@deadrats : By 'that' I meant your post about the revision process. Where's a tongue-in-cheek emoticon when you need one. Finished implies complete, never to be edited again, done and dusted. My one and only paper publication ran to two (short) print runs, the second of which differed from the first; if I ever get round to a third it too will include edits.
Wait, that's... abnormal? I spend twice as a long, at minimum, on editing and improving a story as I do writing it. Actually, it's much higher than a 2:1 (editing:writing) ratio for me. Most of my stories I've edited 20+ times. Like @Scot said, there's always something else to change. I generally enjoy editing, though. I'm not quite sure why that is. Part of it is being borderline OCD about my writing. Ever read a book and think, "wow, this author/editor is really damn lazy" or something similar? I never want someone to read my stories and have that thought. If people think my stories suck, it isn't going to be because of careless SPAG errors, inconsistencies, contrived dialogue, or anything like that. Keeping that goal in mind makes editing enjoyable for me. If each change is a legitimate improvement to the quality of the story, however small, then what's not to like about it? Admittedly, when I get to edit 16 or 17 I have to put the story aside for a while and come back months later with fresh eyes. I'm also very patient with my stories, though. I'll let them sit as long as necessary and go through them as many times as necessary until I think they're ready for submission.
I generally revise and rewrite as I go along, so at the end I shouldn't need to do much to the whole thing (I hope)
I would never be able to put in that many revisions. I don't even think I would want to. I am writing far to many new stories to go back to all the old ones as it is. I have never read books and thought what you mention. Maybe we are choosing different kinds of reading material. But, sh!t, I think you're right on the ratio.
Well, I created a folder called "ARCHIVE" and transferred them to that, to try to tell myself: these are done, leave them alone, move on. I might have made a couple of tiny tweaks since.
I'm absolutely with you on this. I definitely need to move on in my 'development as a writer' and start looking beyond this stuff but since I started writing, what has bothered me most is that people might look at something and think 'hell, that's clunky' or 'yikes, that's comical'. I accept I might have my priorities wrong. I suppose it's because I'm unreasonably harsh on this as a reader. There are a lot of books I've found really imaginative, really compelling, but that I find myself stopping on almost every page and wincing at awkward phrasing, unrealistic dialogue, out-of-place detail. I guess it depends what the writer's goal is whether these things really matter or not, but if you can fix them without fucking up the story, why wouldn't you?
I do the same thing as a reader. Sometimes it's hard to turn off the critical eye and just enjoy reading. It's a useful personality tic, though, because if I can ever get a story to the point where I'm happy with it, then there probably aren't too many other people who are going to read it and knock me for the minute things we're talking about. I think they absolutely matter. Just recently I spent four hours nitpicking a short of mine that I had more or less considered "done." Was it a good story before I did that? Yeah, I would say so. But it's also unquestionably better now that I've examined it in such detail and tweaked and tweaked and tweaked until every sentence serves a purpose. I don't think I have the time or patience to do that with a novel (!), but I give anything under 20k words the treatment.
But not everyone thinks that. I've just had to abandon an award-winning novel because of things that I feel should have been edited. "Yes, you can name a lot of streets in Geneva or wherever. Well done. You went there, or looked at a map or something. Is it relevant? Is a list of street names what the characters would be thinking - especially in this emotionally charged situation? No? Cut it." Clearly, a lot of people are fine with the things in this book that are driving me crazy. Almost certainly I'm missing out on a great story. But it's making me want to punch walls, so it's going to the charity shop.
Yes and no. I did an outline after the first (actually second) draft of my WIP and I think that cut about a year and a half off the revisions (it's a novel, not a short story). I also wrote out index cards to trace important elements throughout the story and that helped with pulling together a synopsis. And I think that likely cut down on revision time, too. With a filthy black passion, even more so just before I roll up my sleeves and start. The only way I've found to do this is to immerse myself in it 100%. If I can reconnect with the story, the whole process gets less painful. Also, the closer I get to the end, the less I hate it. Yes, big time. I used to avoid revisions and rewrites; never did them. Since I changed my attitude, sucked it up and just started doing the work, I think I've improved as a writer. I could be wrong on this, though. Sucked it up, did the work, ignored the fact that I hated doing it. Visualizing the story playing out in my head helps a lot. skim the story so I can put plot points on index cards, trace important elements and make more index cards, find a wall big enough to tack up those index cards (using that gummy stuff) lay out the index cards with the x direction as time, the y direction as various elements being traced in time rework the index cards until they make sense, have rising action, hills and valleys of tension and a big damn climax just before the denouement, write up a synopsis based on the index cards, rewrite from scratch. Suck it up, do the work.
By comparison, it took me 15 days to write the first draft of Aliens Don't Bend at the Knees. Rewriting, to date, has taken almost 15 months (nine days short ATM) and I fully expect it to take another few days to go back and add in things I've found that need to be established before I send it out to betas. I also still have 55 pages I still need to go back over for a spit polish. All in all, I expect these revisions to take 16 to 17 overall months before they're finished.
Best cure for that is to put it to bed for a while, three weeks minimum. And work on something else in the meantime, anything that will get you out of that story world.
The thing that gets me is bad dialogue. I'll get 25 pages into a book and think to myself, "Nobody talks like this!" and I won't be able to continue. Welcome to eBay, book.
@deadrats : Leonardo had a lot of plans and half-ready creations. Just like him, creative people often have the problem of being very enthusiastic about an idea and make a rough sketch, but then not really interested in getting to the details. They (we? ) really enjoy working on the grand idea but are bored by the small bits. In writing, the "working on the idea" can be to sit down and just start to write, improvising the story (pantsers) or planning the plot, world, characters, draw maps, spend a huge amount of time researching, etc (planners). For a pantser, writing the story and see where it goes is the creative part and finding plot holes, making the characters' behavior consistent, trying to fit the action into the available time, sort the events in a logical order, etc. are boring "details". To the contrary, for a planner these latter parts are the most interesting "creative" part and when (often years later) all is planned out in glorious perfection, then writing down the text (in 2-3 months) is boring. You seem to be a pantser, who enjoy the improvisational part of the writing process and hate the revision that comes after that. Do not think that people in the other camp (eg planners) lack this problem. We love to plan out the whole thing, but sitting down and start to write the actual text is painful. Both camps start with the step that is the most interesting for THEM and then hate all the boring "wood chopping" parts that come after. As I see it, the writing process is planning then writing OR writing then planning (revision) with a third editing part that is equally hated by both camps. I was "lucky" to learn engineering in technical school and then IT in college so I had to deal with a lot of "details". What I have learned is that you need to know what "creative work" means to you and try not to do it in one short burst and agonize for a long time because of the things you don't like. Try to do the interesting work in several smaller parts and put the boring things in between. You wrote that you edit as you write. That's a good start, however to write is like eating a whole cake at once and get up one hour earlier for 10 days to go out jogging.
