The Joy of Revision

These last two weeks have been quite busy with freelance work. In between I squeak in writing. I finally came up with a full-ish script, bar the first scene and a court scene for later in the book. Now, I am reading through the script from front and editing as I read.

This already feels so much better than what I used to do, which was write Chapter 1 and revise it a million times since I had to start at the beginning to read the draft and figure out where I was. Then, give up at the enormity of it all, and write Different Chapter 1 of Different Book.

Another pleasant discovery is that dialogue doesn’t have to be accurate to character voice during the first or second drafts. All dialogue has to do is convey important information, enough to bridge to the next scene. Mostly it’s revealing character motivation or fleshing out the setting with character opinions and senses. I can always go back and edit in character voice and conversational cadence later. Never sure which one to go for first, but…that is Future Hannah’s problem.

Yes, I am very happy with the utterly messy — and complete! — state of this first draft. Everything is there, it just needs refinement and shuffling. Already I’ve simplified additional parts of the plot in favor of clear direction. It feels really, really good, much better than slopping something wordy out and hoping a random beta reader will help me make sense of it. There is just enough of the final product peeking through the mess, it’s like a guiding light. There is just enough mess to feel fun, like I’m making meaningful changes each time I return to the story. Best of all I do feel like I can do the rest of this by myself, outside of the occasional support from my spouse.

For instance I had a dead body that gets moved around by various characters, and I was trying to get the first ‘move’ to happen on top of introducing the inn and the murder suspects. It was really clumsy so I talked it over with my spouse and we both decided that an elephant really needed to be involved. But not really. Instead the body doesn’t get moved in the first chapter, which opened up so much room for introducing the various characters and how they all might be a little bit dirty.

I have to be careful, though. Sometimes in my head the script is already ‘complete’, so it can be hard for me to wheel back into writing mode. Drawing is still much more fun than writing, so I have to convince myself to continue abandoning one for the other. The free drawing workshop is coming back from hiatus so I’ll need to reserve Thursday mornings for that once more, and hope it doesn’t keep me from writing.

However, the weather has calmed down. It’s finally back to warm jammies and blankie mode — barring the odd heat wave here and there. My favorite months of the year are coming up. I really adore fall and all the energy it gives me. Walks are just so much better when it’s cloudy out and I can wear a cute jacket.

Now, what I really need to do is knuckle down on the last few freelance tasks to open my schedule back up. I’m hoping to hurtle into a complete, revised script by the end of the year. I’m trying so hard not to rush it, to just let it get written and polished and expanded.

But I want to draw so, SO badly. I want to be challenged by landscape design and characters at weird angles and readable expressions and legible storytelling. I want to color it all in with moody themes and artsy twists.  Every time I’ve leaped into the art too early, I’ve regretted it. These days, though, I have such a hard time deciding ‘when’ to pull the trigger.

When, though?

Hopefully soon.

As a result of volunteering, I was very late writing my blog post here. I hope to include further Cocoon Year posts as part of my SAWgust progress. Already, I’m making a lovely amount of progress on my screenplay version of this story.

August is the worst month, but at least I have SAWgust!