Failed Writer: Revisions
By Yuvi Zalkow | June 25, 2011 |
Therese here. I met Yuvi Zalkow on Twitter after falling in love with the video you see below. Thanks to him for allowing me to re-post this here, and to Christi Craig for alerting me–and the entire Writer Unboxed Facebook group–to the video in the first place. Enjoy!
Episode 1: Revisions (I’m A Failed Writer Series) from Yuvi Zalkow on Vimeo.
Yuvi Zalkow is the author of the novel I Only Cry with Emoticons (Red Hen, 2022) as well as A Brilliant Novel in the Works. His stories and essays have been published in Catapult, Narrative Magazine, Carve Magazine, Rosebud, The Los Angeles Review, and others. Yuvi received an MFA from Antioch University. He uses his poor drawing skills to make YouTube videos and mobile apps that ooze with his worries and anxiety.
Thank you for posting this. It’s an interesting perspective on how to revise, especially if the problem is something that’s more abstract.
Cute video – it might make a good series, but needs to be shorter. I am a victim of internet ADD and lost interest after about 5 min.
I’ve seen Yuvi’s series linked somewhere else as well. Sometimes a more indirect approach to fixing a piece of writing can unlock something you hadn’t seen before. Love his sense of humor too.
Clever!
q21
This was wonderful, thank you so much for sharing. I find revisions to be such a scary prospect, and it is always the part that makes me doubt whether I have even an ounce of talent. I am very inspired by Yuvi, who plugged away so long on his novel, only to write it again from scratch. I have a novel in my mind, which I wrote for my masters, and it never quite came together as I’d wanted it to, despite my love for all the characters. I’m tempted now to start again, and see what else I can do with them…
Excellent post. Thank you Yuvi for putting a humorous spin on the dreaded Revision Process for me. I’ve been on that wrong train for some time. I’ll definitely give myself the assignment to look at my wip from a different angle. Thanks!
LOVE this. :D
Interesting post. I’ve read on other blogs that stepping away from what you’re writing and doing something entirely different can get your head back in the game. Good advice.
Patti
Great ideas on revision with a snappy sense of humor. In the midst of revising my novel, I am starting to work on stand-alone practice pieces involving my main character as a way of unearthing and solving the places where the writing runs dry. Thanks for the further push in that direction.
Holy makrolie! Vot phun!!
Forget the writing. Go with the visual arts story telling.
Are you sure you’re not channeling David Sedaris?
Loved it.
Loved this…both the video itself and the message (although I must say the idea of spending two years at an MFA program only to discover that, a week before it ends, your novel you’ve been working on is crap, sounds like it would make my head explode.)
I remember reading that Arthur Golden rewrote Memoirs of a Geisha seven times or something–completely changing POV etc…
Anyway great video and great post. Now I’m looking forward to reading your (not crap) book someday.
Wow. Thank you all for watching the video, and for the great feedback, and for sharing your own experiences about the revision process. And thanks to Therese and Christi Craig for getting the word out — I’m not so smart about doing that… ~yuvi
This blew my mind. I’ve been bogged down in the third round of edits for my own novel, a source of much frustration in my household. I can’t even begin to imagine how Yuvi must have felt after realising an entire rewrite was needed on his manuscript. Incredibly informative, with the added bonus of entertainment. I hope this series continues!
Wonderful! It does sometimes take an outsiders eye to point out something rather obvious, beyond “it sucks,” but to note where there’s the real start of the story or something very basic, in retrospect, that solves a huge number of problems, does a lot of work.
It made me feel better that I there are other people out there like me. I rewrote my first draft eleven times. I shifted POV, and it actually made me gain a whole new perspective on my characters by forcing me to focus on how other characters were feeling.
Loved this! Glad I watched to the end. And Yuvi–thanks for asking. I am doing great! Running at about 200% and burning the candle at both ends. But I’ve never been happier with my writing.
I love this video, and the one on Time Management. Even a non-writer can appreciate them!
A few days ago I started a new blog in order to help inspire myself to write. Using vintage photo’s and other ephemera I attempt to persuade myself, and others should they like to join in, to write some basic ideas about these daily offerings. By writing a mere sentence a day, or as I have indicated in my Blog title, “Camp Caption”, a caption a day, I hope to make writing a part of my everyday life.
Revisions have always been a huge stumbling block for me. So this blog project is an attempt to master short fiction, to tell a story in a sentence, and to have an occasional laugh. I do like to write comics so some entries will more tuned to that discipline. But who knows, one of these photos may lead to more than brevity and a comic quip, and that is what I hope for.
[…] more–and introduce you to his first official post with us. Yuvi Zalkow allowed us to re-post the first video in his Failed Writer series last month. Personally, I love Yuvi’s videos, and I think weekends are a great time for a […]