A Revising Trick

At times rewriting and revising a novel or a book of non-fiction can be tiresome, especially when one reads the material straight through from the 1st page to the last again and again. I trick I use to break the monotony is to skip about, reworking the chapters out of order.  This method refreshes my interest and imagination.

On Revising and Planning

ON RAPID WRITING AND PLANNING AHEAD

Earlier I noted on FB that a reason Isaac Asimov wrote so many books was that he never worried about style or finding the best word to express a feeling or idea. His goal was simply to put the information down clearly.  Another prolific writer was W. E. D. Ross, who wrote many kinds of books under different names. (As Marilyn Ross he wrote a series of romance novels associated with the classic TV series DARK SHADOWS.) Ross said that he never revised a sentence: He believed that the original words should stand because they expressed the original emotion.  A writer whom I was pared with at a table at a book fair at Union college—unfortunately I do not remember his name—told me that he never revised his novels—and he had nine or ten.  Rather he took about nine months to plan each detail assiduously so that when writing he quickly put everything down. I—alas—am an inveterate reviser. I probably go through each of my novels ten to fifteen times. To me one of the joys of writing is reworking sentences and replacing words and adding details to make the prose more effective. Nor do I plan each detail meticulously. I have a general plot in mind, a number of scenes envisioned, and the conclusion set up. Then I leap into the creative waters and start writing, relying on my imagination to get me to the end. (In recent years it hasn’t failed me.) Of course, my rather romantic method of writing has its problems. In revising, I have to be careful that the heroine’s dress doesn’t change from green to yellow during a single scene. But all writers are welcome to their own choice writing techniques.  But I. alas, feel compelled to revise and revise.