A thousand visions and revisions

[desperance]

It's not that I dislike revisions, exactly. I have - I have said it before - the soul of a copy-editor; I am a quibbler, pedantic and exact. On the page, at least. I'm a lot sloppier in the sloppy, soppy flesh.

I do enjoy the intense engagement with a text that is more or less the definition of revision. The trouble is, when it's my own, I wind up hating the text: bored by some sections, appalled by others, finding very little of merit anywhere within it.

I think it's only about over-exposure. I've been blithely describing this as the second pass, but what does that mean, exactly? It starts by discounting the actual original writing, the first engagement with the text, where I run every sentence through my head a dozen times before I type it, and then as like as not delete and retype it a dozen more; we don't count that at all.

The first pass is what happens between my reaching the end of that original draft, and sending it out to my agents: but that is - at least - twice more through it, once on paper and once on screen. Only actually it's many more times than that, because each sentence gets read and reread on paper, scribbled on and rewritten, and then read and reread on screen before the scribbles are considered and reconsidered. Lord alone knows how many times I've actually thought about each word in the manuscript, before it leaves my hands.

And then the agents have their comments, and I do it all again - in two stages again, yes - before it goes to my editor. This time through I'm ringing the changes, by alternating work on the manuscript with work on the computer, rather than going all the way through it once and then again; this morning and this afternoon I worked on paper in town, and this evening I am transferring yesterday's paperwork to the screen. And trying only to revisit those bits that I have actually scribbled on, rather than reading the whole thing over. And failing, of course. And, yup, not so very far from hating this text already; and I still have editor's revisions to make, and then the copy-edit, and then the proofs.

Comments

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The more I'm exposed to my own deathless prose, the more I grow convinced of its rubbishness.
On the other hand, what emerges from your pen (or fingers, in this word-processor age) is invariably beautifully polished and elegant prose, so clearly you are in fact doing everything right, and any hatred is misplaced (the evil messages of a jealous cat, perhaps?).