Saturday 17 March 2012

Another revisions comparison

Earler this week I said revisions were like unravelling knitting. Now I have decided these revisions are a little more extensive - like remodelling a house.

Move this wall, build that wall there, change where the door is...  Heck, is anything holding the ceiling up?

I'm reminded of the scene in Sleepless in Seattle, where Tom Hanks dicusses working on designing a house and the client keeps wanting to change things and there's a running joke that they can do it but it always involves changing the kitchen cabinets.

ChapterTwo is my kitchen cabinets.

I get eeper into the book (which is way too long, anyway), realise that I could simplify things even further, thereby cutting another chunk of extraneous wordage, but it always seems to involve going back to rewrite chapter two. I am starting to feel I will never get past chapter two, I will never finish these revisions and I will die at my keyboard, my fingers twitching, with this book incomplete.

Okay. Rant over. Feel better now. Back to work. By which, of course, I mean chapter two...

2 comments:

Leah Ashton said...

I hope Chapter 2 is now playing nicely!

My second book's revisions weren't a home renovation, it was a demolition :)

Fiona Harper said...

Actually got to chapter four! Yay!

And, yes, I've had books like that. Nothing left standing but the doorframe. New everythings: new hero, new setting, new conflict... You name it!