I spent a lot of the end of last year working on editing the first book of the series of novels I've been writing. It's not always easy self-editing your own stuff, but I think I did a decent job, considering.
One thing I noticed as I was going through and doing this editing were several themes that started popping up. Some of them I sort of intended (or at least, noticed early on and played up a little), but others I did not notice until this recent bout of editing (though, again, I played those up a little as I went through and edited, since I did like them and wanted them to be more obvious). It's always nice to go back and read something you've written and realize there are interesting and profound nuggets of thought that crept in that you weren't totally conscious of at the time. To be honest, it makes me feel pretty damn proud of myself - like I'm doing something right and supposed to be a writer.
Other than editing the parts I do have written, I also have been working on some new sections to incorporate into the novel - sections that are basically straight up non-fiction, or at least non-fiction memoir essays (except that they are written as if my fictional main character wrote them). My manuscript already consisted of a contemporary story line, a dystopian future story (a novel that my main character is "writing" that sort of parallels her own life), and short sections of descriptions from the main character's dream journal - and now I'm also adding in sections of essays. I'm not trying to overly complicate things - I really do think it'll work, and add to the story. What these sections are are parts of the honors thesis the main character supposedly wrote at the end of her undergraduate program, and they give a lot of insight into how she interprets the world and what she's learned. Before, I had the character just sort of thinking about her thesis intermittently, as asides. Now I'm including parts of the "actual" thesis instead.
But to do that, I had to write the whole damn thesis - not just the parts the main character would consider for this first book. Because I had to know how the thesis would be organized so that I would know how the parts of her thesis relate to each other. And also, I'll use the thesis for all seven books that I have planned for this series, so I thought I might as well write the whole thing now so that I already have it ready to reference in the future.
The thesis is basically a list of philosophical conclusions/interpretations that the main character has written about some of her favorite Latin quotations. She looks mainly at ancient Romans, but also Catholicism, and even some Enlightenment-era philosophers (those who were still writing in Latin). But of course, I knew basically nothing about ancient Rome, or Latin - though I have been doing research into those topics for this story all along, since I know my main character would know all about Rome and Latin, and I'm trying to get her head to embody her beliefs and her voice. So I had to up my research and do a bunch more - all so I could write a "fake" thesis for my main character to reference.
It was a lot of extra work. I like to make extra work for myself. I do this kind of shit often. "Yeah, my story is good... but it would be EVEN BETTER if I added in this whole other idea/layer and made it more complicated! Or changed the point of view and entirely rewrote it!" "What if this is the only set of novels I write ever? I better make sure I put EVERY IDEA I'VE EVER HAD in it. Leave no philosophical stone unturned!" I don't know if that's just a me thing or a writer thing, but I do all this research and put all this thought into it and combine all these ideas - and then I get to the editing of said writing, and end up paring a lot of it down or not even using whole ideas, or scraping entire weeks of research. Writing, it turns out, is a lot more than just writing. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that no one else ever even sees. (At least, how I do it there is.)
So anyway. Now that I've finally (more or less) finished the fake thesis, I'm back to editing the book by adding the sections into it that need to be and giving it another read-through. I am hoping that soon I will be at a place where I am comfortable sending it out to literary agents again. Because I would really, really like to find an agent. I have all these ideas and outlines and drafts and plans, but I don't really know how to go about turning my plans into a reality.
My goal would be to have the entire series published as a series of seven books. Very J.K. Rowling of me. And then, when the series has TAKEN THE WORLD BY STORM and is beloved by everyone and I am rich, maybe also publishing some of all this supplemental stuff I've gathered, like the fake thesis I've written/am writing. (I'm sure I'll come back to it later and add in more stuff. Things are never quite "done" with me.)
I don't really expect that to happen, but it certainly would be nice if it did. ;)
One thing I noticed as I was going through and doing this editing were several themes that started popping up. Some of them I sort of intended (or at least, noticed early on and played up a little), but others I did not notice until this recent bout of editing (though, again, I played those up a little as I went through and edited, since I did like them and wanted them to be more obvious). It's always nice to go back and read something you've written and realize there are interesting and profound nuggets of thought that crept in that you weren't totally conscious of at the time. To be honest, it makes me feel pretty damn proud of myself - like I'm doing something right and supposed to be a writer.
Other than editing the parts I do have written, I also have been working on some new sections to incorporate into the novel - sections that are basically straight up non-fiction, or at least non-fiction memoir essays (except that they are written as if my fictional main character wrote them). My manuscript already consisted of a contemporary story line, a dystopian future story (a novel that my main character is "writing" that sort of parallels her own life), and short sections of descriptions from the main character's dream journal - and now I'm also adding in sections of essays. I'm not trying to overly complicate things - I really do think it'll work, and add to the story. What these sections are are parts of the honors thesis the main character supposedly wrote at the end of her undergraduate program, and they give a lot of insight into how she interprets the world and what she's learned. Before, I had the character just sort of thinking about her thesis intermittently, as asides. Now I'm including parts of the "actual" thesis instead.
But to do that, I had to write the whole damn thesis - not just the parts the main character would consider for this first book. Because I had to know how the thesis would be organized so that I would know how the parts of her thesis relate to each other. And also, I'll use the thesis for all seven books that I have planned for this series, so I thought I might as well write the whole thing now so that I already have it ready to reference in the future.
The thesis is basically a list of philosophical conclusions/interpretations that the main character has written about some of her favorite Latin quotations. She looks mainly at ancient Romans, but also Catholicism, and even some Enlightenment-era philosophers (those who were still writing in Latin). But of course, I knew basically nothing about ancient Rome, or Latin - though I have been doing research into those topics for this story all along, since I know my main character would know all about Rome and Latin, and I'm trying to get her head to embody her beliefs and her voice. So I had to up my research and do a bunch more - all so I could write a "fake" thesis for my main character to reference.
It was a lot of extra work. I like to make extra work for myself. I do this kind of shit often. "Yeah, my story is good... but it would be EVEN BETTER if I added in this whole other idea/layer and made it more complicated! Or changed the point of view and entirely rewrote it!" "What if this is the only set of novels I write ever? I better make sure I put EVERY IDEA I'VE EVER HAD in it. Leave no philosophical stone unturned!" I don't know if that's just a me thing or a writer thing, but I do all this research and put all this thought into it and combine all these ideas - and then I get to the editing of said writing, and end up paring a lot of it down or not even using whole ideas, or scraping entire weeks of research. Writing, it turns out, is a lot more than just writing. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that no one else ever even sees. (At least, how I do it there is.)
So anyway. Now that I've finally (more or less) finished the fake thesis, I'm back to editing the book by adding the sections into it that need to be and giving it another read-through. I am hoping that soon I will be at a place where I am comfortable sending it out to literary agents again. Because I would really, really like to find an agent. I have all these ideas and outlines and drafts and plans, but I don't really know how to go about turning my plans into a reality.
My goal would be to have the entire series published as a series of seven books. Very J.K. Rowling of me. And then, when the series has TAKEN THE WORLD BY STORM and is beloved by everyone and I am rich, maybe also publishing some of all this supplemental stuff I've gathered, like the fake thesis I've written/am writing. (I'm sure I'll come back to it later and add in more stuff. Things are never quite "done" with me.)
I don't really expect that to happen, but it certainly would be nice if it did. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment