Oh happy, happy, happy day. Made it all the way through the book with my revision.

I’m still alive.

I cried as I read the last couple of chapters.

Because the story was sad, not because I hated it so much. Which is cool, because just last week I was saying I wished all my characters would just curse God and die.

Now I have to read the whole thing through to see if the changes make sense, and to see if the characters’ motivations work, and to see if the book is better for the revisions or worse.

And I have to pretty up the scenes I just roughed in yesterday and today. One of them was so hard it took a great force of will to just keep putting down one sentence after another. I’m sure it’s ugly stuff. But it will give me something to work with.

And it’s done.

At least for the time being.

And that is such a great thing.

Next, after I give it a spit-shine, I’ll have to see what the agent says and what the crit partners say. My mom is reading it right now on my Kindle. I love having her read it over and over because she always forgets the story within a week (she’s 88), so I’m always getting a fresh response from her.

She told me tonight, “You are changing so much—” yes, she’s been listening to me moan and complain for the last two weeks, “—that I think I’ll just forget everything I know about the characters and read the book as if I’m meeting brand new people.”

And I’m thinking, “Good one, Mom. Pretend that the reason you don’t recognize the characters is that I changed them so much.”

But I do so much appreciate her reads. She is actually a very good reader and can tell me where she’s bothered by stuff and why. it’s quite helpful.

Now, I’m off to watch a movie and veg my brain for several hours on mindless entertainment.

A few months back I researched agents and I sent queries to a bunch of likely victims. The offers of representation did not pour in, fast and furious, the way I’d hoped they would. No. But I did end up with several revision suggestions and with a couple of agents (and one publisher) willing to work with me on revisions if I’d work exclusively with them.

So…a couple of days ago I got my revision notes from the agent I chose. I wasn’t shocked. I’m fortunate in that everyone who took time to give me suggestions told me about the same major shortcoming. My heroine is unlikable.

Still, though I wasn’t surprised, I can’t say I liked the revision notes. I didn’t. I thought I was done with the book or I wouldn’t have sent it out to agents. To now have to consider cutting scenes and moving scenes, makes me feel a little queasy.

But I’ve read the agent’s suggestions eighteen times, now, and I can see that some of them can be implemented. I can cut one scene and feed the needed information into an existing scene. Other scenes I don’t want to cut or move. I think they are too important to the plot and character development.

But there’s more than one way to cook a fish.

I’ve seen writers spend months revising for an agent or editor, only to be rejected in the end. It’s not that uncommon. One of the reasons the agents ask for revisions before offering to represent a writer is that they want to see if the writer can revise or not. It seems likely then, that many writers either can’t revise or won’t revise.

So I’ve been thinking about revisions and thinking about writers I’ve known who have made their books into unholy messes, when they’ve tried to revise and make their books fit someone else’s vision.

This book is my book.

Writers who slavishly take all the agent’s suggestions and try to cobble them into their existing manuscript, end up with a mess. This book can’t be my book and the editor’s book. No book can have two masters. (Unless, of course, it’s co-written, but that’s a different animal altogether. Co-written books still need to be guided by one vision.)

But saying that the book belongs to the writer does not mean that writers should refuse editing.

I see myself as the owner of the book and the one that knows it best. I know why I’m writing the book. I know what I want my character to learn and I know what I want my book to say about the difference between ambivalence and contentment and apathy and silent approval. I have spent several years thinking about this book and a whole year writing it and I have a deeper understanding of things than an editor who’s only just stumbled upon it.

I’m also blind to my book’s broken places, though. I have it all in my head so I fill in the holes as I read. I know the characters so I hear their tones and see their expressions when they speak. I need people who don’t know the characters and the setting and the theme, to tell me where I lose them. I need them to tell me where what’s in my head doesn’t come out on the page.

But while critics can tell you where a story is broken, they can’t necessarily tell you how to fix it.

Sometimes I’ll get a critique and I can immediately see that the critic is right. The way he rewords a sentence gives such clarity to a previously awkward construction.

Duh. Why didn’t I think of that.

Most times, though, I’ll get a critique and I’ll have to struggle, trying to figure out why the critic didn’t get something. I often have to let the critique sit for several days before I understand what the reader saw when he read the passage.

Usually, I find the reader is right. There is a problem. But the solution he offers is not the best solution. He doesn’t know the characters as well as I do. He doesn’t see the theme of the story as clearly as I do. Critique partners who read a chapter a week have even less understanding of where the book is going and who the characters are, but even people who have read the book in an afternoon are not going to see the theme as well as the author.

So what we need to do is look at every place the editor or critique partner tells us the story is broken. We need to know about every single place the reader is jerked out of the fictive dream. But we don’t necessarily do what the critic suggests when we try to fix the problem. We need to find a solution that works with our characters, our plot, and our theme.

That’s my plan, anyway. I’ll let you know in a few months if it worked or not.

I’m on my fifth pass through my novel.

The first pass was rough draft.

In the second draft, I looked over and revised each chapter before I subbed it to my crit group.

The third time through, I added in scenes and all the foreshadowing that was needed to carry off the final payoff. I made sure that characters didn’t appear and disappear without proper motivation and filled in the activities of daily living to make it appear that the characters were really living in a real world. I also looked carefully at character arc and theme and went through each chapter attempting to move my character forward in each scene and also to move her toward the place where she would be changed enough to make it believable that she would make the big sacrifice at the end of the book that makes the theme work. One trick is to make the sacrifice feel like the only decision she could make instead making her do something she’s not ready for, simply because the plot demands it. The other trick is to change her and show the change, without preaching.

The fourth time I went through each chapter seven times, using the seven critiques I got from my crit group. My crit partners are great. Their suggestions really showed me where the work was dragging, where the pay-off was too slight, where the character was acting contrary to her nature. Their crits turned a disaster into an interesting book.

(I think, anyway. And so does my mother. :ner-ner: )

The fifth time through, I started in the beginning and I’m moving quickly through the work, so I can catch and fix glitches in the timeline and character/place names. I’m also, as I go, cleaning up the twenty thousand words of rough draft I added to the novel when I was in my third and fourth revision.

I think it will take two more times through. I will look carefully at chapter openings and closings to make sure they hook the reader in one pass. The final pass is when I’ll search for wordiness, dull language, passive writing,  and redundancies.

It’s a lot of work. The good news is that on my fifth time through I still like this book. It makes me smile and tear up, still, even though I know full well what’s coming.

:yeah: It’s really helpful if you still like the book when you revise.

What about you? How many times do you revise? Do you find that crit groups are valuable?