Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Once more into the breech. Or, the revision. Something feels odd, but I’m enjoying the revision. I didn’t believe it before, but the writing is in the rewriting.
I read somewhere that there are two types of writers, ones who plan, plot, outline and those who discover their story as they write. I’m of the latter camp once I get going. I do a good bit of research and I sketch out on a large pad the general flow, big ideas, things I don’t want to forget; but, then I dive in and start writing, see where the process takes me.
This means I produce a first draft that is, in effect, my outline. Somewhere in there is the story and it may not be the story I thought I was writing. Or, as in the case of Missing, it is the story I thought I was writing, but a lot of other cool ideas occurred to me as I wrote and I added those. Discovering them along the way, they just seem worth sticking in.
Revising is, at least in part, identifying those parts and taking them out. In this instance I will probably be able to use most of them in the next book, Loki’s Children, but it could well be that they would go into a file and never again see a page or screen.
Revision though is additive as well as subtractive. There’s not only the Michelangelo act of paring away the words that aren’t the story. There is also the painterly act of filling blank portions of the canvas, balancing the picture, making the colors pop. Both of these come into play during revision. Anyhow, I’d better get to it right now. Later.
