I hate revision!!!

gettingby

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Does anyone else hate the editing and revising stage of writing short stories? I sure do. I hate it so much that I rather just write new stories than have to go back and clean up old ones (that really aren't that old). I now have five new short stories that I know I can't send out anywhere until I clean them up. But I just don't feel like it. And I want to change that. How do you get yourself excited about fixing your stories. I know some people love the editing and process. I want to love it too. Why don't I? How can I?

I think part of the problem is that it takes so long for me to edit and revise a piece to get it in shape for submission. I can write a story in under a week and sometimes even a day. But when I edit and revise a story, it takes me longer than it did to write it. About two or three weeks working on it almost every day. I can easily spend hours editing and revising and think I'm done. But when I think I am giving it just another read through a few more hours of my life are zapped up by more revision.

I know some people edit as they go, and I do this too, but it's not enough for me. My first drafts are pretty clean, but I know I can make them better if I put the time in. But more often than not, it doesn't even seem to matter since form rejections seem to be the popular response to my stories. What does revision teach us? I would like to think I am learning something when I put all this work into revising something, but I don't feel any closer to producing work that doesn't require the level of revision that seems necessary for me. I know I probably sound like I'm being lazy, but a lot of the time revision seems to spark new story ideas and I just write those instead of working on revising something else. I am fully aware that revision in necessary for me. I just don't want to hate it so much and keep putting it off. Can anyone relate? Ideas on how to make revision not feel like a chore?
 

Fruitbat

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I love editing. I like it so much more than writing first drafts. My problem is more the opposite, I'm a bit compulsive about it. Whether it's a story, a forum post, or a grocery list, I will keep finding something that isn't quite right and keep re-doing it. :/

Ha, I just did it here.
 

bexxs

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I definitely hear you there! Today I had to cut 100 words from an 1100 word story, and each one was like pulling teeth. Intellectually I know 100 words is just a paragraph, but jeez! I picked all of those words for a reason! I often find that I need to streamline which I know makes my writing better, but cutting is painful. Especially in an industry that pays by the word. ;)
 

gettingby

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I love editing. I like it so much more than writing first drafts. My problem is more the opposite, I'm a bit compulsive about it. Whether it's a story, a forum post, or a grocery list, I will keep finding something that isn't quite right and keep re-doing it. :/

Ha, I just did it here.

I want to love it. The fact that I don't makes me question if I'm doing something wrong. Can I ask why you love it? What do you love about it? I'm not picky over every word, but when I go back to a piece, I can spot awkward phrasing in places and usually end up adding quite a bit to the whole thing in general or I go for a complete rewrite. It bothers me that I didn't get it right on my first go. And it also bothers me that I don't know how long revision is supposed to take. I know it's different for everyone, but I'm just not sure how long it's supposed to take me and therefore now feel like I have know idea when a story is actually done. I know I finish writing a story when it feels done. I don't get that same feeling ever during revision. I usually just get sick of working on it and move onto something new. But now I'm starting to create this backlog editing and revising to do and putting off submitting this newer stuff anywhere.
 

gettingby

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I definitely hear you there! Today I had to cut 100 words from an 1100 word story, and each one was like pulling teeth. Intellectually I know 100 words is just a paragraph, but jeez! I picked all of those words for a reason! I often find that I need to streamline which I know makes my writing better, but cutting is painful. Especially in an industry that pays by the word. ;)

I've never really felt married to anything I've written. I can cut or replace pretty easily as needed. For me, it's not that it's painful mentally to make these changes. It just feels very labor intensive and exhausting, both doing it and thinking about doing it. But I can see how it might be challenging to cut 100 words out of a 1,100-word story if you were trying to make it flash fiction.
 

dragonfliet

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I just need space. I can't edit a piece I just wrote because I'm either too in love with it or frustrated by it to have anything to say. But if I put it away, work on something else and come back to it, I find this helps. For me, I just treat it like I would a story by someone else. I mark bad moments (or great ones), mark errors, and start thinking about what the structure is lacking. The kinds of crits you give anyone. From there, actually editing the thing is a nightmare, but hopefully there is a core of the story that I still love, and for me I'm just wanting it to be made right. To be GOOD, and so that really helps motivate me.
 

MaeZe

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I'm in the love editing camp. I still love my story. I love the edits and then when I edit more, I love the changes.
 

Taylor Harbin

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I used to hate it, but experience has taught me to appreciate it. Once I get that swimming churning mass of an idea out of my head onto paper, THEN I find I can alter it until it's perfect. One of the science fiction stories I'm most proud of was written in September 2015, but I didn't get a final draft until April of this year. It needed time to cool.
 

eskay

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I write very very rough and easily spend twice (or more) as much time on editing. I think for me a lot of the pleasure of editing is actually getting a phrase or paragraph right, so that it flows smoothly and sounds great. For me, the structural parts of editing (does this scene go here or would it be better earlier?) are less fun.
 

Jamesaritchie

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I've always hated editing and rewriting and revising. I hated it when I first started writing, and I hate it now.

My solution has always been to make my first draft so good that it will sell as it stands. I think most writers could do this, if they didn't read the silly advice that tells them first drafts are supposed to be bad. I blame Hemingway for that. He did not actually mean that all first drafts are sh*t. His first drafts were wonderful. They were simply different than his final drafts. Not worse, just different.

Very few writers try to make their first drafts publishable. They're told over and over that first drafts are awful, so they don't try to make them wonderful, despite the hundreds, probably thousands, of writers throughout history, starting with Shakespeare, who wrote brilliant first drafts.


I submitted first drafts when I started writing because I didn't even know you were supposed to write more than one draft. They sold, so I kept doing the same. I had to submit the first draft of my first novel, and it sold, too. I've sold more first drafts in my career than stories I put through more than one draft.

I detest editing, even though I've been an editor several times. But it's different when it's someone else's story. I detest editing, rewriting, revising, changing anything after I reach the end. That's why I now do all my editing, rewriting, etc., as I go, working on each page until it's perfect. This way, when I reach the end, I'm done. I never have to read the story again.

So, yeah. Nothing about working on a story after I reach the end appeals to me in the slightest. I've studied every writer I've read, and a huge number that I've never read. It's amazing how many of them did one draft. Many or the rest just did a clean up second draft. Just making minor changes, getting rid of typos, working on a line of clunky dialogue, but no revision at all.

If all those writers could do it, there's no reason at all why I can't, except attitude. I believe I can write publishable first drafts, so I do my best to make every first draft as good as it can possibly be. There's nothing wrong with getting it right the first time, and no reason at all why first drafts have to be bad in any way.
 

spottedgeckgo

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This is just my own style, but it's worked for me. I hated first drafts, specially when working on novels. Say I knock out an 80,000 word first draft in three weeks. It will likely take me months of revisions to get it where I want it, and there's always more to do. But I realized at some point that editing isn't always about fixing mistakes, it's about taking a good idea that's well written and figuring out ways to make it more awesome. I use this exact formula on Novels, Novellas, and even short stories (though I omit the structure edit for most of those). I do several passes, each with a different intent. The first is almost always structure, because I want the pacing right and I'm looking for serious issues. Then my poor betas get to dig through the typos looking for plot holes and and overall sense of the story, followed by another structure edit. Then I clean my sentences of any extra adjectives or poor verb choices and move commas around. I always do one last typo hunt (or several) before sending the draft of to an editor (for longer work).

Make a game out of it. If one sentence is being especially difficult, then skip it and move on. Make sure that you have some sugars in your system (either from candy, fruits, cookies, or whatever else) as it will help. Biggest thing though, positive attitude. Let yourself fall in love with your story so that dressing it up all pretty becomes fun. You're getting your little girl ready for the big dance ;)
 

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I've grown to enjoy editing. It was a process, and it's hard to say what got me there, but now I see it as a necessary step in writing the best story I'm capable of. It helps me to be aware of what I may want to fix, and think about it even as I'm writing the rest of the story. That way I've got a rough plan while I'm editing.

I also agree with what Gecko said about tweaking ideas to make them better. Writing is more about the execution than the idea, not that the idea isn't important. Because there's always that second draft, I personally don't stress too much about how I'm saying something the first time through.
 

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I'm with James, on aiming to hit it in one. It's not just because I don't like rewriting; it's because I believe you're more likely to hit a creative spark when you just go for it, rather than telling yourself the first draft will be crap anyway.

I'd been a professional writer for many years without admitting this, mainly because everyone seemed to swear by the multiple rewriters approach. Then I went to a workshop in Oregon, taken by some highly commerical writers, who cheerfully confessed to being one-draft writers, and I came out of the closet so to speak.

Having said that, I'd add a caveat that it depends to an extent on the story. For instance, I'm currently working with an editor on a 10,000 word short story and we've been through a few drafts of it so far. This is because it's quite a complex story which could be told from different angles, and for various reasons it's been necessary (and fun, I might add) to actually write those approaches and see what works.

Also, it obviously takes experience and skill to hit it in one. It doesn't mean the writer isn't editing/improving/refining the work; it just means he's doing so in mostly a single process.
 

anakhouri79

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I can't edit as I go, because I would never finish anything that way. I like to spit it all out, stick it in a folder and go back later.

I used to HATE revising. Hated it. Then I revised my first novel. And you know what? I was seeing things get better right before my very eyes. I did a complete turnaround. I love revising now, it might even be my favoeite part of the process. But I understand how you feel back from when I hated it. Unfortunately I don't have any advice because for me it was kind of spontaneous!
 

DragonHeart

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I hate it in the sense that I dislike having my writing flaws and skill gaps exposed and staring me in the face. On the other hand, I can also say I draw a huge amount of satisfaction from having edited and made my work that much stronger.

I guess in a lot of ways I equate it to running. I hate running, but I love having run. Same with editing.

I suspect I'll probably hate the process less once I've refined my skills more and my work isn't quite so raw to begin with.
 

RaiscaraAvalon

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I'm in the love editing camp. Sounds like you need to separate yourself from your work to me, I hated editing when I hadn't figured out the my work wasn't ME, it was just my work. It can be immensely freeing. Plus I have OCD so editing is right up my alley so to speak. Of course I could be wrong, but I'm going by how you've worded things that reminded me of myself during that time frame when my work = me.
 

fatmanny1901

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This is a new monster for me. I just finished the first piece I've written and got some feedback on how to fix things (telling vs showing, primarily) and I don't even know how to go about starting the editing process because things don't pop out to me yet. But just thinking about editing and revising makes me cringe. I never looked things over in high school because the first draft was always good enough for me. The same mentality applies to me today and it's so frustrating.
 

MaeZe

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I changed a whole chapter last night and I'm in love with editing because the changes make the novel so much better.

Writers are so different. A lot of people only need a copy editor (fixes typos and grammar problems, things like that). That's best hired out I think.

I taught myself how to write (with a lot of critique help) over the years I've been writing. So for me, editing is taking what I know now and applying it to what I wrote then. Some chapters I have edited so many times, all I change now is a word or two. I like them.

But there are a number of chapters like the one I re-wrote last night which still read like a new, not yet skilled, writer wrote them. Editing of the chapters I'm working on now involve bigger plot changes.

My character meets someone from her grandparent's generation. I first wrote the elder to be the character's grandmother's best friend from childhood, one she had heard stories about that her grandmother hadn't seen since childhood. The situation made meeting that particular elder too far fetched, and even if credible, the writing got much too hokey. I changed it to an elder that knew both friends in childhood and it's much better. Now instead of a bunch of sappy stuff (she always missed you yadda yadda) I switched it up to add more mystery and intrigue. Did the elder guess the protagonist was from the half of the group that escaped into the forest? There are hints, but the character can't ask, she can't have it be found out the village exists. There's better opportunity for a bit of backstory, it's smoother.


Bottom line, it depends on what your book needs.


Wow, look I wrote something in the thread last June about loving editing. Insufferable broken record for sure. :tongue
 
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SJ Gordon

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Ah, editing. I'm afraid I'm not in the "love editing" camp, but I do alright with short pieces. It's the novel-length manuscript begging for attention that fills me with dread. This is especially true now that I've made a couple of passes through to correct the easier, more obvious issues. Now that I've identified one, big, gnarly issue, I'm just so intimidated, I haven't been able to face it. Yet. It's the ripple effect that gets me. I change one point and that requires changes in roughly 97 other places. Ack.
 

josephperin

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I'm in the love editing camp. I still love my story. I love the edits and then when I edit more, I love the changes.

AGree. Although, sometimes I wish I could stop editing. I'd be driving and think of something I could change.
 

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I'm firmly in the revision camp. It's my favorite part. IMO, it's where the writing really begins.
 

gbondoni

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I agree with the post above that says: make your first draft publishable. Long experience in finishing a first draft of a story and selling it on the first submission says that it IS possible. Having said that, I still edit unless I'm feeling completely fed up with the piece. Why? Because I always find some little thing (generally a typo or a sentence that, yes, could have been better).

But I definitely fall in the hate, despise and loathe editing camp.