So earlier this week, I was hanging out at the local coffee shop, re-reading The Wise Man’s Fear for roughly the billionth time. Tightening and tweaking. Seeing what I can trim. Checking all the interconnecting plot threads like a spider with OCD going over its web.
I tend to hide in the back of the coffee shop when I’m doing this. A little bit of ambient noise is nice. It’s one of the main reasons I go to the coffee shop for this sort of work, actually.
You see, I have two problems when I’m revising. First, when I get into a book, I’m really into it. You can pretty much set me on fire and I wouldn’t notice.
Second, I’m working really hard to make this book really captivating.
Both these things work against me when I’m doing revisions. If I get pulled into the story, I enjoy myself, but don’t get any editing done. The sound of conversation and the occasional pretty girl walking by helps keep me from falling into my reading trance. Hence the coffee shop.
But too much bustle can be too much distracting. It’s a fine balance. On the days when I don’t need much distraction, or I’m just caffeineing up, I sit in the back room. They use it for shows some nights, but most days it’s just empty.
Okay. Enough background? I think so.
So I’m working on the book and some people come into the back room and start to set up their equipment. I look up and realize it’s almost 7:00. I’ve been editing for about 6 hours and lost track of time.
I get rid of my dishes and start to tidy up my table, thinking I’ll go somewhere else to edit. Maybe grab some dinner. But then the band does a little bit of a sound check…
At first I listen just to be polite. (I am from the midwest, after all.) But then I get pulled in. The singer has a voice like honey on warm bread. And the music is my favorite sort: Strong vocals, good lyrics. Some covers, but but a lot of the songs were original. Original and good.
They kept me there for the whole set despite the fact that I was hungry and I knew I should be editing. Still, I didn’t feel too bad. I do write about musicians, after all. I should probably occasionally watch people, y’know, make some music.
They had a pretty good patter too. They talked about music. About their lyrics. They told a few little stories, including how there was one song in particular they would start playing whenever they were out busking and saw a kid. Something about that particular tune always tended to draw the children over to them…
Afterwards I wandered up to the stage and reassured them with my standard line, “Hello, I’m not a hobo about to ask you for spare change. I’m actually a writer, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”
They were delightfully tolerant of me, and answered a couple of questions. The drummer and guitarist both let me look at their hands to see what sort of callouses they had.
Then I asked my big question: “That song you played. The one you used to draw the kids over while you were busking…”
They said they knew what song I was talking about: “Strong Enough to Catch My Fall.”
“I don’t suppose you have a recording of that?” I said.
They didn’t.
I said I’d love to see the lyrics sometime, but I didn’t push the point. The reason is, when I heard the song. I thought, “This is Denna’s Song.”
But I couldn’t just *say* that. Walking up to a band and saying, “one of my characters would totally sing that song!” has to be about the geekiest things it’s possible for a writer to do. I can’t say why, but to me it feels as geeky as walking up to a stranger at a bar and telling them about the time your favorite D&D character killed this troll this one time…
So I tried to play it cool rather than risk being that overenthusiastic guy. But before I left, I asked them if they’d like copies of my book. I’d listened to their show, they could read by book. Fair’s fair, after all…
A couple days later, they were nice enough to drop me an e-mail with the lyrics to the song. I read the lyrics, and thought, “Yeah. That pretty much hits the nail right on the head.”
When I e-mailed them back, I told them if they ever did record a version of the song, I’d love to put it up on my webpage.
The very next day, (today, in fact) they sent me this link.
I was surprised. I’d been thinking that to record a song you need a studio and one of those big boards with all sorts of knobs. And you need a guy wearing headphones to fiddle with those knobs while saying, “Let’s try those three measures again. But this time with more tremulentatso!”
Or something. I can’t remember any real music terms right now. It’s late.
The point is that I’m a little ashamed of myself. I immediately thought of recording music as this long, arcane, artificial process.
They thought: “He wants a recording? Find something that records and point it at us and we’ll make some music.”
And then they made some music. They didn’t piece together a song out of 20 different takes. There’s no pitch-tuner or mixboard here. You know why? Because these folks are real musicians. Making music is what they do.
So y’all should really go check it out. They recorded it specifically so I could share it with you, and it would be a shame if you didn’t take advantage of that.
Did I mention that it’s the Hillary Reynolds Band? It’s the Hillary Reynolds Band.
If you want to hear more of their stuff you can head over onto their myspace.
They’ve got a few shows listed there too. So some of you might be able to catch them live if you’re in the right part of the country.
That’s all for now, folks. Enjoy the music.
pat
Fanmail Q&A: Revision
When you ask about *the* revision process, James, I get nervous. Every writer has their own way of doing things. I can only talk about *my* revision process, because that’s the only one I know.
Still, you aren’t the first person to ask about this. So I decided to take some notes on what exactly I did over the course of a night’s revision.
Here’s what I wrote down: (And don’t worry, there aren’t any spoilers below. I don’t go in for that sort of thing:)
1. Changed a curse to be more culturally appropriate for the person using it.
2. Looked at all instances of the word “bustle” in the book to see if I’m overusing the word.
3. Considered modifying the POV in a particular scene. Decided against it.
4. Added paragraph about the Mews.
5. Changed the name of a mythic figure in the world to something that sounds better.
6. Spent some time figuring out the particular mechanisms of sygaldry to prevent consistency problems.
7. Reconsidered changing POV in same scene as before. Decided to just tweak it a little instead.
8. Trimmed two excess paragraphs.
9. Looked at my use of the word “vague” to see if I’ve been using it too much.
10. Removed about 20 instances of the word “vague” from the book.
11. Spoke with beta reader on the phone, getting their general impression of the book. Asked questions about several issues/concerns I have about the book. Took some notes.
12. Added two paragraphs to a chapter in order to adjust reader’s expectations for the following chapter.
13. Tightened dialogue in two key scenes, making them move a little more quickly.
14. Went through a manuscript copy of the book returned by one of my beta-readers. Fixed the typos they noticed, read their comments, and made a few minor adjustments to fix areas of the book where they were slightly confused.
15. Expanded scene to improve pacing and dramatic tension.
16. Considered moving a chapter to earlier in the book.
17. Moved chapter.
18. Read section of the book with new chapter order.
19. Moved chapter back to where it was before.
20. Re read several new-ish scenes to check their clarity and make sure they’re properly integrated into the book. Made small adjustments to smooth things out.
21. Invented several new religious terms.
22. Added paragraph to clarify character motivation.
23. Developed several new elements of the Commonwealth legal system.
24. Resisted the urge to add a 4000 word chapter so WMF would be longer than Brandon Sanderson’s Way of Kings.
25. Changed chapter ending to add slight foreshadowing.
26. Read the book for about two hours, making many small changes to tighten, clarify, and generally improve the language used.
That’s how I spent my Friday night, James. Altogether it took me about 11 hours. (10:30 PM to 9:30 AM the following morning.)
Some of these pieces of revision take more time than others. Something like #8 is relatively quick and easy once I’ve decided to do it. But something like 6Â or 16-19 might take me an hour, and result in nothing at all in the book being different when I’m finished.
While most of these are in no particular order, the last one, # 26, is how I normally finish out my night, re-reading the book on the computer and tweaking the language it in a thousand small ways. When I do this, I also try to trim some of my excess wordage a bit. My first drafts are fairly verbose, and stories are better when the language is lean.
I know that sounds strange coming from someone whose novel is almost 400,000 words long, but brevity is something I really strive for. Everything in the book is there for a purpose. Every scene has to pay for itself. Every piece of description really needs to be worth reading.
During the two hours I tweaked the book, I trimmed out about 300 words, removing little bits of sentences and superfluous bits of description. I’d say over the last year, I’ve removed over 100,000 words from the book. Some of that was whole scenes and chapters, some of it just little bits and pieces.
I realize a lot of this is kinda vague. I apologize for that, but I don’t want to spoil any of book two by saying things like, “Added two sentences so it would be more of a surprise when Bast and Chronicler kiss.”
But since you asked me to “show you how it’s done,” I will. Since you admitted your letter that you only tend to write a first draft, I hope you won’t be offended if I revise your letter.
(Editor’s note: I felt weird doing this, so I e-mailed James to ask for permission. He said it was cool.)
Here’s how your letter looks after I gave it the same treatment that I give the book. I read through it twice, fiddled, tweaked, and tightened up the language.
First off, James, I don’t mean to imply that your letter was in desperate need of revising. There’s a reason I answered yours and not someone else’s. Your e-mail was delightfully polite. It had punctuation and capital letters. It even looks like you spellchecked it. It was a lovely letter.
I just did this to show you what exactly I’m talking about when I say I tweak things around. I like shorter sentences and paragraphs because they’re bite-sized and easier for the reader to digest. Also, now each paragraph centers around a separate idea. That makes it easier for the reader to follow your points.
Also, my revised version is about 30% shorter. I clipped out a few phrases and some repetition. I removed prepositions when I could and combined some sentences. It says pretty much the same thing, but it’s about 160 words long instead of 225.
That’s what I’ve been doing all these months. Except instead of doing it once to a tiny letter, I’m doing it a billion times to a huge, bugfuckeringly complex metafictional narrative.
Hope this clears things up a bit,
pat