Revising your novel II

This book is out of print now, but if you can find it in the library or via used books websites, it's a good one, academically focused. I peruse it once in awhile to keep my revisions on track as I tend to think I can just write however I want to instead of conforming form-wise to some of the things I learned in Graduate School.

Meanwhile check out Holly Lisle's website. She's a genre writer but she has some good tips, including revision tips.

Unlike visual artists who can show you their work in process, writers can only talk ABOUT what they're doing, unless they have someone who wants to read the actual page. And on for 300 plus pages. The work in process remains invisible to others.

And thus the writer herself is more invisible than the visual artist. And doesn't become visible unless they publish their book. Or share their novel with one other person or a group.

I worked on Chapter one revisions y'day and also looked up some old writings of mine I may want to steal from. I changed the main character's name from Hannah to Zoe, and the town's name from Bournemouth to Phinney's Harbor. I deleted Hannah's job as a caregiver for elders but kept Mrs. Mornay, the elder, as a neighbor Zoe helps out now and again. Hannah/Zoe was tall and I may change that too as in my mind I just don't picture her as tall. So minor things and so far I haven't had to use my imagination to create new scenes yet.

But I'll do that today. (Am ALREADY feeling frustrated as I said a lot more in this blog entry but I messed up the Holly Lisle link and when I "erased" it in HTML I erased a whole bunch of great and clever stuff I'd written. Did not feel like rewriting it.)