Major Surgery

Don’t get me wrong—I love the revision process. When I teach writing workshops, I always tell students, if you can’t deal with revision, don’t be a writer, because you’ll be doing it all your life.

There’s the revision you do yourself, before you let anyone see your heart’s work; the revision you do after your trusted readers give you feedback. Sometimes it’s even hard to stop revising and send your work out.

And, of course, if you send it out, and you’re lucky enough to be published, you will be revising in response to your editor’s feedback. Ideally, that partnership results in a better book. But that doesn’t make it any easier when you get that editorial letter and the work you thought was basically done isn’t.

So I’m in the middle of this major revision. I’m wrestling with this 500+ page manuscript. I wrote 150 new pages, revised everything else, then cut 100 pages. Today I decided to move this one scene. But one thing led to another, and now everything is scrambled. This is the kind of situation that results in mistakes. And heavy drinking.

When I was in junior high school, I was a volunteer at a VA hospital. They didn’t allow visitors under 15 on the floor, but I was there, at 14, volunteering. One thing that struck me was that the patients always looked worse when they came back from surgery—pale and wounded, sick, and confused. On life support. And I remember thinking—this is a good thing?

Depending on the seriousness of the surgery—er—revision, your book can look worse before it looks better. Sometimes you’re afraid it will never recover. You hope that once you’ve repaired the plot holes and cut away the dead tissue, your book will be healthier for it.

Not enough metaphors for you? I’m a professional writer, after all.

My husband works in stained glass. He was making a lamp recently—had it almost finished, and set it aside on the floor to clear his work table so he could work on something else. Somehow, he stepped on it, shattering several panels. He had to cut out the unsalvageable, replace it with new, and somehow make it fit back together.

He came upstairs and said, “I think I finally understand what revising a novel is like.”

I said, “Welcome to my world.”

I was secretly glad I didn’t have to solder anything. Words, I can do.

Right of Revision

Q: Ms. Chima. Have you ever gone back and read your own books and began to wish that you had written certain parts differently or do you think that you captured the entire story just as you had imagined it?
Thanks, Matt

A: Matt, actually, I can’t stand reading my books once they’re in print, because I always want to change things. I can always see room for improvement, ways I can sharpen dialogue or deliver emotion more effectively. When I write sequels, it always gives me ideas about things I could have done differently in previous books. (If I’d known in Book 1 that Han needed to know all about poisons….) But short of traveling to bookstores and putting sticky notes in, I’m pretty much stuck with the way they are.

There are many potholes along the road to publication. One of them is sending work out before it’s ready. I’ve written before about the importance of revision, because a first draft is never as good as it can be.

But sometimes revision is just an excuse to hold onto a project. If you send your manuscript out, somebody might reject it. It’s much safer just to keep messing with it.

If you want to be a writer, you have to learn when to revise—and when to stop. First, you educate yourself by reading great fiction, reading books on craft, and attending conferences. That will prep you to do your best work. Then write the best book you can and have it critiqued by peers and mentors. Then revise revise revise until it is as good as you can make it at that point in time. Then let it go.