When is it ever enough?

[kromen]

I just submitted my third story ( shameless plug) but i was sitting on it for about four months. I kept going back, editing, rewriting, and sometimes starting over completely. Wondering whether my fellow authors ever overedit and how do you know when you are truly finished with a piece. Even now, I wonder about my recent efforts and play the "shoulda, coulda, woulda" game in my head.

 

[chris 44]

I just submitted my third story ( shameless plug) but i was sitting on it for about four months. I kept going back, editing, rewriting, and sometimes starting over completely. Wondering whether my fellow authors ever overedit and how do you know when you are truly finished with a piece. Even now, I wonder about my recent efforts and play the "shoulda, coulda, woulda" game in my head.

Nothing wrong with sitting on a story for four months. I try to leave things for a month anyway, there are always huge flaws in it when I go back. But you're right. There comes a time where you just have to kiss the story on its forehead, say goodbye, and launch it into the wide world.

Some people can launch and forget. I can't, though I can't remember going back to change any of my Lit stories. Sometimes I'll fiddle with the master copy, sometimes quite drastic changes, but I've never been back to change them. Always another story to be told you see.

And the next one is going to be the best I've ever done. So look forward, not back. Personally I find writing a never ending journey. What I do like to do is look back at a piece some 12 months later and think where it could be improved. It makes me realise I'm a better writer than I was 12 months ago.

Best wishes,
Chris

 

[S-Des]

Three stories, lots of doubts

Every story I've done has presented me with the same question. I got around it by finding prereaders. I mix a couple of authors with a couple of people who just enjoy reading. They will often present me with questions I hadn't anticipated. That helps me believe that my story is ready to be submitted.

Of course, the day it posts, I always think of 10 things I could have done to make it better, but like Chris said, you eventually have to send it on it's way. Finding a good editor is key because they can not only catch errors, but see things you've missed. Often I get challenged on a point and just having to defend my position makes me understand my characters better. I write long stories (not by choice, it's just the only way I can resolve everything), so there are always a ton of areas that could be improved if I took more time. But by submitting your story and getting feedback, you can move on to the next one, which is probably a better use of your time than trying to write one "perfect" story.

 

[SesameStreet]

All writers do this. I reread my work until my eyes cross. When I get to that point I have to let it go on as is. If you don't you lose all the pleasure of writing.

 

[sophia jane]

All writers do this. I reread my work until my eyes cross. When I get to that point I have to let it go on as is. If you don't you lose all the pleasure of writing.

No, all writers don't do it. I edit/proofread, and have my editor edit. Then I submit.

 

[cloudy]

No, all writers don't do it. I edit/proofread, and have my editor edit. Then I submit.

Me too.

 

[sophia jane]

Me too.

Oh good. I was worried that by being the exception to "all writers" I wasn't really a writer after all.

 

[cloudy]

Oh good. I was worried that by being the exception to "all writers" I wasn't really a writer after all.

I think there's probably more like us than most realize. In fact, I edit as I go (I'm horribly anal that way), so I usually just get someone to proof it for me, and then it's submitted.

 

[FallingToFly]

If it's fluff, like Falling, I don't overdo.

If it's something I have to just DO, and get out there, I hardly edit it at all, because what came out was what needed out.

And if it's something like A Love Story In A Minor Key, I'm never done with rewriting it. Never.

 

[oggbashan]

Some classic masters/mistresses of literature confessed that they were never happy with their published works and always wanted to edit and rewrite until they died.

Some were so dismissive of their published work that they didn't want to talk about their earlier works and some tried to surpress a novel or two.

Perfection isn't human. A balance between polishing and over-revising is probably saner.

Og

 

[Guest]

I just deleted an entire chapter, over five thousand words because I didn't like the way it was working. And I still panic when a new story gets posted and I find a single mistake in spelling or punctuation or the way something was said that still just didn't feel right to me.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

In reply to Ogg, there were also writers like Dickens and Shakespeare who just churned stuff out on a daily basis to meet the rent and satisfy the wife. What about Hemingway?

Take two great Parisian friends in the first half of the twentieth century, André Gide and Georges Simenon. Gide spent his literary life mentally constipated, rewriting his novels over and over again until he died with only 6 published and a 4-Volume journal. True he won a Nobel Prize, but who has read him?

Simenon, on the other hand, wrote 220 best-selling novels, including more than 100 Maigret detective stories. That's ignoring all his journals, diaries and travel books. Oh, and yes, his 400 short stories, novels and novellas that are called his juvenilia. He didn't win the Nobel Prize - probably because quantity used to be considered a bad sign of being popular.

Yet Simenon ha left a more permanent mark on our culture. With his police detective Maigret, he retired the gifted amateurs such as Poirot and Sherlock Holmes and opened the path to great classics(?) like Hill Street Blues, NYPD, Colombo and Inspector Dagleish.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I just deleted an entire chapter, over five thousand words because I didn't like the way it was working. And I still panic when a new story gets posted and I find a single mistake in spelling or punctuation or the way something was said that still just didn't feel right to me.

Deleting a chapter is par for the course. For the rest, it'a difference between amateur and professional - we haven't got the back-up.

Having said that, this has got to be one of the best sites I've found for well proofed submissions.

 

[Guest]

If it's any comfort to you, Raymond Carver , pre-eminent short story author and poet, re-edited several of his stories for republication last year or the year before (I heard the story on NPR) -- some of the stories were "finished" 40 years previous and had been published, paid for, and even anthologised, but he still felt like he needed to work on them.

Stories never really get done. You just stop messing with them somewhere along the line and decide -- through logic, through emotion, through exhaustion, through disgust -- that they are done enough for now.

Makes me wonder, when Michaelangelo walked passed his David, if he'd think "Oh, hell, I should have polished that left buttock up a bit more."

 

[Selena_Kitt]

You could have put a link with your plug, Kro...

 

[3113]

Take two great Parisian friends in the first half of the twentieth century, André Gide and Georges Simenon. Gide spent his literary life mentally constipated, rewriting his novels over and over again until he died with only 6 published and a 4-Volume journal. True he won a Nobel Prize, but who has read him?

Simenon, on the other hand, wrote 220 best-selling novels, including more than 100 Maigret detective stories. That's ignoring all his journals, diaries and travel books. ...Yet Simenon ha left a more permanent mark on our culture.

Hm. By that logic, Jane Austen shouldn't be popular at all. Wrote a mere six short books. Just like André there. And I promise you that, likewise, there's many a best selling author out there who put out book after book, but whom you've never heard about, never read, who's characters are long forgotten.

The number of books an author puts out, the popularity those books during their lifetime is guarantee of nothing. Maybe their stories and books and characters will last for centuries. Or maybe they'll only get their fifteen minutes. It might well be that in 20 years people will say, "Harry Potter who? Oh, those old things. We've moved on."

We write what we write. As much as our ability, imagination, temperment, talent and desires allow us to write. We each find our own way to make what we write the best it can be--either by editing ourselves or letting others edit us, either by editing a lot and carefully or not at all. We may be prodigeous (like Simenon) in our output or stingy (like Gile).

To my mind the most important thing is to do right by the story. Always. If that means keep editing, edit. If you're done, you're done. The rest is really not up to us. One never knows why a certain character or certain books at certain times take off...or flops. That first Harry Potter book might have gone unnoticed 30+ years ago--lost under the enormous popularity of Lord of the Rings and Stranger in a Strange Land. But it got put out in the late 90's instead; the Zeitgeist was right and it became the best selling book, well, ever. Who knew?

You never know what will capture people when, or what will outlast its shine. Trying to go after such a thing--popularity, immortality--is a bad way to write. And trying to mimic the way others wrote (edit/don't edit, putting out a lot of product rather than a little) because they were popular or immortal is really a bad way to write. Write because it's fun, because you enjoy it, because you must, because the characters in your head won't shut up or the scenes in your mind insist you write them down. And because you care about your stories.

IMHO, that's always the best reason to write.

 

[Guest]

Hm. By that logic, Jane Austen shouldn't be popular at all. Wrote a mere six short books. Just like André there. And I promise you that, likewise, there's many a best selling author out there who put out book after book, but whom you've never heard about, never read, who's characters are long forgotten..

Peter Mark Roget (who created Roget's Thesarus) might be considered yet another one hit wonder of the writing world -- yet look at all the highschool students who feel his influence

 

[S-Des]

That's almost as bad

I just deleted an entire chapter, over five thousand words because I didn't like the way it was working. And I still panic when a new story gets posted and I find a single mistake in spelling or punctuation or the way something was said that still just didn't feel right to me.

The first chapter of my first submission was not warmly received (is that a nice enough way of saying it completely sucked?). Over the next 3 months, I rewrote the final three chapters and probably removed 5000-10,000 words, and added 10,000 more with the help of a couple of authors who took pity on me. The result . . . 1st chapter was at 3.74, final chapter 4.74. Rewriting can be a very good thing. It was really painful and I was tempted several times to kill all my characters (or follow the advice of a helpful reader who suggested I sell the wife to white slavers), but now I'm glad I did it.

 

[gauchecritic]

Nobody, professional, amatuer or dilletante writes a novel which is exquisite throughout. every sentence perfectly constructed, the total of every scene moving the plot forward, every character being essential to the plot.

If you look hard enough, you will always find some little thing; a misplaced colon, an ill considered paragraph or a description begging to be deleted.

You wrote it. Is it what you wanted to say? If not does it at least follow its own rules and consistencies?

There are no published works that stand up to nit-picking, so you have to realise at what point you start nit-picking and then... live with it.

 

[kromen]

Thanks for all of your comments. My head has stopped hurting and I feel better about having sumbitted the story. When it comes through the pending process, I'll drop a link for it. Thanks again to all of you.
kromen