On Revisions

Last week, after a meeting with the Chair of my committee, I took a metaphorical axe (at his suggestion) and carved out about 7000 words from my novel. It was a bit painful at first. Watching that word count grow had been—after my trip to Iowa—the highlight of my summer. 

Watching it drop wasn’t nearly as much fun!

In one moment, it fell from 78,000+ words to about 71,000. It has since fallen to about 68,000—before climbing again to nearly 71,000 with the addition of a new chapter. Yet, cutting out all those words I slaved over has been a very good thing!

The beginning of the story feels tighter and more focused—and why not? I know what it’s about now, much more than I did when I first started writing. It’s become easier to tell what’s important for the reader to know, and what is just me riffing with an idea. 

It’s starting to feel like a real book.

Are there more revisions ahead? Of course. There will probably be hundreds more words that disappear from the page before I’m finished. But there will likely be—at least in some spots—others that either take their places, or fill in gaps I hadn’t seen in the beginning (like that new chapter I’m working on now).

When I first started writing papers in college, the call for revisions seemed like a punishment. Now I understand it a little better. It’s a re-visioning of the story you are trying to tell. As you understand it better, you’ll want to tell it differently—to be as sure as you can that your readers will follow.

Which they won’t…if they can’t see that where you’re going is someplace they want to go, too.