Revision brain and writing brain are two very different brains. I want to stay in my writing brain. She is comfortable and interesting. Revision brain is boring and slow. However, when I find I get to jump into writing brain I realize that I truly have switched into revision brain because I have trouble switching back. What I really need is agility of mind.
Progress
My progress has been slow at best and I am letting it stay that way. I’ve decided not to put any targets on when I will finish this revision. As someone who always has goals and targets, this is extremely new to me. I still want this novel done as fast as possible but beating myself up over not revising enough is not going to help the process. I know what I need to fix and because I am rewriting so much, it will take longer.
I’m trying my best to look at progress a bit differently. It is the only way I can keep myself a little bit sane as I slog through revision. Any day that I get any revision done is a day I have succeeded and any day I revise five pages or more, I have exceeded expectations. I am past the first quarter mark and soon will hit the first third. We will see how much I can get done in the coming month.
What I’m learning
I learn something from every project. I am learning how to revise and it is a hard lesson. I am not naturally good at it and neither do I like it. I am also realizing that I need to be creating in other areas to keep me sane. Whether that be crafts or short stories. Revision is not the same as creation for me. It is more technical and odious.
That’s why short stories are so important. It takes a long time to explore a whole novel and that slows down learning. I imagine I can learn much faster writing short stories and novellas (though I may start them out that way only to find them expanding into novels. We shall see on that score.) I can explore in all the directions I choose, be more inventive, and learn more about craft as I do.
Other Creativity
Something I’ve succeeded in this month is doing other creative things. The fact that I’ve slowed down and don’t feel the need to constantly write means that I don’t end up “doom-scrolling” on my phone and feeling bad that I’m not writing. Instead, I make a mushroom hat, paint something, or work on a handmade leatherbound journal. Did I burn myself with hot glue (more than once) in the process? Of course. Did I get to watch some good movies and feel good about accomplishing my crafts? Naturally. All in all, that’s a marvelous improvement. It has helped my mental state tremendously and once I get into a proper routine, I’m sure I will write more too.
Leisure
I have slowed down a little bit and though the part of me that wants to get everything down yesterday is screaming at me I know it’s for the best. This started with going to the camp I attend every year. I completely unplug and get in touch with myself and my thoughts. Every year I contemplate getting a flip phone too. If it weren’t for promoting my art and writing on social media, I would have done so already. As it stands, however, I am tied to this technological ball and chain.
As for reading, I actually have something to report! I read Piranesai by Sussana Clarke and my goodness was it a wonderful read. I couldn’t put it down (although I did for a couple of hours to attend a friend’s wedding reception). The writing was exquisite and pushed me to think about what I actually like in books.
The library where I picked up Piranesai (and where I work) designated it as fantasy, which I agree that it is but it’s also something else. After digging around on the internet for a while I realized that it is a part of the category of “Contemplative Fiction.” That is the genre I really like. If it has fantasy elements all the better. It is a more literary category (in my estimation). What is funny is that I’ve been having trouble getting into fantasy books, especially the older ones but many epics just don’t work for me. I believe that Brandon Sanderson’s work is more of an outlier, for me, than I thought. There is something about the flowery, overdescriptive nature of most fantasy books that puts me off within the first page. This saddens me because I’ve always loved the genre. However, I really long for stories that break the mold and go off in other directions. Fantasy can be so many different things but we get bogged down by what we think it should be. What I want more than anything is to read stories that make me think and question. Characters are interesting but many stories don’t use the form of their books to the proper advantage.
The other thing that reading Piranesai made me think was that my novel is rotten. I hate it. It is not as good as it could be. I know there are great stories within me but they are still beyond my reach. This story is a good story and it will get better as I revise and tweak it. It is not a great story yet. It is not one that turns heads and makes the reader question what fantasy is as a genre. At least I don’t think so. Then again, I ought not to be trusted on such matters. Ask me how I feel about this story on my next read through and I’ll no doubt tell you it’s really good and I can’t believe I wrote it. Then when I go to revise it again and look at it through the lens of critique, it will look deformed and ugly once more. I find it impossible to be objective about my work. I am merely at one of the two extremes.
The next few months
Moving forward I plan to continue revising this complicated behemoth of a novel as well as write short stories, and just like last fall I will write a bit more by hand. It gets me off of the computer and away from distractions. Plus, my stories are more interesting and imaginative when I write them by hand.
When I go camping I will bring my journal and some of the notes I’ve already made on a short story and a more literary book I have planned and start drafting where I feel like it. There is something about the motion of travel that alights creativity within me. I’ve also allowed that with the literary book, I can take as long as I want with it. It will be a great day when I write a sentence in that story, so I imagine that will take me years if not decades. And, I’m excited about it all the same. Besides, I imagine I’ll be a much different person in a ten years time.
