You Already Know (What you need to do)

When my clients send off their manuscript to me many of them will then embark on a 4 to 6 week-long process of agonizing. Some of them email me during the process, even though I say up front that I will only give feedback in total. They want to know if I hate it, love it, think they should give up altogether, or quit their day jobs. They fear what I am going to say.

It can be agony to wait, I know. Right now I’m doing the same thing with my own novel. Readers are reading it. Some have given me early feedback, bless them, but mostly on the first act. That leaves two acts hanging in the balance. And I am itching to revise because I’m still in the world of this book. No other project is calling me away. I’m not sick of it yet. I want to shape it to be as perfect as I am capable of getting it.

Yet as each bit of feedback rolls in, I have had the same reaction: Yes. Yes, you are so right. That does need condensing. She wouldn’t really say that. The language has been sacrificed for the action here…Some part of me knew that, and thought maybe I wouldn’t have to do it.

Most likely, you also know many of the problems with your own manuscript. Feedback is, then, a chance to validate what you suspect, to get evidence to support the change you know you must embark upon.  Sometimes we don’t want to see it. We are afraid of the work it will entail, and wonder if we can do it.

You can do it. You must, if you hope to be published.

But most likely, it’s no more work than you already imagined when you are honest with yourself (unless, I’m sorry to say, you have been deluding yourself all along).

So don’t be afraid. Get feedback. Revise. Start over.

It Happens to the Toughest of Us

“The first draft reveals the art, revision reveals the artist.” Michael Lee

No one is immune to the discouragement that comes in the process of scaling the craggy, seemingly impossibly high mountain of revision.

Just last night, after two weeks of gleefully gutting my manuscript I hit the sinkhole. The feeling that, even after all this revision, I still had so much more to do…was it even worth it? Should I gut the entire first act altogether? Should I rewrite the thing from scratch? Not my finest hour, I’ll tell you.

But I woke up this morning with that same sense of possibility: Oh yeah, I get to rewrite this. I have the power to change whatever I want. It says nothing about me that it isn’t “there” yet except that I am not done. And to quit now would be silly.

So, in April I’m teaching a 4-week class on Revision for Publication, and I’ve realized how important it is that I include, each week, several supportive strategies to help writers power through the discouragement and disappointment inevitable in the revision process. It will be as crucial as the editing tricks.

To Register: www.jordanrosenfeld.net/events-classes.html

Revision Grief Redux: We’re in this Together

My facebook/twitter status this morning: gutted and slaughtered darlings everywhere. It’s carnage over here in novel revision land (said gleefully, like a serial killer!)

I try to make clear to my clients and students  that I am a writer too. A working writer striving her hardest to get to the same place as they are: published. My hope is that this makes it a little bit easier when I tell them what has to go, what isn’t working, and what I think needs to happen next. Because we all know it’s far easier to be a critic than it is to produce material.

Yes, I’ve published a bit already–two writing guides, one fairly big press, one fairly small, but I also dream of the day that my novel sells to a publisher. Or wait, let me rephrase that…I also dream of being published, send my work out for feedback from people who will be honest about what has to go, what isn’t working, and what needs to happen next. And I too curse, cry and moan until the feelings pass and the answers start to rise from the mist.

I am in the same boat as my clients/students. When they email me saying they feel discouraged by all the work ahead of them, or are sad that a chapter or scene just isn’t succeeding as they’d hoped–I FEEL their pain. I know exactly what they mean. When the novel my agent tried to sell to publishers didn’t sell several years ago but “came close” as they say when you receive positive rejections, I had to take a really long time to recoup that loss. After all, writing a novel isn’t something you can do in a couple of days. Slowly, painfully, I mended. I wrote another novel (and let’s not talk about the first four abandoned novels I wrote early on), ran it by several people for feedback, saw its potential and its limitations and made the tough decision to let that one go too. It wasn’t coming together.  Then I picked up a different half-attempted novel and tried it back on. And this time it fit me. I was able to finish a first draft that I felt good about.

The whole purpose of this revision series has been to bolster myself through the revision process of that novel. But let me point out that every published writer on the shelves, from the flash in the pans to the mightiest of success stories was on the receiving end of some serious feedback at one point or another. Each one of them had a cringe-worthy moment or several thousand where they thought maybe they’d never get “there.”

And the only way they got there was by realizing that writing IS rewriting. That the pain is good for you. That it builds something beautiful just like exercise painfully sculpts a beautiful body.

REVISE for Publication:

In honor of all this, I’ve decided to teach a new 4 week online class in April on revising your manuscript toward publication. It will contain strategies and tips for how to revise your work in the most effective ways, including self-soothing tips for the hard times. I hope you’ll join me.

Full cost: $159. If you register before March 15, only $129.

 Until I get the paypal link up and running, email me if you’re interested in registering: jordansmuse (at) gmail (dot) com.