Revision, Revision

No one ever told me that writing a novel would mean hours of going back over my (to me!) wonderful work and ripping it all apart, virtually starting over again. I guess I was vain enough to think that my writing was good enough that revision would be a snap. Well, what has almost snapped is my patience.

In March of 2008, I put the finishing touches on my final chapter and thought my work was done. Oh, I knew there were things I had to revisit, but really I was finished my year long project. And then I took an extreme editing course. And found out a lot about myself and more about revision.

Things I've learned:
1. Not everyone likes or is qualified to critique historical fiction,
2. The choice and understanding of point of view is subjective and dependent on a reader's experience,
3. I have hours of work revising and rethinking elements of my manuscript,
4. I have to have a lot of time to mull over others' criticism, good and bad.

I found that several people in my class gave excellent, insightful, useful suggestions for me which showed they were familiar with the genre. Others did not. My quandry in the beginning was knowing whom to believe, and I went through much soul-searching, self-flagellation, and weeks of not writing at all while I wrestled with the problem.

My reading of published authors' work for the last six months has shown me that, indeed, chapters can be written from multiple points of view as I have done. This is contrary to the advice of several criticisms I received telling me that I had to choose one point of view and tell the whole story with it. I have known and used multiple points of view--omniscient it is often called--for years. And much of my historical fiction reading has used this as well. My struggle was gaining the self-confidence to ignore these criticisms, a task which took me months. In the end I have decided to reduce the multiple points of view in the chapters where both my major characters are speaking in order to make the reading smoother and the storyline clearer.

Rereading has shown me that there are many flaws and inconsistencies in my story. What is in my head is not necessarily on paper and I must make the story flow from the words on paper. I like this challenge as it involves crafting the sentences and rethinking my word choice, studying the cadence of words and sentences and the language of each character. A big task is keeping the particular personality of each of my characters in mind as I write their dialogue. Here I am wrestling with using period dialogue or slipping into more modern language patterns. I have to say writing the way we talk today is much easier.

While others may be wondering what New Years' resolutions to keep, I know what mine is: keep going and get my novel revisions done so that I can go on with my plan to publish. One of my Christmas gifts from my son is a website titled with my novel title, to which I can add material that is pertinent. So I have that as a carrot to help me finish. For now, though, I've already revised for two hours today, written this blog, and had lunch out with my sister. The sunlight streaming in my window beckons me to bundle up and walk out my frustrations.