As I retrofit this character

[larryhammer]

Revision is not easy for me. A draft has a shape in my mind. I have to unbuild a part of that shape, if I'm to replace it -- excise it thoroughly enough the new crenellation doesn't look like a ghost of the old cornice. This, while making sure the crenellation is actually, yanno, good and the seams where it joins the roofline are cleanly spackled over. And, oh yeah, making sure the shingles fit around the new bit, and the window treatments no longer match the old shape.

All of which takes me a couple days of slowly steeping my brain with the intended new architecture. No, steep is too mild. Stewing in it, and not on the back burner. As a rule of thumb, it takes me at least twice as long to revise a story as I think it should.

Rewriting is easier -- if nowhere as much fun.

Writing update: After 30k words, Her Nibs is still not a kick-ass heroine. She has threatened to kick someone's ass, but the threat was effective and did not have to be carried out. I will post further updates as the situation warrents.

---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

How do you see rewriting and revising as different processes? Are you seeing one as what I call polishing--that is, going over the prose and checking for escaping continuity floobs, as opposed to what you talk about above, pulling it all apart and reenvisioning the shape so you can restitch? (And yeah, I find that very hard, but kind of exhilarating.)

[larryhammer]

No, "rewriting" is the even deeper rework -- the ground-up writing it all over again from page zero. I call what you describe "polishing" too.

---L.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I think for me revising and rewriting are part of the same process--though polishing is definitively something different.

[larryhammer]

It's possible I over-refine the etymological differences between re-vision and re-write.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

It's possible I over-refine the etymological differences between re-vision and re-write.

Mais non. To revise is literally to look again, to carefully read over; to rewrite is to change the text. They are two different things, and both are important in the writing and refining process.

[janni.livejournal.com]

And I think it makes perfect sense that they're distinct phases, too, actually. It's just that for me they happen at the same time. I revision prose and text together, in tandem. (But polish mostky in isolation.)