The Second Great Believing

Writing a story is the First Great Believing. That crappy first draft happens with no guarantee that it will ever get published or even that anyone will like it, including the author. Nothing in the world says that the story we are using time and soul to craft will do anything for us except sit there eyeing us with vague malevolence, like the cat that never wants to jump into your lap. It's an act of faith as much as creation. We make ourselves finish it (except when we don't), and we try not to think about whether it will ever make a difference while we're working.

Y'all might remember that when I started this blog I'd finished a story that got me accepted to Viable Paradise XIV. That was my First Great Believing, but of course it wasn't the end. I got a lot of good constructive criticism at VP, and that led to the first revision. Then I got some more, from my beta readers. Rinse and repeat. Then the first rejection note, making me understand a failing in my writing--here we go again.

So I've revised the damn thing around five or six times and every time I go to rip another chunk of its entrails out, it's like chewing nails--which is to say, when I open the file my teeth start to ache and my mouth tastes like pointy rust. Perhaps I'm imagining it.

The point of all this is that editing your story is the Second Great Believing, and for me it has been much harder. To write the story in the first place, you had to conquer earthquakes of fear, scale mountains of self-doubt and possibly even slay a dragon of disbelief or two. It felt so good to finally finish it. And then you found out there were aftershocks and tsunamis and volcanoes, and the dragon's big brother starts sending you rejection notices. And somehow, you must open that file, you must dredge up the gumption for a second (third? sixth? seventeenth?) act of faith, and you must take up your hammer and your tongs and stoke the furnace and attempt to refine this jagged blade of a story before you get too tempted to fall on it.

And this is harder because instead of blissfully traipsing across the page, I am required to assess word choices, and murder entire paragraphs, and to learn new things. There were many times I made the mistake of thinking I was doing well with my writing. Then I discovered that I simply didn't know enough about my craft to see what I was doing. It's like trying to write a story with only a fifth-grade vocabulary list because you didn't know any better and then finding a copy of Roget's Thesaurus.

As I go through this process of learning to be a better writer I find that I'm impatient. I shouldn't be, because I know it will take time, and stick-tuitiveness, and thought and study and practice. Becoming a really good wordsmith, like becoming a really good painter, does not happen overnight.

I can feel things shifting in my head when I come to the keyboard or the storyboard. I know that I'm internalizing the process because I reach for different and better tools--dialogue instead of exposition, for example. But it's like, when you're first learning to paint, you're learning your technique. And your "eye" can develop faster than your skill. So you paint the skin and you're thrilled, and then the hair and you like that too, and then you get to the dress and you knock it out of the park--but suddenly you see that the hair is actually quite dreadful. How did THAT happen?

So it's the same with writing. I think that I'm finally introducing good tension and I'm snipping away at the extra bits of prose that are just filler so my writing is leaner, and then, because I am learning so much, I take a look at my main character and OHMIGOD! There are holes. Horrible, gaping black holes with little signs posted that say "who IS your MC and why is she the best one for this story?" and "can't you think of a single word that just describes her personality and not her circumstances??"

So that's where I am. I am about to muster another ounce of gumption and scrape what's left of my faith off the bottom of my shoe to push through this revision so I can send this thing out to the next market on my list. Then I can stop looking at and thinking about it for a bit. Freshen up by working on something else.

At least until the dragons send me the next rejection.

Cheers!

AFB