You cannot revise a blank page

Hello everyone!

It’s been a while, wouldn’t you agree? How are you doing? I’ve been doing quite well, as busy as I’ve been. Spring break rolled into Draft 2, and I was lost in the work load between school and rewrites. I want to go into it in more detail, but for today, I want to get us back up to speed on the current topic in my head. Revisions.

I want to talk about the importance of revisions. I’ve often read that revising/editing and writing are two very different skills, and I think that’s an important thing to think about. I wrote Draft 1 of my book, and that was all well in good, but it was not really done. It was a rough thing. I knew what it could be, being the person who wrote it — I could see what was under all the dirt and grime. The problem is that most other people can’t see that, no matter how excited you may be for the project.

So, you have to go back to that dirty rock and polish it, work it, revise it. It’s a long process. I think it’s the part of writing where a lot of people give up.

I think many new writers put together a first draft and think that’s that, and if it stinks, well, they just weren’t cut out for it. If you’re such a writer, I want to urge you now to not quit! Take your time. Keep working it. Rome was not built in a day, and your favorite book was not written in one draft. As clever as you think your favorite author is, he or she is only so clever because they’ve spent countless hours reworking the same chapters and scenes until they are as good as you see them.

During NaNoWriMo, I read all of their motivational emails that were sent out. One particular adage stuck with me, and it was something like this: “You can revise a bad first draft into a great book, but you can’t revise a blank page into anything.”

Revising has become a process of writing that I’m very, very fond of. The initial writing is the groping in the dark, figuring out where things go, if you will (get your mind out of the gutter!) — the revisions are where you really start to bring light to what you’re trying to say. Cut out the fumbling passes, the awkward gestures, and get to the heart of the matter. What you came there to write. I’d like to walk through my process of drafts so far, to kind of show the way my own work changes over time.

Let’s start with a look at Draft 1. I warn you, it’s ugly. It’s a monster in the dark, afraid of the light still. Raw. For this example, we’ll be looking at the first paragraphs of Chapter 2:

CHAPTER TWO / DRAFT 1

“You could have killed him,” a voice said, floating somewhere in the sky.

“How was I to know that he was so sensitive to the arts?” Another voice that sounded familiar, though this one sounded no closer.

The boy felt himself coming back around to some semblance of consciousness.  He could hear the echoes of voices lingering around him, but couldn’t make out what was being said anymore. His legs and arms still felt numb, like a thousand feathers were dancing up and down his skin. He felt cold and alone, in that moment, and for all her tried he could not seem to open his eyes. As he fell back to sleep, he heard the voices coming clear again.

“You’re too brash, you need to be gentler,” the first voice spoke again.

“Oh, please, the last thing I need is to be gentler,” the familiar voice said, becoming hazy again. The voices thickened as if dipped in honey, and try as he might to hear, he lost his focus and fell into sleep once again.

Yowza. I can’t picture THAT winning any prizes, or getting me anywhere particular. It’s important to note that for Draft 2, I’ve done away with Draft 1. I wrote the whole thing, and now I’m rewriting it from scratch and memory of what happened in Draft 1. It was the only way I could distance myself enough from what I’d done before. I needed to do Draft 1 to figure out what happened, how things worked. I need to do Draft 2 to turn it into something more. So, let’s take a look at the second run at the start of Chapter 2.

CHAPTER TWO / DRAFT 2

“You could have killed him,” a voice said from the darkness.

“How was I to know? Maybe it would have been better that way.” The second voice sounded familiar, cool and distant as it was.

“No one is dying tonight. You’re too brash, you need to be gentler.”

“The last thing I need is to be gentle. I’m not some caged animal to be controlled, you’d do well to remember that.”

The voices were like ripples in a pool of water, spreading out in the black. The boy felt a swelling in the back of his head, and numbness in his lips. He heard himself groan out once, a long and low sound that seemed a thing separate from himself, and then even the darkness left him.

Okay, it’s getting better. The flow has been changed to something more readable, I got rid of some of the awkwardness and formality of the first. It’s still not quite right. I’ve sent it out to two beta readers (the full chapter, that is) — and it’s clear that it’s just not quite working. I wish I could post the whole chapter here so you could see the full extent of the revisions, and maybe I will at some point, but not today. Anyway. After getting opinions back on that chapter, I went back in.

I erased Chapter 2 as it was, and started from scratch again, in what I call Draft 2.5.

CHAPTER 2 / DRAFT 2.5

The darkness ebbed and rolled like the sea beneath him. He didn’t know where he was going, but he could sense the movement as he was carried away. In the shadows, he thought he saw himself, always just out of reach. He tried to grab hold of anything, but he found his fingers were wet and unwilling. He could swear that he cried out, but he never heard the sound.

Eventually, he lost himself in the darkness. Time, words, even thoughts had no meaning any longer. It may have been hours or days before he heard something again. It was faint, and he had to strain to make sense of it.

“You could have killed him.” The voice thrummed through the emptiness. He thought it faint and motherly, it was gone too soon.

“And maybe it would have been better had I just slit his throat rather than bring him back, Valdel. You will take him or I’ll do as much.” This voice peeled like thunder, it was familiar in a terrible way.

“No one is dying tonight. I will take him, I am only saying that you must be gentler.”

“After all that has happened, you ask for kindness. Leave me, and take that boy if you’ll have him.” The thunder snapped.

He wanted to cry out, to scream, but he could not find his voice. He thrashed in the darkness until he was too tired to move, and then he waited until the emptiness swallowed him.

There it is. It’s the most recent version of that segment in the book. It took a long time just to get that chapter to where I want it to be — and it’s still not done yet. It’s done enough for Draft 2. I’m sure once I finish this rewrite I’ll be going back and changing wording, deleting some things, but the bulk of it is at a place where I’m happy with it now.

The point I’m trying to make is that revisions are an amazing thing. Your initial writing may not be that technically great, but you’re saying something that you need to say. It’s important. The second draft is just as important. Finding the energy, the time, and the drive to do that second draft is important.

Don’t be discouraged by Draft number one! If our favorite authors did, we wouldn’t have any of the books that we cherish today — at least, not in the form that we love. Everything starts off in a similarly rough form. It’s getting everyone else to see what we’ve always known was there that’s the beauty of it.

I’ll be back for more talk, I’m sure, after I rewrite chapter 3.

I’ll see you guys then!

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