The voice inside, the voice outside

My wife read Ch. 12 and I went back to it this morning to make changes based on her feedback. (The chapter got longer by a page and remains lots longer than I would like it to be.)

Jane Smiley advises against having an intimate reading the work in progress, but I've had my wife reading it every step of the way. She heard first drafts read to her over lunch hours after I wrote them, and she's been assigned to read chapters as they get revised through all five drafts since then and to read the whole thing from start to finish a few times. She's given tons and tons of great advice and, probably more important, pointed out problems that I was too timid to face up to. Typically, a voice inside is trying to tell me that a scene isn't working, but it takes another voice that I can't ignore to get me to focus on that problem.

These conversations are very stressful for me and I assume they are for her also, because she must know that I will inevitably be quite depressed by them. Last night is typical. She reads Chapter 12 for about an hour and, hoping to avoid the tension, puts her comments in writing, but I lure her into explaining more. We do a lot of processing, talking through the problems until I see them clearly and have an idea of what needs to change. That's necessary of course and helpful, but it never feels good and I get discouraged at how much further from completion I thought I was when I handed the draft to her to read and how much more work I still have to do. Then I bitch and moan all night. In most cases I get back to work the next day, frustrated but disciplined, and make some more progress.

Well, it's been an amazing amount of time on her part over the last couple years and a lot of work to navigate the rocky terrain of my emotions. She'll deserve a ton of credit for the result. I'm sure I would have given up in confusion a long time ago without her as a sounding board.

Now, one caveat about the usefulness of her or any reader's advice. When she sees a problem she naturally suggests a fix. One scene in today's material, for example, had the character acting in a very emotionless and flat way, and she suggested showing how upset he would be. But the thing is I had him acting flat for a reason--the emotion sets in later; he's having a freeze response at that moment. So the fix I needed was to make clear what I was trying to do rather than to change what I was doing. Oftentimes I have to take the advice I'm getting and back it up a step. I just tell myself, "My reader is helping me see that there's a problem here. Now, what are the possibilities for fixing it other than what they recommend?"

Much slower now

I did a read-through of Chapter 5 this morning, and nothing I said about the rate of progress yesterday is going to apply for awhile. This chapter needs a lot of work--mysterious work that intimidates me. But I've got a list and I'll start working through it, probably on Monday. I guess it will take me at least 3 days and maybe the whole week to finish the chapter.

It's intimidating, but I also am a little excited. I have an idea not just for fixing the chapter but for truly developing it into something more--quite a bit more dramatic with lots of fireworks. I don't know if it's the right thing, but it should be fun exploring it. That will make me worry about the "butterfly wings" effect though.

Meanwhile, on chapters 3 and 4 I've skipped the step where I have my wife read it and then decide it I'm ready to move on. Maybe I can get her to do that this weekend, but I'm afraid what I'll find out.

Still on Chapter 2

Well, the comments my wife had on Chapter 2 over the weekend convinced me that I need to do a little more work.

The obvious need, which I took care of this morning, was to straighten out the order of presentation. There was too much jumping back in forth in time so that it was was difficult at a basic level to understand what was happening in time.

I also trimmed out two scenes--deleting most of them and incorporating parts of them into other scences--which reduced it by about 2 pages. (1%! Big whoop.)

So now it is hopefully much more intelligible. I'm going to see if my wife can spare some time tonight to look at the first half of the chapter that was so confusing and confirm that.

What I fear, though, is that it is more obvious where it fails to be meaningful. I have a nagging sense that I'm evading spots where I know in my heart it is not really developed well. But I really want to keep moving forward, so I think that's what I'll probably do tomorrow.

I've been thinking more and more lately that it's time for another reader. I'm trying to postpone that as long as possible, but it's on my mind a lot.

"Finished" with Chapter 2 yet again

Today went like planned and I finished the work I had in mind for it. I found it didn't need (as far as I could see) as much development/digging as Chapter 1, and with luck that will be the case with the rest of the chapters.

When I started this week, I thought I would be cutting out huge amounts, but most of it stayed, and the few pages I did cut got replaced with fuller development in other places, so that it's about a page longer than the last draft--49 manuscript pages, which is way way too long.

So, same routine as last week and as through most of the process of the first rewrite. I'll show it to my wife over the weekend, make note of what weaknesses she's finding in it and then decide whether to put it aside and push on to Chapter 3 or linger some more on this chapter.

I'm feeling good about the work I got done during a four-day week like this. The discipline and habit are the main thing--working steadily every morning. It's good to have that back again.

I'm starting to hope for the possibility of knocking out one chapter per week this way during the rewrite process. That would mean 15 weeks total, starting two chapters ago, 13 weeks to go--slightly less than a semester, which would mean being done with this rewrite before Christmas.