I have never been one for patience. My plan for the revision process was to hold off until May but I just couldn’t wait that long. I made a bargain with myself. I told myself that if I finished reading Ulysses I could start editing my novel, even if it was still April. I couldn’t wait for that either. (I’m still reading Ulysses.)

Printed (size12TNR1.25”marginsdoublespaced), my novel is 341 pages (don’t worry—I printed on both sides on 100% post-consumer). It feels a little heavy and I find that satisfying. I went through it one chapter at a time armed with a pen, starting on Monday, and on Thursday I read the last sentence. I’m still trying to piece together my feelings on the novel in its entirety, but as far as the revision process goes, I have a few thoughts.

It will take its toll (image copyright Sam Brown)

Adverbs: Jesus Christ. I instinctively include adverbs habitually, ignorantly and unknowingly thinking they will aid my story in being told more clearly. As I read slowly through each chapter, I sighed exasperatedly at each appearance of the word “slowly” or “gently” and crossed it out violently. The only thing adverbs unwittingly assist in one’s story is telling it more ridiculously and blandly and gracelessly. In the future I’ll have to carefully remember to write more confidently and let the nouns tell the story beautifully rather than rely so heavily on adverbs. Seriously—95% of the time they can be cut. They’re also one of the most satisfying things to cut.

Punctuation and grammar: It appears my stance on commas changed partway through the story. The same is true with quotation marks, colons, and semi-colons. I had a bad habit of conjoining sentences with the “, and” system. This is really all part of:

Prose style: I’m shocked at how much it changed. The first two chapters (written in 2009) read like a different book. That’s not the extent of it. Even in the three months spent writing the remaining chapters my prose style mutated beyond my control. The beginning of the book sounds nothing like the end of the book. I attribute this almost entirely to confidence. When writing the last few chapters, which is where I see the most satisfying prose, I started to let go of whatever hand I was holding and write without fear or restraint. As such I have a few sentences that span a paragraph’s length uninterrupted, but those can always be tweaked. I really, really like the sentences I was writing toward the end of the book. I can be proud of them. The real terror now is the disparity between chapter one and chapter nineteen. I suppose I could always be one of those writers and say that the prose style is meant to display evolution as the characters themselves evolve but that would be lazy. I’m trying to avoid laziness these days.

Plot: For the most part I’m satisfied with the story’s events and even the content of each scene. There are only a handful of scenes that I plan to make major changes to. I noticed that in the writing process I tended toward the dramatic. That will of course be smoothed out as much as possible.

Characters: Not as strong as I’d hoped. I wanted it to be a triad—three central characters each embarking upon an odyssey—but it falls a little short of that. One of the three characters is downright weak. I don’t know that any of them are where they should be.

Now that I have 341 pages full of slash marks and underlined sentences, with the edges curled, with the words “weak” or “awkward” scribbled in the margins, with a multitude of question marks and even a “wtf?”, I’m intimidated by the next step. There’s a lot to rewrite. Based on the terrifying inconsistency of the prose I worry that the only reasonable course of action is going to be to start a new document and start typing, using the first draft as nothing more than a guide. That might be the only way that I’ll pay close enough attention to every sentence. I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about. I tried to start revising the first chapter the other day and it took me over an hour to make changes to the first two paragraphs. A week ago I told myself that the worst was behind me, that writing the initial draft was the hard part, but now I’m not so sure I believe that. This next part seems more daunting than the free and fearless romp of writing without rules.

I’d be interested in hearing from Xenith’s readers. What does your revision process look like? Even if you’ve only ever written short fiction—what kind of practices do you employ when revising? A complete rewrite? Changing your phrasing here and there? First draft is the best draft? I’m curious. More than anything I need to know that there are other people out there suffering. At least then we can suffer together. That’s really the goal of human existence, is it not?—suffering together instead of alone? Perhaps that’s too lofty for this banal article.

Wish me luck, at the very least.