Revision

I just finished revising (again) the first four chapters of my novel. You have to understand: I finished a first draft three years ago. (The pre-first-draft was nearly incomprehensible, but Tom was able to slog his way through it and give advice.) Once I finished, I had some lovely fantasies of finishing revisions quickly and then getting accepted by a publisher and chosen by Oprah.

Here's how it really went: I let some friends read it. I revised. I sent out queries to agents, and while some expressed interest, I didn't find representation. I let other friends read it. Revised. More queries. More rejection. I had a baby. Revised. More queries. More rejection. Not sure whether it was time to give up, I put it aside for more than a year and started working on something else.

In preparation for the conference this weekend, I looked over the novel again. Here's what I realized: Chapters 2 and 3 were deadly dull! The story starts with a literal bang--a fatal car crash. Not bad for drama. But the next two chapters got bogged down in exposition and description. My main character was drifting--understandable for a new widow, but oh so boring to read about. Agents often ask to see only the first 50 pages, and if those drag, you're in trouble.

Novels are hard to write and hard to revise. I'm pretty good at micro-revision; I can get rid of typos and add descriptive details. But writing a novel demands the ability to see the shape of the entire story.

Writing a first draft can be frustrating, but it's also fun. At it's best, it's like falling in love with your characters and their world. You become absorbed in them, and you want to record every little detail. But revision is more like contemplating marriage. You take a step back and ask, What works? What doesn't? (Of course, the big advantage of writing over marriage is your ability to make changes. If there's a boring or annoying scene, you can simply delete it.)

Revision gives you a chance to be analytical, which is why letting a piece sit for a long period of time can be helpful. Looking back over my opening chapters was like reading someone else's work. Why does she keep going on about that? I kept wondering. Revising is like solving a puzzle--you have pieces, and you have to figure out how best to make them work together. I knew my job in this new draft was to heighten the conflict so that readers wouldn't just put the book down and go check their email.

Let me give you one example of a change I made. I wanted to describe my character's house. In early drafts, this scene began, "One night a few weeks after the funeral, feeling empty, I wandered through the house at dusk." Lyn, the widow who is my protagonist, goes on to describe her kitchen and dining room. When I reread this scene, I realized it was mighty boring. I remembered Kurt Vonnegut's advice: Every character should want something, even if it's only a glass of water. I decided to give my character a small conflict. Now this scene begins, "I needed to find light bulbs." Instead of having her drift through the house, I have her see that two light bulbs have burned out, and she doesn't know where her husband kept the new ones. I still get in the house description, but it's seen through the lens of her helplessness and frustration. The burnt-out bulbs in the chandelier become a small symbol of everything she wishes she could fix about her life.

I hope I've fixed the boringness in those opening chapters, and I hope I'm able to publish this book. I've come to accept, though, that this novel may never be published, but that I'm still growing as a writer by working on it. One of the agents at the conference said she likes to hear that a writer has a few unpublished novels; she said that gives her hope that the third novel will be really good, and ready for publication. As someone who is 100 pages into her third novel, I hope she's right.