manuscripts

Maybe a better title would be “Regress Report.”

Remember the pile of scribbled-upon paper I displayed in a post at the end of June? That was the first draft of my current work in progress. Two hundred pages, about 100,000 words, I hoped.

I expected to take a couple of months to type it up (why does that sound old-fashioned?) The story was complete, more or less, so I was finished with the hard work of rendering imaginings into prose. All I had to do was pound the computer keyboard until I had a big, fat Word document I could massage into perfection.

Remember the motto I applied to the project? “PLOT MUST BE LOGICAL.” It lived up to that until the 60% point, when I reached a place I remembered as potentially problematic. It turned out to be actually problematic. In fact, I had added a note in the manuscript that said “Major Bump in the Road. Fix!” At the time (back in April), I was intent on powering through to “The End.” Any problems could be fixed in the rewrite.

Fixing this problem meant scrapping and rewriting ten pages, or about 5,000 words. The Imaginer had to be recalled from a state of torpor and persuaded to come up with some logical plot elements that would fit nicely into the ~~chasm~~ gap created by removing those ten pages. The new material couldn’t interfere with other plot elements that absolutely had to remain as they were.

As part of the rethink that preceded the rewrite, the Imaginer came up with a splendid new idea that fixed not only the previously identified bump in the road, but did away with some other logic-impairing aspects of the original.

The rewrite took about two weeks, in part because the continued drought in this part of the world made it necessary to spend an hour or so a day racing around with watering cans, dragging hoses, positioning sprinklers, etc. Then there were the usual garden tasks of deadheading, staking and tying, fretting about plants not doing well, and standing around admiring those that were.

Now, at the end of August, instead of a complete second draft, I still have 50 pages (25%) of the original manuscript to key in (which sounds less antediluvian than “type up”). I know it won’t be a simple matter of transcribing the original, because I have to make adjustments as a result of the rewrite, with the splendid new idea. And there are a couple of things the characters are going to have to discuss, to make sure that certain elements make an appearance.

On the plus side, I don’t have word count anxiety. At 75%, the document has about 77,000 words. There will be lots of surplus to trim, once I get to that part of the process. Short, skimpy early drafts make me nervous–will there be anything left after deleting all the crap?

I still hope to have a publish-worthy novel by spring 2022.

So you’re cleaning out your files of works in progress, false starts and abandoned projects. Delete, delete, delete. Crumple and dump. It’s going great. Then you start reading.

Cancel plans for the rest of the day and follow these steps:

Pull up (or out, if in a drawer) the old manuscript. Dust off the real or metaphorical cobwebs.
Read the manuscript.
Realize it’s pretty good. Decide it needs to be published.
Sit down to give it a quick edit, or type it into Word (if a printout).
Realize it’s pretty bad and needs to be beaten into shape.
Highlight. Delete. Patch in new stuff. Highlight. Ctrl X, Ctrl V.
Read it over again. Decide it’s much better and just needs another once-over.
Three minutes into the once-over, realize it’s a big mess.
Patch in more new stuff. Highlight. Delete. Highlight. Ctrl X, Ctrl V. Repeat Steps 6 through 9 as needed, pulling hair (if any) to relieve stress.
Publish. OR say “Nuts to that,” and start writing ~~a brand new version~~ something else.

Last week I remembered a sort of by-product of my first novel that I stashed away on a floppy disk (back in 2001, this was). Like anything with that brink-teetering, obsolescent technology feeling, it suddenly seemed worth another look. And bonus! I found a printout, so didn’t have to dig out the old grey, 2-inch-thick Toshiba laptop from the previous millennium to read it.

After a quick read I thought “Wow! This is great! An almost lost gem. So I hastened to key it in to a fresh Word document.

Tip: If you’re not sure about the quality of a piece of writing, print it out and try transcribing it. Typing out every single word reveals a multitude of faults. A couple pages into transcribing the almost lost gem, I was making parenthetical comments in the text, like: (Geez! Enough already! You’ve already said this three times!)

Pop on the thinking cap. Think, think, think. Result: a better idea of what the piece has to look like.

Back to the manuscript to start the beating-into-shape process.

Right now, it’s been reduced from 10k words to about 6k. Some paragraphs have been moved so many times their little heads are spinning. Others have been highlighted in an array of colours meaning “Delete” or “Consider deleting” or “Repurpose.” Lots of new text has been added (and changed, and deleted, and moved).

I’m reminded of remaking a garment. Turning a pair of pants into a skirt, for example. Or a dress into a smock. Or a silk purse into some sort of unmentionable. One of those projects that seems simple at first blush.

And to complicate things, I’ve already designed a cover image for this story. (Trying out Canva!) So I have to to make it work! Look for more in the next couple of months.