I know for myself that most of what I do is revision, I was wondering how much other preplan, actually writing, revision, etc.
Revision. It is far harder for me to revise/rewrite a story than it is to put out a first draft. Actually, for me, it is incredibly easy to spit out a first draft once I have an idea. I can get a couple thousand words in a couple hours...but this generally means there is a higher need for revision.
Revision. I typically just write, even if i don't know where I'm going. I keep writing till i do figure out where I'm going. Alot of times i figure out what style, voice, and theme I want for a story before I figure out the plot. But the plot comes and it all works out. After my rough draft I usually cut about 20%. Hell alot of times, when I get stuck (which is almost always) I'll skip to parts that I know what I want to do. (i.e. My story for the "scare us" contest. I didn't know where to start. I knew what i wanted my monster to be. I wrote 2 lines of exposition. Then I just started killing my charachters. Then I saved my protagonist. Then I wrote my denoument." Then i wrote the beginning. Funny thing is I'll keep writing on my laptop or notebook right where I left off. Sometimes I spend more time trying to put things back in chronilogical order, putting my puzzle pieces together via cut and past and writing the in between connectors than i did writing the story. I'm a bit tipsy right now but I hope that helps.
My first draft takes me the longest. I write extremely slowly. I like to get it right the first time so I don't have to write tons of different drafts. I don't like to waste my time by writing long scenes that I end up needing to cut, so I try to figure it out in advance while outlining. It's much easier to outline a scene and cut it before I finish working on the outline than to write out the scene in prose. It usually takes me about one or two days to edit fifty pages. Maybe working 8 hours a day.
Same here. I don't "draft." When I'm done with the first pass of something, it's 85% as good as it's gonna get. That's not some inflated sense of quality, it's being methodical and editing as I go. On writing days, I average about one page per evening, maybe two on a weekend day. Each of my novels took over three years. A few months were spent outlining and researching before writing word one, but they also only took a couple months to revise, doing several passes on each. They'll usually get about 5% longer, not shorter.
The primary benefit in doing things this way is no delayed gratification. Each night when I go to bed I can (theoretically) be happy with it, instead of hoping for some far-off day when this piece of shit might start coming together. It's also easier sharing your work with people, so they're not nit-picking you. I don't want anyone's critique until I've done my best first.
A good short story takes me at least three weeks, not counting coming up with the idea.
For me it is revision. Especially on this second book. With Malice, my first book, it was written in the style of a farce, so you have little or no time between events, so to some degree, less detail is required. Also being a comedy you get forgiven for being a shitty writer. However when you lay the foundation for a gag early, you have to retrospectively stitch things back up.
People think I'm being cute when I say I am a shitty writer. But I am a shitty writer, a good story teller yes - but a shitty writer. Cocksickle (Which I might change to Entomology') it is three books in one. It has a slow, drawn out beginning to establish the character. Pacing of the gags is a task because of tempo and all number of stuff. Revision for sure!
I spend way more time on the first draft. I'm absolutely terrible about getting that first set of words on paper. I panic about word count, pacing, pronoun use, all of that shit while I'm writing and it makes me write extremely slowly and terribly.
I love revising. It's my favorite part of writing. Getting to dig into my writing, tear it apart, and really see where it's going, is the real benefit of writing for me.
My final drafts almost always end up being shorter than the first draft. I never cut entire scenes. Only words and sentences here and there. And once in a blue moon, a paragraph, although I didn't cut a paragraph during the blue moon. Although there's a chapter in the book that I'm working on now that seems extraneous. Might cut it and use it as part of the appendix sort of thing in the back of the book since it's text from an imaginary textbook rather than a scene. It was actually published online recently. I feel like extraneous parts of novels work much better than the other parts as far as getting it published seperately. I'm not a big fan of reading excerpts unless I'm using it to determine whether or not I want to buy a book.
Mine varies from story to story, but it seems to hover around the original wordcount. I'm really, really good at estimating what word count a story will be -- I'm not sure why. It's one of the reasons I get nervous during first drafts. I realize early on that, to fully explain something, I'm going to need a certain amount of words. So when I start organizing and outlining, I try to pin word counts to chapters and the like and I'm shit at that for some reason.
Basically, though, if I think a story is going to be 10k -- it's between 9 and 11k. I can't do it for chapters, but I can do it for overall works. It's fucking weird.
Because I'm a shitty storyteller, but a decent writer, I tend to spend as much time on the first draft as on the revision. I tend to write multiple first drafts. I write myself into a deadend and as I search for a way out for days/weeks/months, I'll just start writing the story over in a new direction (if I've come up with a different story direction) until I get to an ending that seems okay (even though it's not, because, as stated, I'm a shitty storyteller). Case in point. My current short story is in its fourth version (not revision, but version, this one quite different than the others, but I think I've found an ending this time). I try to come up with endings before I begin a story, and I kid myself into believing I've done that, but by the time I've written the story, the ending just doesn't work.
I'd much rather be a shitty writer and a good storyteller. And I suspect that Jonny's version of being a shitty writer is far, far superior than actual shitty writers.
EDIT: But because I'm using Scrivener (for the first time) on this 9,000 word short story, I'm finding the revision much easier. I broke out each scene into its own file, so all I have to do is drag files around to rearrange the sequence of events. This would have been a nightmare in Word or some other linear processor.
No doubt. I would gladly trade half of my wordsmithery gifts to be a better storyteller. Well, my telling of them I think is okay, I mean the imagination that some people have in coming up with them in the first place.
Not knowing an ending (at least in general terms) would drive me crazy.
I'd say it's usually revision for me as well, but at times I'll spend more time crafting a story. Some tales are like twelve pound babies that just don't wanna come out. The last story I wrote was like that; it was painful.
Gonna sound silly, but that hasn't stopped me yet...thinking. My creativity has been surpressed for a long time, so it's tough to create exciting scenes and dialogue. I basically have the scene played out in my mind and go from there. I then write it down and put fancy words in it. I haven't really been serious until fairly recently. This writing for a living business is a new thing for me.
@ Gary P and
@Gordon.
I'd glady trade half for half. My mind is never exhausted of fresh ideas. Even if i don't know where it will end when it starts, my fingers and brain figure it out pretty quickly. Mind you, that is for short fiction and poetry, and a few script treatments. I've never tackled anything novella or novel length yet.
I'm not a bad wordsmith but I'd say I'm limited. I'm envious of the language I see other's use. Not just the words, but also the knowledge that comes with them. I'm just not that versed in geography, literature, history, ect... Alot of times I cheat. If i don't know it i make it up. But lately i research everything. It took me two hours earlier listening to A Bermudian accent for one line of a flash fiction piece. Just trying to get the dialect right. I know I'm a good story teller and decent writer. I want to be great at both.
The first short story I ever got accepted for publication was re-written 20 times over a period of one year.
More or less the same for the second and third (cos I write about a country I'm not native to, and that takes a killing amount of research). The latest stories that are due out in print have taken me a few weeks each-- the first draft takes about a week, but revision kills me. 1st draft: Revision= 1:8.
With my first ever novel, the first draft has taken long, cos the first time ever, I did index cards-- I did nothing but 3 months of index cards-- shuffling, tearing off, writing new ones. Then spent a week writing a synopsis. Then wrote 5 chapters and trashed them. Then picked up again and now am mid-way down my first draft, but the story has changed from the synopsis.
I'm hoping the ratio between 1st draft and revisions for my novel would be somewhat less stark, cos I've already spent nearly an year writing the first draft.
I wish I were a good writer and a story teller. Seems like I'm neither-- just a non giver-upper who keeps writing no matter what.
I spend more time submitting. Not really, but on a few stories that has been the case. Maybe I should focus on rewriting, instead.
Ugh. Submitting. Yea, that too. Finding the places that you think you'll fit takes a lot of work. Especially when you don't follow the same types of themes in every story.
Submitting might actually take as much time as writing, once you consider the average number of rejections. That's sort of sad, now that I think about it. I probably spend most of the time either re-writing or submitting.
I feel like we need "sad trombone" in here. That realization certainly took the wind out of my sails.
Submissions are such a soul-sucking exercise that I think it's wise to compartmentalize that activity, to just buckle down and go into that "mode" X number of times per month so as not to interfere with your creative time. More disciplined people might be able to devote their first hour (or whatever) of each day to it, but not me.
@Sparrow - Just for you. http://www.sadtrombone.com/
As problems go submissions is a great one to have.
Haha, awesome.
And that second point is true. I was just thinking how before the internet, Duotrope, etc. new writers probably spent months on what I spend a couple days on. And they probably waited longer to hear back, too.
@Sparrow - Yeah, that too. I was thinking of folks born in war torn/improvised trying not to die while we hang out in nice industrialized nations thinking our dreams are too hard to accomplish.
The best lesson I've ever learned came from my friend who is the adopted mom to 3 HIV positive orphans from Ethiopia. She said not to feel bad about complaining about trivial stuff,because even people in third world countries complain about trivial stuff. It's life.
It's human, but I try not to. There are better things to do with our time.
