Wielding the Knife
By Juliet Marillier | March 6, 2008 |
Anyone who’s been following my occasional references to the work in progress may recall that last year I had the challenging experience of needing to change horses mid-race. The situation was complicated, but in a nutshell I had a two book contract with my Australian and UK publishers, and I had written four chapters of the first book, Heart’s Blood. At that point the North American rights were sold to Penguin, a new publisher for me, and my editor there wanted to publish the other book first. They were stand-alone novels, but the second one was related to my Sevenwaters Trilogy, which sold well in the USA. It made good commercial sense for my new editor to want that one as my first novel for Penguin.
So I wrote Heir to Sevenwaters, which is all edited and ready to go. Now it’s back to those four chapters of Heart’s Blood, written nearly a year ago, and I remember how much I loathe major revision! It hurts to delete pages of serviceable work that took hours to write. It pains me to have to take these chapters apart when the clock is ticking away and all I really want to do is get on with the new bit. I felt severe envy reading that Ann Aguirre had written Grimspace in three months – if I worked as fast as she does I’d be finished by now!
Of course, I could have simply picked up the ms at Chapter Five, couldn’t I? Well, no. Because I had to write Heir to Sevenwaters in less time than I’d expected, I unconsciously used elements from the partly written novel, including aspects of the male protagonist’s physique and character. That meant the male protag of Heart’s Blood had to change. From that flowed all sorts of other changes, since the story is based around this character’s personal struggle. It didn’t help that I read a comment somewhere suggesting that my two central protagonists are always the same: a damaged hero and a strong, capable heroine who saves him from himself. While that isn’t true of all my novels, it is a pattern I’ve used in several books, though to me the characters and stories are quite distinct. The comment did sting rather, and I reassessed those four chapters in the light of it. (For the record, Heart’s Blood still has a damaged hero.)
As I re-read these chapters, I found other flaws. In fact, the book just wasn’t working. The plot was OK – we’d been through the outline in writers’ group and fixed up the structural flaws. It had drama, romance, mystery and some other elements that were new to a JM novel. Still, something was wrong with the pacing, and it went beyond my usual problem of slow starts. The more I read the chapters, the less I liked them and the harder it was to work out what the problem was. I considered ditching the lot and writing something completely different. Then I got it. Too much information too soon.
To keep the reader involved, I have to resist the urge to explain as I go. Heart’s Blood is a novel in which layers of the past are unfolded, with the main plot involving a scribe’s work on a collection of ancient documents, and another, related strand which is the mysterious family story she discovers there. The two threads meet up towards the end of the novel. I need to drip-feed Caitrin the information from the papers, so she and the reader don’t fully understand its dark significance until it’s almost too late (this is a Gothic fantasy-romance, after all!). I need to keep my protagonist in relative ignorance as long as I can, so she’ll put herself in perilous situations. Mind you, I don’t want her to be a white-floaty-nightie girl who runs screaming along dark corridors, Gothic as that might be. I like my female protagonists to have the courage to face their fears, and indeed this is the central challenge for Caitrin in this book. But the reader has to be slightly ahead of her all the way, constantly wanting to shout ‘Don’t do it!’ as she takes another risk.
This means I’ve made major cuts to the 150-odd pages already written, and every one of them hurt. Oh, for a book I can write in one flowing sweep from page 1 to page 500! Still, I am working my way through Chapter Four now, and should soon be onto the new bit and barreling ahead.
How well do you cope with structural revisions? Can you see them as a welcome challenge, or does the process feel like taking a knife to your own offspring?
Photo by Amlet with Dreamstime.com
Juliet Marillier has written twenty-four novels for adults and young adults and two collections of short fiction. Her works of historical fantasy have been published around the world and have won numerous awards. Juliet’s most recent series was Warrior Bards, of which the third and final book, A Song of Flight, was published in 2021. Her collection of reimagined fairy tales, Mother Thorn and Other Tales of Courage and Kindness, had its trade release in 2022. Mother Thorn is illustrated by Kathleen Jennings and published by Serenity Press.
Juliet is currently working on a two-book fantasy series. The first book in this duology, The Amber Owl, will be published by New Dawn in February 2025.
When not writing, Juliet looks after a small crew of rescue dogs.
I had the same urge to weep after reading Ann Aguirre’s interview. Her process (just sit down and write, no planning) is the complete opposite of mine. I’m completely OCD, with maps and diagrams and everything.
I love structural revisions. It’s my opportunity to take my amoeba-like mess of a 1st draft and give it some bones. I move things around, cut cut cut. Because in the end I *know* it will all be worth it, that I will have a much better book than I did before.
My way of getting over the feeling that I’m murdering bits of my “baby” is to save the old draft in a different file. I tell myself I can always go back to it if I change my mind about cutting something. I almost never do, though.
Yes, it feels like I’m taking a knife to my own offspring. What makes it easier for me is to open a new file, call it “experiment” and then butcher away. I know I’m not REALLY killing my babies, just being creative with their doubles. By the time I’m finished experimenting, I usually prefer the new version to the original and the pain of losing the old work is far less.
That’s a good plan, Therese. I’ll have to try that next time, even though I do enjoy hacking and slashing at my work.
Every atom of shed blood is felt in sympatico with you, Juliet!
I just cut a chapter I sweated over for two weeks. I could talk about pacing problems, etc. but the truth is, it sucked. So I put it in my FRAG folder (‘frag’ as in fragments, not fragging my own work, lol). So like Therese, I can make the cut and pretend that if I don’t like the new version, I can always go back to the old.
Which I never do.
Oops, that was a fragment.
But I’m mostly like Lyle, OCD about plotting until I actually have to write it. Then the plan goes out the window. Sigh.
God, to just sit down and write and come out with a novel at the end!! I’m still fighting with something I started seven years ago.
Cutting annoys me more than anything. I had the first 20,000 words of a perfectly serviceable novel and through circumstance it lay for over 18 months.
I came back to it and realised it’s not the novel I want to write. I like bits of it, but the story I’m telling now? It just doesn’t fit.
I ended dropping 17,000 and it seems like such a waste! All the time spent! I can only tell myself that the words are just part of the story’s journey, I couldn’t have got to B if I hadn’t written A.
Then I go back to weeping and wailing
Oh, bloody hell, I just read that back. I do appologise for the inadvertent swearing. I’d fix that if I could.
Some great comments here. I do always save the old versions, but I’m not able to fool myself into forgetting the hours of writing effort that are being discarded. I guess my pain comes from the fact that my usual method is to pre-plan to the nth degree, then have a relatively smooth run with actually writing the book. I don’t do multiple drafts. So intensive revision does not come easily to me.
Dealing with the editor’s notes after submitting the ms is a separate issue. As with any unpleasant task I can’t avoid, once those notes arrive I give them all my time and energy until the job’s finished. This has a neat timeframe and a kind of inevitability. When the revisions are self-inflicted it seems much harder to tackle them in a workmanlike manner.
I fixed that for you, astrothsknot. :) I feel for you re: that long wip. Hang in. I finally reached The End, so I know you can too.
Thank you kindly, Therese. It’s annoying, you know where you want to go with the book, but getting it there!!
I’m fine with starts and finishes. If books didn’t need middles I’d be fine.
I’m with Astrothsknot. If books didn’t need middles they’d be easy:-)
If I plan in advance it all comes from my head and doesn’t ring true when I start to write. If I flimmer, the unconscious, apparently in a misguided effort to be helpful, throws up heaps of material, not all of it relevant, that would make every story into an epic if I squeezed it all in. (Gee, how’s that for a convoluted sentence?)
How I would love a story to come to me, whole and complete, just wanting to be written…