the sun always shines on tv but we don't get cable
Thu 2015-02-12 23:23:57 (in context)
- 5,389 words (if poetry, lines) long
I'm not at the fun part of the short story revision.
Is there a fun part? I hear that there is. But then I mostly hear that from writers who like the revision phase, so I'm not sure if I believe them. I believe it's fun for them, but I'm not sure the experience translates.
In any case, if there is a fun part, this isn't it. I'm still stuck in the segue glue. And it feels ridiculous, because the segues aren't between scenes. Microscenes, maybe. They're the transitions for getting the protagonist from one paragraph to the next, essentially. They need to be concise and perfectly worded to do two emotional tasks per sentence, and they need to either be written anew or refined out of existing draft.
Which is not easy. If it were easy, I'd have already done it, and the story wouldn't need revising.
Basically, I'm going from stuck to stuck. And it's not like getting stuck in rough draft, where getting unstuck means running for pages and pages on the new idea. No. Every "a-ha!" that gets me unstuck is good for about a sentence. Maybe two. Then I'm stuck again.
I think if I could bottle that "a-ha!" feeling and prolong it, that would be the fun part of revisions.
So, in keeping with my anti-BIC play-while-you-work strategy, I'm attacking the revision in very short sessions. Like, spend 15 minutes throwing myself at the current brick wall, then go do some unrelated thing. During that unrelated activity, something about the story will unknot itself and give me an "a-ha!" which will send me back to the revision with great joy and hope. Fifteen minutes and maybe two sentences worth keeping later, I'm making brick-shaped indentations in my forehead again and it's time to go do something else. Rinse, lather, repeat, all day long.
It's better than no progress at all, but it's not what I'd call fun.
(Which is why the unrelated thing is generally video games.)