Grrrr. Revisions really get to me. Progress is slow and unsatisfying. To me, writing the first words of the story is a bit like horse racing; I’m trying to get my ideas on the page as fast as possible, before they get away. I can look at my word count tracker and watch the page counts leap forward daily. It’s exciting! I’m creating! I feel like a writer.
Revisions, not so much. I’m deleting paragraphs; even entire scenes. Sure, I’m fleshing the story out too, but the net gain at the end of the day is hard for me to measure. I started out expecting to revise two scenes of GLAMOUR per day, but my pace has slowed to half that. Every day I want to go back and tinker with earlier scenes instead of spending my time on the one in front of me. I look at my flat dialogue and dull word choices and say, “Really? Was that the best you could come up with?” And then my brain freezes over and my inner critic takes over, telling me, ah, well, you know. I feel more like I’m a teacher correcting papers than a writer.
Today was a good day. Second day in a row where the scene I had in my hands was stronger at the end of the day than where I started. Yeah, the dialog is still a little too direct, but it’s richer, and the characters have more meat on their bones. It’s got an acceptable (albeit not great yet) opening hook, closing hook, a (kind of) goal, a rising of the stakes, several clues disguised as plot complications, and a disaster. It’s good enough to move onto the next scene tomorrow with no regrets. Well almost none. I remind myself it’s still an early draft. Grrr.
