My last project story was a PILL to edit. I hated it when I finished it, I hated it during the first readthrough and markup, I hated it during the first correction...and then during the second read through I realized I had the climax in the middle of the story, and a whole lot of symbolism involving bible stuff and ceramonial ritual stuff --it's a weird book--had crawled in while I wasn't looking, and that said symbolism PERFECTLY matched stuff I wanted to do two or three stories later, and if I just rearranged the scenes and tweeked aformentioned symbolism just a little bit, the book would work.
It was a lot of work, and that doesn't count fixing typos, self-contradictory statements, and the nine bazillion times I used "he" to refer to a sort-of-non-gendered character (the species is gendered, but they are all "its". Two members of this species have survived into the next story. One is not a good guy, and the other one kind of is. The slaves their parent species kept have taken over the island they live on, and having the former slaves interact with these guys is a lot more fun than I thought it'd be.) but I am actually very proud of it. Thank GOD the biggest issue I've had with the current project are reversed statements (Changing "My keys were in the container, I grabbed them" into "I grabbed my keys out of the container") and trying to balance a non-linear storyline.
I guess my point is, most of the time you don't figure out what the theme of a story is until the first, second, and sometimes THIRD time you read through and edit. And once you have that figured out, you have go to back through and fine tune things to match that theme. I don't see how a writer can release work without a second or third draft. To me, those are when the actual writing part happens.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-12-18 07:59 am (UTC)It was a lot of work, and that doesn't count fixing typos, self-contradictory statements, and the nine bazillion times I used "he" to refer to a sort-of-non-gendered character (the species is gendered, but they are all "its". Two members of this species have survived into the next story. One is not a good guy, and the other one kind of is. The slaves their parent species kept have taken over the island they live on, and having the former slaves interact with these guys is a lot more fun than I thought it'd be.) but I am actually very proud of it. Thank GOD the biggest issue I've had with the current project are reversed statements (Changing "My keys were in the container, I grabbed them" into "I grabbed my keys out of the container") and trying to balance a non-linear storyline.
I guess my point is, most of the time you don't figure out what the theme of a story is until the first, second, and sometimes THIRD time you read through and edit. And once you have that figured out, you have go to back through and fine tune things to match that theme. I don't see how a writer can release work without a second or third draft. To me, those are when the actual writing part happens.