An Exclamation of Larks

Time for another exciting edition of ‘fess up Friday.

Writing: Much better this week. Freewriting resulted in less whining, more novel notes, so I’m pleased with that. I managed to do my freewriting almost every day. I missed Tuesday, though, and ended up reading for most of the day. I’m thinking of doing some writing this weekend to make up for it.

Revising: I tried something new with a revision this week. For months I’ve had this one particular story that I didn’t know what to do with. Originally, the story received a lot of praise, but somewhere in the gazillion revisions, I started to hate the story. So earlier this week I reread the original draft of the story, opened my computer and, starting with a blank screen, started writing the story again.

This may not be groundbreaking to anyone else, but it was for me. We were never given any advice on how to revise in grad school and so my system never changed. I always used the latest draft as a basis and just marked the heck out of it from there. The revisions were extensive, but they were always based on the previous draft.

Starting from scratch is . . .  freeing. It’s a lot more time consuming, but it also gives me room to wander away from the the last draft. I don’t feel locked in to choices I made.  At the same time, when I get stuck, I know the next step of the story, so if I want to keep it, I just start working my way there. Ultimately, the process will be judged by how well this revision goes, but so far like the system. I’m halfway through the revision and I like this version of the story much more than the last revision. It will be interesting to see what my writing group thinks of it.

Submissions: Nothing yet. The mail hasn’t come today, though. I didn’t submit to any new markets this week. Again, when I have a story out at 10 places I start panicking about putting it in more hands. Maybe next week.

Overall: Productive week, but I feel like it could have been more productive. I’ll try for better next week.