The Art of Revision, Part 2
There are several stages we go through when we decide to write and the first one usually involves a tender ego that can be smashed rather quickly with the least bit of criticism. This is where you want your best friend to read your work and gush. If you are lucky, this will keep you from quitting until the gushing gets on your nerves and you realize it can’t possibly be that good. You start to question exactly what you need to do to fix it.
Congratulations! You have reached the learning stage where your writing will really take off and your skills improve. Many would-be-writers never make it this far. If you have, this is where you need to seek out the input of other writers. We help each other. Get online and start looking. Find a group of writers who will discuss the finer points of your book and help you see what you need to see in order to grow. The important thing is that you get with people who share your interests, but will also broaden them. You want to grow, not pat each other on the back all the time.
I found a large group to start with. It was fun. I spent a lot of time in chat with the others discussing writing in general. It was good at stimulating creativity – and wasting a lot of time. One really good thing came out of it though, I met several other writers in there. We decided to form our own crit group. We kept it fairly small, I think there were eight or nine of us in the beginning. That’s a good number. Not so many that you can’t keep up with the people wanting your input and enough to give you a good mix of feedback. Everyone sees different things. Also you must be willing to give feedback as well as get it.
In stage two, it’s time now to grow a tough hide. It hurts when someone says your baby is full of comma splices, boring dialogue and your characters are flat. Get over it. If a crit hurts, and any really good one will on an early draft, sleep on it. Do not ever respond in anger, on the spur of the moment, to any statement about your work, no matter how far off the mark you think it is. The next day take a deep breath and look at the crit again – objectively. Ask yourself some questions. First, is it true? Second, is it relevant? Last, what can I do about it? Now, keep in mind, some crits will be wrong. If one person out of five tells you your plot doesn’t work, give it some thought. If three people tell you that, you’d better sit down and talk with them about exactly what they see as wrong and how it might be fixed. That’s what revision is all about. Good critiques are essential.
Be willing to explore options. If you keep your mind open, amazing things will happen. If you stubbornly keep your mind closed to any changes because it’s your book and you are going to write it your way, period – you won’t grow as a writer and your work will never have a professional polish. I can’t tell you the times I have had my toes stepped on because I had made some basic errors and thought it should be just fine the way it was. It wasn’t and I was so hardheaded it to take several people telling me the same thing before I really started to listen.
One of the things that made an impression on me was critting other people’s work and seeing my own mistakes in their writing. Talk about having your personal bubble busted! You need to take the time to crit other people’s WIP. You gain insight into the process and into your own work. It’s rather like the way I have never taught a class that I didn’t learn something as well.
Somewhere in stage two, you come to cherish getting your toes stepped on. You have a good grasp on the essential skills and want every single word to be the best it can be. I hope, that no matter how far I may go in my writing, I never get out of this stage.
A note about giving crits. Be kind in your honesty. That can be extremely difficult sometimes. Watch your wording to make sure it doesn’t come across as an attack, keep it impersonal. If the work you are looking at is obviously immature and at the early stage, you may have to gently lead them into improving their prose, rather than hitting everything at once that needs to be fixed. Always take the time to tell them what you liked and what they did well. We need to know that, just as much as we need to know what’s wrong.
Recognizing where the other person is in the process can be tricky. If a person is at stage one, there isn’t much you can do to help them unless they happen to trust you enough to be teachable. Even then, handle with care. If the writing is horrid and they think they should be able to make the best seller list next week, smile, say congratulations and walk away. Don’t even try to give a crit. I am discovering that a person who’s truly ready to learn, will ask you to tell them what needs work.
