rachel speaks
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
"Revisions" is a four-letter word
Okay, yeah, I can count . . . but it's become such a dirty word in my household. I used to think that writing a synopsis (an outline to use as a selling point, then ignore when you actually write the story) was the worst job in the publishing biz. A synopsis requires me to know things that I never know when starting a book, like what's going to happen. But I found that you can finesse your way through one of those, especially if you focus on the emotional journey rather than the actual events.
But revisions . . . God save me. It took me four times as long to revise The Assassin as it did to write the book in the first place. I don't want to read the same (or very similar) book over and over, so I darn sure don't want to write it over and over.
Gee, can you tell I just got my revisions for Deep Cover? (Where are those blasted little smiley faces when you need one?)
Part of my dislike for revisions is just me. When a book is finished, for me it's finished . . . I don't mind a little tweaking, but that story is over and done with, finis, outta my head. My muse -- if she hasn't already hit the beach somewhere in the Caribbean -- is raring to go on to the next set of people living inside me. Our contract says she does the aforementioned tweaking willingly, but anything beyond that is like pulling teeth.
And part of it -- how silly is this? -- is semantics. I don't mind making changes to my story. I do it all the time, from the first line of Page 1 to the last line of the last page. But they're not "revisions." They're "changes." And it makes a difference. Hey, I said it was silly. Revisions make me hyperventilate. Changes are more of a challenge -- and like my heroine, Selena, I just can't resist a challenge. But until I find a way to trick my brain into thinking one word instead of the other, I'm still finding it just a tad difficult to breathe. Wonder if I can convince my muse to stay here and work and let me hit that Caribbean beach?
