several million books in print and New York Times and USA Today’s bestseller lists under her belt, former CPA Patricia Rice writes romance, mystery, and urban fantasy. Her books have won numerous awards, including the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice and Career Achievement Awards. She has also been honored as a Romance Writers of America RITA® finalist in the historical, regency and contemporary categories.——————-
June 9, 2015
A Belated Baycon Report
I really should remember to write up my notes and impressions of a convention soon after because they fade with astonishing speed. For example, I flipped open the program of Baycon 2015 (May 22-24, Santa Clara CA) panels, looking for a blog subject. “Inspiring the Next Generation of Science Fiction Writers” – ooh, I thought, I have a few things to say about that. Palm to forehead time: I was on that panel!
Not only that, my dear friend and awesome science fiction writer Juliette Wade was on it with me. Also a very cool guy named Colin Fisk, and “the Winner Twins,” two young women writers who dress alike, collaborate, and definitely spoke for the younger generation. My own perspective arises from coming of age during the space race. I remember the hoopla about Sputnik (in fact, I made a Sputnik costume for Halloween) and how cool it was to like science and engineering. Physics and astronomy were majorly splashy news. We don’t have an equivalent now in terms of the general conversation, although the images from Hubble and the other space telescopes are even more awesome. The Winner twins came a gaming perspective, seeing video games as instruments to not only teach science but inspire players to learn more. Of the latter, I remain dubious. On the other hand, I remain hopeful that the various efforts to attract more women and minorities to math and science may result in a new generation of science fiction writers as well.
Sometimes my panels and other convention events revolve around a theme. This could be the vagaries of chance, the items I ticked off on my guest questionnaire, or simply the way the convention programming folks work. Baycon 2015’s theme was gender and sexuality. More or less. I moderated “Pink Hockey Sticks: Raising a Gender Neutral Child in a Highly Gendered World.” One of my favorite resources for this is the blog Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous, Gender Creative Son (although I think it should be child, but it’s not my kid, so I don’t get to vote). The cool thing is that one of the panelists was an intersex person, which is a viewpoint not often included in “Quiltbag” (LGBTQI) discussions. We all lamented the paucity of gender-neutral pronouns and emphasized that the polite thing to do is inquire the preference of the person.
Saturday morning brought a themed reading on mythical creatures. Four of us had to split up a slot of 60-75 minutes. We’d contacted each other about how to do this (highly recommended!) and so the process was graceful. Most of us selected very short (15 minutes) excerpts, except for the fabulous Marie Brennan, who read a complete short story based in her “Lady Trent” world. And hilarious. A good time was had by all. Despite the challenges of making sure each reader has their allotted time, with time for transitions and questions, group readings are great. Folks come to hear one author and discover others. I found a new one to look out for (but, alas, the dealer’s room didn’t have the first book of her series or I would have bought it right then).
“Constructing Fictional Cultures: Sex Without Shame” could have been a meaty discussion of craft, but devolved into “what’s wrong with current attitudes towards sex.” But I got to talk about how I created the gender fluid native race in Collaborators. I wanted to write an occupation and resistance novel, and to do that I had to talk about interpersonal power. And to do that, I had to talk about gender. So I wanted a contrasting culture where gender differences are not an issue, where any other person is a potential life mate and reproductive partner. And all the misinterpretations and assumptions we humans bring to the conversation.
Even though I was commuting from home (an hour either way over twisty mountain roads) I stayed late on Saturday night for a rare treat: Katharine Kerr reading, accompanied by Cliff Winnig on sitar. It was like listening to a duet – the interplay and dance of words and music.
My last panel was entitled “Short Stories: Before the Series,” and the fun thing was that none of us could agree on what that description meant, especially since it didn’t appear in the program book. But with co-panelists like GoH Seanan McGuire and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, just about anything we talked about would have been delightful. It was.
Sometimes my convention schedule is so full, I don’t get to attend any panels I’m not actually on. This year, I had space to hear an urban fantasy panel with Seanan and my friend (and this year’s Lambda Literary Award winner for SF/F/H) Chaz Brenchley. One of the secrets of being a good moderator is paying attention to when the conversation is flowing smoothly and the audience is all perked up and interested, and when it needs a nudge in the form of a provocative question. You also have to keep a balance between those folks who speak freely (and often at too great length) and those who are shy or shy-er and do better when you divert the conversation toward them from time to time. Fortunately, there was a minor conversational explosion in the middle of the panel, so the quality of the moderation was no longer an issue. A word to the wise: do not announce that a cure for cancer has been found but the pharmaceutical companies are suppressing it in the middle of a panel on urban fantasy. The results may be amusing, but not for you. Especially if you have never heard of Jay Lake.
All in all, however, a wonderful convention. As usual, not nearly enough time to chat with friends or write down all the story ideas that burble up from being around so many fellow writers and fans.
June 8, 2015
Deborah Responds to Ads Aimed at Men
For various reasons, mostly having to do with the fact that my husband never flies anywhere, he now has a free subscription to a magazine aimed primarily at a male readership. Out of curiosity, I flipped through it. And was suitably amused and horrified. Come with me on an adventure in befuddlement…Cover: Hmmm, interesting. Think I’ll check it out.
Inside cover. This cloud turns gamers into Titans. I’m anti-interested in “massive universe” games.
This ad for an airline offers drinks on the house (image of man’s hand holding airline-plastic cup of beer). Drinking at altitude is such a colossally bad thing for your hydration, this airline is evil.
Table of contents: Ooh, a person I want to read about.
Ad for men’s eyeglass frames. What were you smoking to think these might make a man look even remotely attractive?
A cancer hospital’s goal is…wait for it…curing cancer.
This ultra-modern watch is ahead of its time. And its face is also unreadable, especially at a quick glance. It’s analog but has no second hand. Why bother?
I think this ad is for a tablet, but I’m not sure. It could be the thing that holds a tablet. The company is marketing to folks who already want their product.
A bluetooth-enabled electric toothbrush. Department of Useless Technology, much? I find an electric toothbrush an improvement over the traditional kind, since I have a touch of carpal tunnel syndrome. I like the little built-in timer. I see no reason whatsoever to have an app that keeps track of how long or how hard I’m brushing.
Finally I come to an actual article! Alas, it is an op ed piece on political and technology. Snooze.
A truly incomprehensible ad about growth, expanding capability without expanding infrastructure. Sounds like a plan to put construction workers out of a job. Zero interest.
The next ad informs me I can roll over my data plan on my smartphone. Since I have a stupid phone, I pass.
Letters to the editor. These are not the droids I’m looking for.
Ad for an intense fragrance for me. Is this why the magazine makes my nose itch?
Another watch, this one with a clear, numbered, analog face. It’s either got a dial to measure seconds or that’s a stop watch. Is there a women’s version for those of us with small hands? Oh, and it says made in USA. I know this because I found the ad interesting enough to read it. Kudos to the company!
An article I might be interested in, only it’s white type on black background and the graphics are unreadable.
Another article on an issue I care about and would to read, only it, too, is illegible white on black.An ad I believe has to do with day trading. Anti-interest. I have so many and better ways to spend my time than making myself crazy.
Finally, an article I’m interested in and I can read. By this time, I’m on page 26. Alas, it’s followed by an ad for liquor, whiskey I believe, but since I’ve seen far too many lives destroyed by alcoholism, I question the ethics of making liquor appear elegant and attractive.
Another white-on-black article. Drat, one I would have read.
Another watch with an unreadable and terminally ugly face. It’s solar, but what good is that if you can’t read any of it’s 20 functions. Get a sun dial!
Article I could read if I had the slightest interest in it.
Ad for a car I would never own and that probably gets 3 miles per gallon. Trees died for this???
Yet another article I could care less about. Why are these the ones with black on white? Is there an inverse relationship between interest and readability?
An ad for men’s fragrance, featuring a model with great face shape, gorgeous eyes…and a 5 day growth beard that makes me wince. Porcupine time – run away, run away!
Here I gave up. I didn’t even get to the cover story.
It’s a good thing we recycle.
