Monday, August 2, 2010

breaking up with your pages

Writing today, I am trying to cut the pages in my book where I am moving from point A to point B; in other words, the places where inspiration was not hitching a ride with me, and I am plodding along. Why is it so hard to do? It's not even "killing my darlings." I think my darlings are, well, darling, and I am keeping them.

Is it like not breaking up with the wrong someone until someone better comes along? That's not very brave. Right?

7 comments:

  1. Kelly, could you describe in more detail your process for making those cuts? Perhaps a short example. This is a challene, and something I'm going through right now too.

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  2. AARGH!! Kelly, I feel your pain. I can never figure out what is important to me, and what is important to the story, and separate the two. Ugh. I ditto Molly in wanting to know more about the process...

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  3. Ha, I am in the same boat, Kelly. This is what I do:
    - Print out a hard copy of the entire ms.
    - Take it somewhere (out of the house) where I can sit relatively uninterrupted for several hours (a cafe, a library, or someone else's house.
    - Read the ms with a pen in hand, as though it is not mine but a ms I have been hired to edit.
    - Be ruthless and cut, slice, or add whatever I feel like, whether it is large chunks or minimal edits. Do it all in one go if possible, no matter how long it takes.
    - go home and type the edits into a copied draft on the computer.
    _ Repeat.

    I've already repeated this about a dozen times with my current ms, and will likely do it at least a dozen more. The trick is to pretend the words are not mine and then I can really have fun with revisions. They are just words after all-they are meant to be toyed with.

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  4. Hey Lisa, I do that too! And the story gets a little clearer every time you make a run at it, and that's really satisfying, too.

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  5. Two nights before my grad reading, I went through my thesis and slashed every unnecessary word (tons of uninspired babble). I knew where I wanted to start reading, and I knew where I wanted to end up. I went from something like 22 pages to 9. I took out an entire chapter (which I may move to a later spot). My inspiration came from workshop with Kelly and Claire. They told us to play with moving things around.

    It's just a first draft opening, but now it's a leaner first draft opening. I think the enormous pressure of having to read my work out loud helped me to be ruthless with the cuts.

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  6. Lisa's method is exactly what I do, and am doing, now in a library in Providence, just before in Seven Stars Bakery (best coffee house in RI, not that y'all will be here), and I also read it aloud, often to my husband while we're driving on long trips, or on the phone to my sister in England. Then I can really hear where it's dragging! So thank you, Lisa!

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  7. Thank you all. It's so nice to have a picture of the process. And Danette, I was also editing and cutting the whole residency.

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