Of shoes and ships and sealing wax-- Of captcha and kings (who stand on platforms)

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Guys, I'm not planning a huge post today. Rather, I thought I would catch up with you all. How are you going? We're two months into 2012 now - is everyone meeting their writing goals? I must confess that I've been struggling a bit, though that's starting to turn around now. I've been trying to re-plot FROM THE OTHER SIDE, which I've renamed REVENGE, ahead of a giant re-write. You know the feeling, when you've got such a huge task ahead of you that it all seems too daunting...

But I've been taking inspiration from this passage of Mary Kole's:

So if you feel like you’re just tinkering, shoveling text like a kid pushing peas around his plate, be brave and try starting over completely. You know what you want to accomplish with the section, so just take a brand new run at it. Or maybe you’ll realize that the section wasn’t working and trash it entirely, or find another, better part that fits. Change is tough, especially when you’ve been working on something for years and are eager to see it in print. But it’s once you kick the ladder out from under yourself completely, I’ve found, that you discover resources and ideas you never could’ve imagined.

If you're facing the thought of big revisions ahead, Mary's post might give you some helpful insights - it did me :)

Talking about motivational posts, did you catch this post by the legendary Angela Ackerman of The Bookshelf Muse (in a guest post at Write to Done)? It gives a number of practical ways in which you can turn your writing weaknesses into strength, and is a must-read for all writers. And Angela was kind enough to mention me and my Beta Matches in her point about finding critique partners to help identify your weak areas and offer strategies to improve.

Captcha

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It used to be bad enough, but the word verification (now commonly known as captcha - "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart," according to Wikipedia) at the bottom of many bloggers' comments boxes is causing all of us huge headaches! In their quest to trick spammers, the writing has become almost indecipherable to us mere mortal humans. So we're forced to squint, guess, re-enter words over and over again, all of which is a waste of time. Many bloggers refuse to comment if they know you use captcha, so you might even be missing out on comments if you use it!

Did you know you can turn word verification off? While I can't speak for other blogging platforms, Blogger does a pretty good job of filtering spammers. True, you receive an email telling you exactly what the spam message is, but the message isn't seen on your blog. So I guess it's worth considering. Anything to make things easier, right? Here's a recent post by Siv Maria, who's definitely not feeling the love. She tells you how to turn word verification off, with step by step instructions for those of us who are more technologically challenged :)

Writers' Platforms

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You know I'm all about platforms, right? Well, it's important to build one, of course. But have you thought about what happens then? And what a platform is anyway? Sher A Hart has written an awesome post about what exactly a writers' platform is, and more importantly, how not to fall off once you've built one. Check it out - I think you might find it useful.

Well, my not-so-huge post has gone on a little longer than I planned. So that's it me for today :)

How about you, any thoughts or helpful links you'd like to share? Do you just want to tear captcha to shreds? Have you got the philosophy *behind* your writers' platform in place?

Are you a tortoise or a hare in your writing (or a strange hybrid of both)?

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I've realized lately that I may be a hybrid of a tortoise and a hare when it comes to my writing. I'm not sure what it should be called though: a hortoise? a tortare? (though they both have a certain ring to them, *grins*).

Anyway, before I get distracted with names, and thoughts of what a tortare would look like...

I wrote my current WIP, FROM THE OTHER SIDE, in less than 3 months, and probably closer to 2. I pantsed the whole thing, I must admit, something I doubt I'll ever do again. But the words flew off my fingers onto the computer, the characters came to life before my eyes, and my plotline sprang into shape with remarkable ease (even if it did require some heavy shears/clippers/cutting implements/dynamite to prune it afterward).

I was a hare, and proud of it, and I didn't stop once until I'd crossed the finish line. I didn't even stop to rest under that nice shady tree along the way.

Then came revisions!

And I became a tortoise.

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I've been plodding along in revision hell joy for 9 months now (and I won't draw any comparison to the pregnancy thing *grins*). Not a particularly long time in the scheme of things, but it feels long to me after such a quick first draft turnaround. Especially when I see others (including certain awesome CPs who shall remain nameless) who seem to whiz through writing AND revisions, with a speed and efficiency that leaves me amazed.

I've been thinking through the reasons why my revisions are taking me so long:

• as mentioned above, I pantsed rather than plotted with FTOS, so I've spent a lot of time fixing things, getting the structure of the manuscript right, tweaking the plotline, getting to know the characters, and making sure I'm happy with the way the story reads
• I have a limited number of hours during the day to write/revise, and those hours are eaten into by things like critiquing for my CPs, my Crusades, blogging, reading, and all the "daily life" stuff
• I'm a perfectionist, and I want my manuscript to be the best it can be before I query (there are different schools of thought on this, and I may well do a separate post on this soon)
• I want to give myself my best shot at getting an agent by learning as much about writing as I can before I query
• my health has been very bad the last few months, and unfortunately this has impacted on my revision time (and my time for anything else, for that matter)
• simply, I don't want to rush

I'm not quite chafing at the bit--not yet--and I'm taking comfort from posts such as this one from Mary Kole, which gives great advice about being patient. And I am enjoying my revisions, believe it or not. With querying in sight for me, it's all good in the end. It does make me wonder about the tortare though, and how it is for all of you.

How about you: Are you a tortoise, a hare, or a tortare (or do you prefer hortoise)? What's your experience with revising your manuscript versus writing it. Do you like writing or revising best? What things impact on the time you spend writing/revising?

Do you take breaks when you're revising?

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It's a long weekend where I live, and I've decided to take some time off my revisions. A huge step for me, as I've been working on the same document most days for what feels like forever now! And it's hardly taken that much arm-twisting from my critique partner either *grins*.

I guess that's made me wonder, how do you do it? Do you sit down for a solid chunk of time and finish all your revisions in one go? Do you have breaks between each revision-draft of your manuscript (and if so, for how long)? Does the whole revising process work better if you come back to a document fresh from some time at the beach/snow/wherever? Or does taking some time off actually break your train of thought, making it hard to get back into the manuscript when you start?

The same questions apply to drafting too, so drafters feel free to weigh-in :) I'm a huge fan of letting a first draft "rest" before you dive into revisions, but do you take breaks at other times as well?

When revising your manuscript seems too daunting (Part 2)

In yesterday's post I spoke about Step 1 of my Revision Plan of Action - printing out my manuscript and revising/editing on paper rather than on the computer screen. This gives you a completely different perspective on your manuscript and can help to break the dreaded revision-block. I loved reading everyone's comments, and it was really interesting to see the different revision methods that people use (revising all on the computer, revising all on paper, or combining the two).

Today I want to talk about another way to make your revisions seem less daunting: breaking your manuscript into sections. This works well for both computer revisions and paper revisions.

REVISION PLAN OF ACTION

Step 2 - break your manuscript into sections

I suspect that part of the cause of my revision-block was the 300 page manuscript in front of me. My thinking went something like this: How on earth am I ever going to get my revisions finished, OMG there's 300 pages!!! I was focusing on the size of the whole task ahead of me, rather than on what I could do that day, that week, or that month.

The funny thing is, I knew even as I sat there that I shouldn't be thinking this way. I just didn't know how to break myself out of the mindset.

Here's a little tip that might help you if you're ever in a similar position:

1. save your document into a new file (so you don't lose/delete your manuscript while you're cutting and pasting);
2. using the new document, cut a section out of the manuscript. I have 4 parts in my manuscript, so I cut out the whole of Part 1. But you may prefer to do this by chapters (eg 4 chapters), or pages (eg 30 pages). Whichever approach you take, I wouldn't go much higher than 50 pages in total;
3. create a new document and paste the section you cut from your manuscript into the new document. Save this under a label you can easily find (I called mine "Part 1 - From The Other Side");
4. Repeat until you have fully divided your manuscript into sections;
5. Close all the documents except the first (eg my Part 1).

Whether you print out the document or work by computer, you now have a very short document to work on. And it's amazing how quickly you can revise and edit a 30 or 40 or 50 page document when there aren't 250 plus pages waiting to be revised behind it. With me, this actually tricked my mind past my revision-block AND got me all psyched-up about revising again.

Once you're finished with the first document, simply move onto the second. Once you've finished them all and made the edits in your computer (as many rounds as necessary), simply copy the revised sections back into the one document. Then rinse and repeat as appropriate...

Obviously this may not work if you're still carrying out structural revisions, so it may be more appropriate to wait until your structure is in place and you're revising by scene or by chapter or working on line edits. But once you're in that place, give it a go, hopefully it will do the trick for you as well.

Have you ever tried anything similar? How does it work for you?

When revising your manuscript seems too daunting (Part 1)

I hit a wall in my revisions recently, a great big high one. I stared at my computer screen for hours, knowing I still had heaps of revisions left to do but not able to bring myself to continue. I tried to pass off my mental block as a one-off event, only to find myself in the exact same position the next day. And the next.

Eventually I admitted defeat, closed down my computer, and went for a walk. The change of scene worked wonders and I came up with a plan of action that has since helped me immensely. I thought I'd share it with you over the next few posts.

REVISION PLAN OF ACTION

Step 1 - Time to print out my document and start working on paper. 

Some of us prefer to do all our revisions on the computer. If this works well for you, that's great, there's no point trying to fix what ain't broke. But, if you're like me and find your focus narrowing to an area the size of your computer screen (minus the toolbars), and often tunnelling in until you can only concentrate on the sentence you're revising at that particular moment, you might need to print out your document and start working on paper.

I've found that the shift from computer screen to paper immediately broadens my perspective, enabling me to look at the manuscript/part/chapter/paragraph as a whole rather than revise sentence by sentence. This has obvious benefits to my manuscript, particularly when I'm focusing on "big picture" revisions rather than line edits.

When (or if) you make the shift from computer drafting and revisions to printed-out revisions is up to you. After I finished my first draft, I found I had a lot of scenes and paragraphs that needed moving around, and I did most of this on the computer. Once I had my manuscript structure in place though, revisions on paper became a must.

How about you, do you revise on the computer or on paper? When do you make the shift?

Next Revision Step: dividing your manuscript into sections...