On Revision

I just finished a second draft of my current novel opus (working title: THE FORKED ROAD). I've done tons of work--this new drafts includes at least 50,000 words of newly written material, replacing much that was deleted, alongside many smaller changes, including a fairly significant restructuring effort in the early chapters.

Revision is a funny process. When I read a published novel, the text is finalized in the physical form of paper and ink, and (if the novel is at all good), forms a cohesive whole, one chapter proceeding naturally from the next in (usually) chronological order. I experience the story through linear progression from front cover to back cover, and each page added on brings fresh information to add to the story unrolling in my head.

I really do believe that a book, rather than being a story as such, is a set of instructions for the reader to create a story in his head. The instructions vary in detail--compare an 800 page fantasy epic to Hemingway's six word "story": "For sale. Baby shoes. Never used." The former likely provides extensive descriptions of nearly everything, from precise fencing maneuvers to character eye colors and weather, whereas the second (IMHO) isn't so much a story as a writing prompt.

This is, I think, why different readers can have such different impressions of the same book. Often, in response to a negative review of a book they loved, people will say "I wonder if we read the same book".

Which makes revision a funny process for me, especially the kind where I delete scenes wholesale and insert new ones in their place, significantly altering such whimsical entities as character arc and mood alongside the basics of creating good prose and readable dialogue. I also don't necessarily work in linear order--I might be fine-tuning the emotional conclusion of a character's romantic story one day, then working on that character's first appearance the next. I'm forced to consider the book as a malleable entity, all its parts--the raw text I'm working with--in a state of constant shift, striving towards the story I truly want it to convey. I have to consider left-to-right reading progression, but also transcend it so that the book makes a rational whole. In a way, it's like the Catholic formulation for God's view of time--God is not bound by "past" and "future", but because he exists outside chronology, he sees all things simply as "being".

Essentially, the revising author must hold in stasis the reader's viewpoint--cover to cover, left-to-right, as the novel is meant to be experienced--with the more transcendent point of view necessary for a craftsman.

Stray thoughts from a brain driven by four hours of sleep, Mountain Dew, and a rather good bacon, egg, and cheese croissant sandwich.