Gerard Houarner

My good buddy Tom Piccirilli, whose “noirella” Clowns in the Moonlight ( http://www.amazon.com/Clown-in-the-Moonlight-ebook/dp/B0078B6VK2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330741769&sr=8-1 ) was just released, recently posted on Facebook: “Worst thing about working through your novel for a second draft? Realizing that all those brilliant lines you wrote actually suck dead grizzly ass.”
Yes. Yes they so sadly do.
Of course, his suck is what some of the rest of us can only aspire to, but still, the point remains, running through your first draft with a cold eye can make you feel like you’ve slipped into a talent show judged by Ricky Gervais, Seth MacFarlane, and MST3k guys. You can’t help wincing.
But there’s no choice. Not if you want to sell. Or at least not be held up to ridicule like many self-published innocents whose work gets the occasional Ricky/Seth/MST3k treatment at writer gatherings. The cold eye is essential. It ain’t all poetic inspiration and glasses of wine.
Some writers embrace, even love the editing process. Blessed by stronger editing genes, or perhaps they’re strangers from another planet granted the super powers by the light of our sun, they’re not frustrated by debris from the crumbling façades of imagination. They’re not appalled by weak, even non-existent foundations of motivation. Nor are they attached to the clever bits that come in the fever dream of creation, the kind that wilt and die under the glaring reality of a really good second read. They love to prune, and are not afraid to chop off entire chapters.
The rest do it because it is part of the job. Face it, for any kind of work, there’s always some part that sucks worse than any other. I’ve heard writers say they hate writing, but love having written. Gardeners don’t all love messing around in the dirt, but they love the flowers or vegetables they grow.
There are ways to find support. Some folks give their work to hand-picked readers or writing partners who know their material, what they want to say, and can be trusted to give appropriate feedback. Others use a writing workshop for fast edits as deadlines loom. A few even have great editors with keen eyes who really work to make the piece even better than you ever imagined it might be.
The editing process differs with the writing process. Some folks like the fast first draft, others build the work carefully, scene by scene, laying down a strong foundation, putting down one chapter seamlessly on top of the another.

I usually spend a lot of time on beginnings, because I feel the end is in the beginning. As the story develops, I go back and plant a seed that needs planting, or I jump ahead and lay something down that will need to be done or said at the end.

I’m also a foundation type of writer. I need to feel what’s gone on before is solid before I move on. Of course, I know I’m deluding myself. But in the moment, I want to feel like something feels solid. I’ve dug into the characters, even the setting, maybe exposed something new or different, which then leads to a plot twist I hadn’t anticipated. Maybe I have to go back again, change a couple of things. In other words, I always seem to be going back and edit, smoothing out the rough spots so I have an idea what the thing I’m building actually looks like, and not just an outline of what I hope it’ll turn out to be.

This means I violate a rule many writers have of never researching while writing. Make it up, fix it later. My problem if something is worth mentioning, it’s worth getting it right. The detail may have an impact on plot, or maybe you put it in for the sake of authenticity. But if I’m going to bother with the details of, say, the ingredients of a meal and how it’s prepared, it means I want to use it as a way to show something about the characters. For me, it’s important to know those kinds of details as I come to them. It helps me get deeper into their POV, work with their reactions, make them more consistent, or surprising in believable ways.

But I understand the lay-it down first and smooth it out later types. For a lot of writing work, like media-based stories, you just have to pump it out. Deadlines rule. Business is business, and sometimes good enough writing and timely delivery will get you the next job, while great writing handed in late means zip. And, for folks not on deadlines, it seems like they need that feeling of being rushed to get through to the end and finish a story.

Whatever gets you through the long night.

Alas, whether you’ve written fast or slow, benefitted from friendly or rough feedback, worked on tight deadlines or loose ones, edited on the fly or not at all, you’re going to be faced with a final edit at some point, even if it’s at the last-chance galley stage. If you’re not, you didn’t get over, you got robbed.

Hopefully, you’ve gotten some distance from the material and forgotten those cherished little things you put in there that you thought were so cool. And for projects that may have taken a long time to complete, or suffered from a lot of interruptions, it’s the last chance to pick up problems like mixed up names/characters/descriptions, jumps in mood or tone, unfinished thoughts, questions that really should have an answer, repetitions and all the other errors and bad habits that pop up because, well, nobody’s perfect.

Speaking of lack of perfection, I’ve been working on revising a long piece and thought I’d share, for whatever it may be worth, a snapshot of an edit in progress.

In the following section, my goal was to show a part of the background setting, the Caravan of Death, actually working instead of trudging through desert. I also wanted to offer my main character, a young girl, Aini, an opportunity to return to a safer place.

In the earlier draft presented here, I already (thankfully) deleted a heaping glob of a useless paragraph that seemed to be a placeholder for something I wanted to say, making the initial word count around 500 words. In a cold second read, I had no idea what I’d been talking about, so out it went.

I’m pretty sure I went on to fine tune it a bit more, but you get the idea. I’m not putting it out there as an example of how to do it, just an example of what I did.

419 words – earlier draft
Dejjal took the camel bridle from a servant, and the rest quickly vanished. “You must be careful what you play with,” he said, passing his fingers gently over her exposed calf, bruised and scratched by the djinn. “My brothers must work hard to calm what you stirred, and you might not survive another such encounter.”
Aini pointed to Bomaye and Mafufunyana at the center of a knot of figures, and said, “Not all your brothers.” She thought her thief had returned to bargain for her return. But then she noticed jeeps and trucks, the machinery of her youth in the other world, and uniformed men with guns. Another kind of bargain was being made. Bomaye was talking to the dead, calling them out of the line, looking to a fat man in green and black. When the fat man nodded his head, Bomaye yelled at the pick, directing each to the line loading into the vehicles. Mafufunyana pulled the females out, dragged them to a smaller van while carrying a strong box on his shoulder. None of the children were chosen.
The trucks started up as thunder rolled over the desert once more, drowning the noise of the engines. As the vehicles drove off to the east, the sky shimmered above them while ahead, the rocky, rolling landscape seemed to shrink and waver, like a mirage.
She thought of al-Sirat, and the possibility of other roads in and out of the country of caravans. She tried to remember the old stories she used to tell of growing up in that far and other place, before her parents had brought her into their dream of a caravan life.
Every place, she supposed, needed storytellers.
Dejjal laughed. “Finding the way to and from the Caravan of the Dead is part of the price of trading with us,” he said. “For those in need, what we provide is worth the cost. But do not believe that any journey back with those in such need would be gentle, or the world at the end of such roads a welcoming one for you.”
Aini closed her eyes, blocking out Dejjal with the many voices, the pictures moving and talking, the endless stories happening and being told all at the same time in an enormous stewpot of fantasy and gossip seasoned by the occasional fact and rare dashes of truth.
“You protected your virginity, but surrendered everything else to our world,” Dejjal said. “You’re ruined for any other land you think you could run to.”

****
480 – final draft
Dejjal took the camel bridle from a servant, and the rest quickly vanished. “You must be careful what you play with,” he said, passing his fingers gently over her exposed calf, bruised and scratched by the djinn. “You might not survive another such encounter. My brothers must work hard to calm what you stirred. ”
Aini pointed to Bomaye and Mafufunyana at the center of a knot of figures, and said, “Not all your brothers.”
She thought her thief had returned to bargain for her return. But then she noticed jeeps and trucks, uniformed men with guns, the machinery of her childhood in the other world. Another kind of bargain was being made.
Bomaye was talking to the dead, calling them out of the line, looking to a fat man in green and black. When the fat man nodded his head, Bomaye yelled at the pick, directing each to the line loading into the vehicles. Mafufunyana pulled the females out, dragged them to a smaller van while carrying a strong box on his shoulder. None of the children were chosen.
The trucks started up as thunder rolled over the desert once more, drowning the noise of the engines. As the vehicles drove off to the east, the sky shimmered above them while ahead, the rocky, rolling landscape seemed to shrink and waver like a mirage.
She thought of the world her parents had left behind and what might be waiting for her on the other side of a mirage. Every land held a promise, and a price. It was a world, she was certain, filled with stories and wonders. But no Caravan of Death, or Dreams.
Dejjal laughed as he followed her gaze and pointed at the rapidly diminishing trucks. “Finding the way to the Caravan of the Dead is half the cost of trading with us,” he said. “We claim the rest. And, of course, the way home requires its own payment. For those in need, what we offer is worth the sacrifice.
“But do not believe that any journey in the company of those in such need would be gentle, or the world at the end of such roads a welcoming one for you.”
Aini closed her eyes, listening to the crack and rumble of djinn until the many voices they’d awakened in her mind rose up in a tide of tales, real and imagined, seasoned by fantasy and gossip, the occasional fact and the rare dashes of truth, to drown Dejjal’s seductive murmuring. Tears came to her eyes, the kind she might have had if she’d ever seen her parents one more time.
Dejjal’s voice slipped through, a steel blade as hard and sharp as his smile. “You protected your virginity, but surrendered everything else to our world. You’re ruined for any other land you think you could run to.”