The Agony Of Rewrites

So today, among other things, I’m rewriting a story. Tightening it up, seems to be the standard term these days.

Some writers think this is a joyful activity. Others would rather throw themselves naked into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades. I think I fall somewhere in the middle; I’d rather jump fully clothed into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades, but at the same time, it’s a necessary and occasionally enlightening experience.

The story in question is one called Photographic Memories, my attempt to do a slower paced, more lyrical, character study. As usual, there are tons of extra “bits” written in that are more or less unneccessary which I never notice until someone else points them out for me, usually to much embarrassment on my part when it’s revealed that something that took 12 sentences to convey can actually be done in ONE. Time for the ol’ writer’s dunce cap during moments like that. This is the story with the lesbian in it that I’m thinking of giving to the Canadian anthology in lieu of the Jen short story which I have categorically decided to not take to the isle of Lesbos, even if it is all expenses paid, first class.

It’s been “critted” (Writer slang for critiqued) over the years (Oh yeah, it’s, like three or four years old) and for the most part the critiques have been helpful and aside from a few obvious errors, most people have generally liked it. Although my newest online forum group, a bunch of people who call themselves “Inkies” (Big side note: Oldest established writer’s group online, only two ways to get in, you “audition” with a sample, or prove you’ve been previously published; I submitted my literary agent’s website and my On Spec credited and schmoozed my way in…) have looked at it, and again, while the crits have favorable (And EXTREMELY helpful, because they all pick up nitpicky grammatical, narrative, structural and stylistic errors that casual readers would miss) the one woman who seems extremely supportive of my writing had to regret to inform me that this was one story of mine that she was surprised to see she didn’t like, on the grounds that she found it a bit too meandering, and ultimately, didn’t accomplish the goal of telling the story it set out to.

This, of course, is extremely disappointing to hear.

It’s the writer’s ego thing. I’m reminded now of one writer on another forum who started a MASSIVE month’s long flame war when he said (FOOL! FOOL FOOL FOOL!) something to the effect of “Be blunt and honest, I’ve got a thick skin.” Unfortunately for him, the other writers took him up on this offer, and gave him exactly what he asked for. They were trying to help him, they pointed out the numerous weaknesses in his style, plot and characterization (Or distinct lack thereof, it was TRASH) and the thick skinned writer who demanded blunt honesty turned on his critics and started attacking them, calling them everything from “Little Girl Writers” to, in the case one helpful commentor, an outright bitch.

This did not endear with him with said writer’s community. Since then, new policies have been instituted that allow forum members to rate posts. If you get a negative score, your post is automatically deleted by the system.

He has many deleted posts, usually rated with Flame, Troll, Uninformed, Misguided, Off-Topic, or Profanity.

But it was pretty eye opening, because here was this guy, who wanted to improve his writing. And here were these people who, as he’d asked, unmercifully told him how to do it. The next thing you know, he’s defending every single weakness in his text, usually with the ringing endorsement, “But all my friends and an English teacher I showed it to said it was GREAT! Besides, [insert famous Science Fiction Writer's Name Here] does it, he’s WAY worse than I am for it!” When that peerless bit of logic failed to make a dent in the reasoning of his commentors that’s when he resorted to the still higher plane of contemplation that involves questioning the integrity of one’s mother. Amazingly, these gentle retorts didn’t change the minds of his readers and make them love him, his writing, and want to be his best friend. The traitorous bastards got upset and slammed him for making them use up valuable time to help someone who clearly only wanted to be told he was genius and couldn’t deal with it when people wouldn’t play along.

Hey, there was a point to all this, wasn’t there?

Oh yeah, the fact that this person I respect doesn’t like this story.

Sigh…

Occupational hazard. And inevitable. When you invest that much emotionally into something, it’s always going to hurt at least a litlte when someone says “I don’t like it.” You just have to remember that they’re not saying “I don’t like you,” grit your teeth, and try–much, much harder to say than to do–to look at the piece objectively without all the heart and soul and wonder if it needs more work. And of course, it always to remember what Stephen King once said; take 10 people. Show them your work. If all ten people are saying different things, then you can safely ignore them all and just do whatever the hell you feel like. But if 7 of those 10 people are all hitting on the same thing–be it praise or damnation–then chances are you’ve got something on your hands, and it’s up to you afterwards to decide how to proceed.

I do still respect her criticism. I’m sure there are valid points to it too, which I may need a few other people to comment on, because so far this is the first negative criticism I’ve received on this story, which was a bit suprising. I’m still tightening up the story, deleting and rewording those extra bits she generously pointed out. And my style is as solid as ever, she didn’t have any problem with the writing, she still loves that, believes it is detailed and evocative, she just believes it suffers from major structural problems. I’ll have to look at that later, I suspect. In the meantime, I’m going to do the lame brain thing; that is, clean it up, prepare it for submission, and send it off to see what the anthology people think.

Like I said, at least it already has a lesbian in it.