I'm currently nearly done writing a novella-length piece that has taken a year and a half out of me. It has gone through three rounds of editing, with each new draft deserving the adjective new as much as the draft before it. I now find myself at that part of the writing process where I know I need to give it the entire weekend to make the final rush of edits for continuity of voice, clarity of thought, and overall completeness.
I want to do it over this weekend because I want to - I feel the primal urge, the need that got me into writing in the first place, and I have to - I find it impossible to edit for uniformity of voice over short periods of time separated by long gaps, I feel one Philip K Dick-esque sitting would be best.
Besides, I'm young, and my voice evolves with every new piece of art that I encounter. This is great, since what I'm writing is a bildungsroman, but is problematic when you want to have control over your artistic voice and maintain unifromity.
My question to the writers out there is this. (This might apply to creative people of any sort, really. Coders, film-makers, musicians, I don't know.) Does what I have said so far make sense? What techniques do you use to complete the final lap and do justice to all the effort you've put in so far? If you do agree with me that the last mile needs to be done in one epic sitting, how do you prepare yourself for it? Do you play music or do you prefer silence? Do you travel someplace new and write there for a change, or at home at your desk? Do you prefer cafes or study rooms?
Please share your techniques and ideas with me. Answers to either these questions or the meaning of life will be much appreciated. Thanks.
edit: Really caught up with work these past few days, so I haven't got the time to update the post with my experiments with editing. This is what I did. As expected, the thought of rewarding myself with run got the better of me and I pre-warded myself with it on Friday night. This made it impossible for me to really work till Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, I sat down at my neighbourhood cafe, bot myself a caramel macchiato, put on my earphones and started. My friend had a lot of work pending, (he works in a start-up, erratic hours) so he sat across the table from me, got himself a cup of coffee and put on his earphones. I sat there for twelve hours straight, editing, reworking, rewording. And it worked. I'm satisfied and am nearly done. I now know this works for me if I want it enough. Thanks. You will be the first ones to hear about the novel when I do publish it.
It sounds like you need to get in the zone and power through it. The problem is the best way to get in the zone is through repetition and linking of habits. I had an odd habit of drinking grapefruit juice whenever I code (mostly because water is too boring and soda makes my teeth icky.) Because of this habit, I can now feel compelled to code merely by putting my headphones on and drinking grapefruit juice. Pick a time. Clean up. Turn off the phone. Turn off the internet. Get yourself a bottle of water and juice and whatever you want to drink/snack on. Put in headphones. Get comfortable. Sit down. And do it. Prepare yourself for the task and just go full force. You don't get to adjust the temperature. You don't get to get up and pee. You get to do the task at hand until it's fucking done. And then you will pee and run around and dance and rub your knees and ass and feel fucking great. Pick a reward after that. Sometimes I let myself get drunk as fuck whenever I'm done and ignore anything else on my to do list for the rest of the day. By the way, this is very different advice than the "what do you do to create stuff." That is all based around inspiration and being creative. You've already done the hard part. This is the easy part where there is nothing but brute force to get you through it.
Your grapefruit juice is my caramel macchiato. I get what you mean, though, and this is roughly what I have in mind. Sit down at the beginning of the day, a large cup of hot coffee on my table, and get some hard work done. You're mostly right when you say that the creative part is done. I'm not looking for new plot-lines or fresh characterization. I need to sit down, read the whole thing, and edit it it for uniformity, tie it all together. This is a process that might require a bit of creativity, yes. But it mostly requires hours of unwavering focus and concentration. Rum does sound like a great reward though. Unfortunately, when it comes to rum I have a history of treating it as a pre-ward. Thanks for the advice.
If you are a morning person go for it in the morning. (I am a morning person.) If a night person, go for it in the night. Understand what your strengths are, how to manipulate yourself (so that you feel inclined to work), and play to them. When you go to edit it set yourself up so it is as easy as possible to do the work you want to do.
In the words of Stephen King - Write with the door closed. Edit with it open. You have fallen in love with your writing. More than that, you have become enamored with the process, not the product. The where and how is up to you, cowboy; do what you want to do. But stop fetishizing over it. Do you know what an asymptote is? It's that thing you never reach. It sounds like you've already made two attempts at finding it, and are now digging in for a third round. How do you know when it's done? - See, I know it's done when I realize I'm adding shit for me, not for anyone else reading it. And I stopped doing that a long f'ing time ago. So I know it's done when I've edited it once. The rest of this shit is process, and it's tedious process at that. "cafes or study rooms?" You write where you are. I wrote 60 pages of a screenplay on the flight from Narita to San Francisco once. My choices aren't your choices and your choices need to be personal, reasonable and repeatable. You're asking the equivalent of "how do you take your coffee? For I wish to drink coffee the way other writers do so that I may be a writer." You wanna know how to really knock this one out of the park? WRITE SOMETHING ELSE. Now go back and edit this. Got anything to add? No? It was done already. Yes? Well, you wouldn't have gotten there if you kept remixing it. Just write. All else is artifice.
To be fair, I often ask questions of #askhubski that I don't know the answer to for myself personally (or if I am reconsidering my previous answers). It's not necessarily because I expect that other people will be able to provide answers that I can then appropriate but because I want to see how other people approach the same process, in the hopes that maybe seeing/using their methods might yield results that are meaningful to me. Seeing how other people think can help me re-examine a situation in a different light or take details into consideration I hadn't factored for before. - See, I know it's done when I realize I'm adding shit for me, not for anyone else reading it. And I stopped doing that a long f'ing time ago. So I know it's done when I've edited it once. I know I'm done with something, truly done with something like a poem, when I can't see the forest for the trees: I can't find anything to change about it. That's when I try and toss it out for outside review, when possible. Kind of similar to asking for advise on how one edits, I rely on detached observers whose opinions I trust to provide a new perspective that will hopefully help me get to a better poem. It's not perfect and you can't rely on other people all the time, but especially when starting as a writer (college-level creative writing workshops) it's INCREDIBLY helpful. After college, you learn to do it on your own...but an outside eye is still, usually, nice. | "cafes or study rooms?" You write where you are. | Yes. With this I do agree. OP, jayfixkleenit, figure out what setting works for you and edit there. Do you need peace & quiet, or can distraction help you? Do you like background noise? It's about finding a setting that helps you do what you need to do, not wearing a beret, listening to jazz music and snapping at the riffs you like. The latter, that's accoutrement. (And it's a stereotype. It's a stereotype I hate which is why I'm picking on it.) Personally, when I edit: Often I can edit a piece 1 or 2x immediately. (Keep in mind I mostly write poetry not prose.) I write it, re-write it, maybe re-write it again. Then I put it away for a little, maybe a day or two, maybe less if I like it. I edit it again. I put it away for longer. If I really really like the poem I have to put it away for a month or more at a time. To edit well you must, as kleinbl00 said, detach yourself from your work. Time above all things helps this. Recently I wrote a book of poetry and have been struggling with editing it. I've done it twice but I've still been too close to the material and the project to be "done." I know it's not done - but for four months I haven't touched the book. I don't have the energy and - I'm too close to the material. I can't see the forest for the trees; can't see the flaws for the work and words in there. I'm starting to feel ready to pick it up again and, once work dies down (three more weeks!!) I plan to. Then what I'm going to do is: print off a draft. Take a colored pen. Read every line. Cut every non-essential, and I do mean essential, word out. Some poems I will entirely gut and re-write. Some, I will experiment with: put them in a Word doc and write them out three or four times, see what I come up with, what I like best. Keep the best version. Some poems I probably won't change much. But I may play just to see what I come up with. Even if you think a passage is great, play with it. See what you can do with it. You may surprise myself. I will probably do this in a surge of about a week. Editing is my least-favorite part but it is also the most essential. I will probably do this in my house though I may do parts at a bar, the cross-outs and under-lining parts. I will have some sort of background noise going. Until I get my groove on I will take frequent breaks to do pointless things, but at some point it will click, I will stop feeling like a crap poet and realize that some of the stuff I've written is actually pretty good, and the rest of the ride will be a merry jolly little cutting party. I will keep copies of previous drafts to compare, but I probably won't. (Compare them, I mean.) I'll rearrange pages. And at some point I'll find I can't do anything more with it, again, and at that point, I think I'll be done. Three edits is enough. Then...I'll figure out how to self-publish ;)You're asking the equivalent of "how do you take your coffee? For I wish to drink coffee the way other writers do so that I may be a writer."
How do you know when it's done?
and I have to
- that's the main thing. I've been haunted by stories that had to be written. If that's how you feel, then you'll do it. how do you prepare yourself for it?
Personally, I need to go away from home. Home is full of distractions. If you're willing to sit in a library or coffee shop, go there. I might do a burst of writing in longhand, and then type it up wherever, whenever. Typing it up/editing/revising is easier than creating and needs rational thought. Answers to either these questions or the meaning of life
I'm less concerned with the meaning of life than I am with living. In your case, while you are finishing your story, you will feel acutely alive. It will be good. Keep us posted.
I enjoyed the read. I enjoy your blog. I agree with the idea of getting away from home. I get a bulk of my writing done at cafes. It hasn't been as effective of late though. I have been toying with the idea of sitting down in this park next to the sea and going through with this mammoth early morning editing session. Sounds good in theory. I have no idea how it'll work in practice, especially given that the novella is set in a city, not in a a village by the sea. Thanks for your inputs. I will keep you posted.
Unfortunately, I'm not in university. I'm what you would call a working man, I guess. It's taken me a few years out of university to understand the charm of the library. If only I had spent more time in it than outside it bitching about it.
My essential rules of finishing a piece of creative work: 1. Know where you're going before you start
2. Too much work in the details makes you lose sight of the piece as a whole - A sure fire way to lose interest or motivation is to start something which you ultimately don't know how is going to end.
- Get the main idea down and then layout the entire structure as soon as possible, even if it's rubbish. It's much easier to work when you can physically see or hear an end.
3. Don't expect to produce anything good for at least the first 45 minutes to an hour - It's very easy to get lost in how particular things should be phrased, what words/sounds to use, how the tiniest detail should sit. It's all well and good until you come out of that and realise you've kind of lost the overall picture.
4. Enjoy what you're doing. - This is the time most people give up on an idea but this a crucial time. For me, this is just when I haven't really produced anything good yet but I'm just about in the zone. Don't stop now.
- Cliche but simple really. Sometimes you feel that urge but there's no point in pushing through if you're not enjoying yourself. Sometimes it's hard, but it should never be laborious.
There are lots of songs that I write and record half way, to never work on again. Hundreds. For example, I'll likely never work on this song again, even though I could add drums, bass etc to it and make it better. Why? Because I have a tendency to move on to something new each time I put an instrument in my hands. But sometimes I have to force myself to go back and rework a song or finish tracking a song. If I commit to doing it, I can. For me, making music shouldn't always be easy sometimes I need to work for it and often those songs end up being much cleaner and more polished than the ones I record quickly out of inspiration alone. I know that many writers/artists will have a specific routine for each project. I wrote in a small coffee shop every day when I wrote this screenplay or I only drank Macallan 12 while writing my novella. -This routine and repition allows them to jump back in to the 'voice" that they were using previously. It allows you to return to that "inspired state", it's a trick to fool yourself in to never having left in the first place. Maybe try something like that? But I don't think you should have to write/edit it all in one weekend. Writing should be hard sometimes.
What should ultimately appeal to the consumer of a creative piece, is the voice of the creator and how that voice has shaped the product to create an experience for the consumer. To do justice to the work, take as much time as it needs for it to reach an acceptable level for release. Many writers continue to rework pieces, even though they've already been published. Try out different stuff. See what works for you and for that piece. Then try something else again. Get some fresh eyes on it. Put it in a drawer and leave it for a week. What things are and what they could be change from moment to moment.What techniques do you use to complete the final lap and do justice to all the effort you've put in so far?