Revision, Part I: Restructuring your story

I've been away all of this holiday week, first on a road trip with my wife and mother-in-law to Joshua Tree National Park and then to a 3-day retreat, so I've been remiss in my blog posts. 

Ocotillo at Joshua Tree National Park (Nicole R Zimmerman 2013) 

In the new year I'm settling in at 30 hours a week of copywriting for Viator, which leaves me 10 for creative writing/revision. With two MFA essays now accepted for publication, I have a host of others (and two short stories) on my list to revise and polish for submission, and I'm excited about the challenge of bringing these pieces to fruition. 

Before leaving on my trip I started revising an essay -- a profile of a woman I know who worked as a seasonal wildlife biologist in Alaska. After several interviews with her and her partner (a close friend of mine), the essay morphed into a portrait of their uncommon relationship and its challenges. I submitted two very different drafts of the essay in 2011 during my MFA, one in Feb. and one in Nov., and I have approximately eight 1-page student responses (plus instructor comments) that accompany each. So I began the daunting task of unraveling and restitching my material by reading through and highlighting all of this feedback. 

As I find with much of my work, there are several themes and stories competing for attention, and my job in the revision process is to untangle them, make some decisions about which to highlight, and shape the arc of the story toward that vision. 

"What is this piece about?" is the essential question. Here are a few responses:

• What it's like to make the transition back to society after being connected to the earth's heartbeat for so long
• A modern relationship and the challenges of maintaining connection with an extreme work situation
• What it's like to hold space for someone when separated by space and time
• About loving across thousands of miles

After reading the comments on the first draft, I then read that draft and made some notes in relation to the students' and instructor's responses. Then I did the same for the second draft. As often happens in a second draft, many of the essential components were cut in an attempt to address feedback, but in doing so more was lost than gained; although strides were made on a prose level (much of it had been initially told in lengthy block quotes, which I later changed to my own words or described in scenes), the structure had lost its shape and new questions arose. So, much like taking apart a textile to reweave it, I cut apart both drafts and rearranged them into one on the kitchen table (sometimes with its alternate version of text next to it). I had to take out two extra leaves to make the paper fit across it!

This part of the revision process is painstaking, but it is one I love, for I call upon the dreamlike, imagery-laden, intuitive right brain and the analytic, language-loving, problem-solving left brain to unite in a coordinating effort towards art. If I allow my left brain to listen without taking over, the story takes shape before me and transforms again and again until it feels right. That essay on the table is roughly hewn, but my material is all there. When I reach a hair-tearing state and can't imagine how to go on, I read a section I especially like and remind myself to trust in the process, remembering that I've been here many times before and I've seen my way out.

Once I arranged this essay into a loose structure, I wrote an outline for each section before cutting and pasting them anew on the computer. Now I've placed that 30-page draft (which I imagine will be cut in half by the end) into Scrivener, a writer's lifesaver. Those notes I took for the outline can then be placed on virtual index cards on the 'cork board' and entire sections easily moved around, tightened or sliced up without pages of scrolling. My next task is to comb through each section and tighten the prose, and keep rearranging its structure until the story emerges whole. I'm still not positive what that is, but I trust it'll tell me.

Writing and Revision: making the process easier

early morning editing (with paper, pen and poncho)

Now that I'm over the biggest hump of my MFA thesis revision, I want to share some of the tools and strategies I've used to organize my manuscript materials. When working with a long-form essay, scrolling through 10-30 pages of a Word document to find the portions to cut and paste can be taxing on both eyes and brain. That's why there's Scrivener. It's an awesome software program that allows writers to organize an essay or whole manuscript into chunks of text that are easily moved around--just like you might on a tabletop:

The "binder" allows you to navigate between the different parts of your manuscript, your notes, and research materials, with ease. Break your text into pieces as small or large as you want - so you can forget wrestling with one long document. Restructuring your draft is as simple as drag and drop.   --Scrivener website

There's also a "cork board" where you can label "index cards" and write in synopses for each section. You can view/change these in outline form, file form, or--if you're visual like me--on the cork board itself. View several sections at once or side by side to compare them.

You can download Scrivener for a free 30-day trial (30 uses, actually). Watch the brief video tutorial, which I found a bit hard to understand (what with the accent and the speedy rate of explanation). Never fear, you can get a more thorough (and slower) written introduction upon downloading.

Funny thing is, the virtual cork board inspired me to revert back to an old style cut-n-paste (tape, actually) on the kitchen table. Viewing an essay in physical form allows me to catch areas of redundancy, to edit sections for clarity and cohesion, and to move sections around without losing my train of thought. Writing that synopsis (or at least labeling the topic) for each section or chapter is crucial for ordering any sizable manuscript. Today I'm tackling another essay, this time maneuvering between Scrivener and the tabletop. This method, I dare say, makes revision almost...fun!

reverting back to the time-honored tradition of cut-n-paste on a kitchen table

Rachael Herron On Knitting, Writing and Revision

photo credit: Khalil Robinson

"I hate writing, but revisions are magic," said Rachael Herron, the featured speaker at last week's Writers Forum. Author of a trilogy of novels, which she cleverly coins "knit lit" after her favorite pastime, she recently published A Life in Stitches: Knitting my Way through Love, Loss and Laughter--a memoir collection of heartwarming stories that spin around the theme.

Too young to write the story of her life, Herron joked, "It's the story of my sweaters." Each scarf or pair of socks tells its own poignant tale. The book, which I finished in three days, was this week's featured nighttime read-aloud before sleep. In fact, I was so inspired by her luscious skeins of yarn-spinning (both sweaters and stories), that today my favorite autumn-hued scarf and I stepped foot inside a store to sign up for a beginner knitters class!

Herron has been knitting since she was just five years old, and writing just as long--she was smitten as soon as she figured out there's an author behind each book. Getting her MFA at Mills College gave her permission and the space to write. But although her pursuits were "literary heavy," she was never able to type the words 'The End': "I'd write 25 pages of genius followed by 75 pages of crap."

It was NaNoWriMo ("where you have a month to write 50,000 poorly chosen words") that led Herron to write and publish her first book. A lover of romance, she carefully considered her protagonists: "Who can I pit against a knitter? Ah, a hot sheep rancher. They both love wool." When her thirty days were up, she added 20,000 more words, edited it and sent it to agents. It took her 32 queries (sent five at a time). Then, after almost two years of polishing, she got a 3-book deal with Harper Collins. With that contract, she had just six months to churn out a second book. "The language and characters were great," she said, "but I had no plot."

Overhauling the book with a major rewrite gave this author insight into her revision process--a series of 15 or so steps she uses, from restructuring scenes to final touches. From choosing your book's theme ("its core, its heart") to creating an elevator pitch ("that 1-sentence hook you tell an editor between floors 2 & 11"), from re-reading that first draft ("the egregious things & lovely things--'someone sneaked into my office late and night and wrote that!' ") to creating a cuts file ("a place for your brain to rest"), Herron outlines it step-by-step on her seven-year-old blog Yarnagogo.

photo credit: Michael Wade at Ravelry

One additional hint not included there: print your story in 2-page sections and bind it like a book, or send it to Kindle, which will format it as such; you'll notice things you didn't as a document, and even "fall in love with it all over again after hating it for so long."

Herron calls herself a "pantser"--someone who flies by the seat of her pants, writing as fast as she can. She allows her characters to take her somewhere and never knows how the story will end. For 2-3 months she "spits words onto the page," as opposed to a "plotter" who first outlines her text. But Carolyn Jewel, a forum participant and author of historical & paranormal romance, disagrees.

She said any "office supplier" like Herron, who makes good use of sticky notes in what she names "the magic post-it method," plots plenty. Or, maybe, as Marlene Cullen suggests, she's "a pantser with a plan."


While Herron recommended the GMC approach (Goal = what your character wants more than anything else; Motivation = why the character wants this; Conflict = why she can't achieve it, externally and internally), Jewel said "my writer brain doesn't work that way." Instead, Jewel writes 1,000 words (about 4 pages) a day, revising and "fixing wrong spots" as she goes along.

Whether you're a pantser, a plotter, or something in between, there's no shying away from revision. Just as in her book Herron points out the "similarities between putting words on paper and making stitches on the needle," there are times when there's nothing left to do but unravel it. Then, trust yourself to put it back together, page by page, piece by piece. Speaking of... back to those 25 pages!

Dear Reader: Do you fly by the seat of your pants or plot/plod along line by line? What is your revision process and how does it compare to Rachael Herron's rehaul?