Week 4/5 - Practice makes Perfect
On Rewrites, Re-organisation, and Rose Coloured Glasses
I find I often surprise myself when I write.
No matter how long I'm at it, or how many times I redraft a passage, I always somehow manage to find something I simply can't recall writing. This has been the case for things as small as sentences or paragraphs all the way up to full scenes or even chapters. I'll step away for a month or more and come back, wondering who it was that put these words on the page.
Sometimes this is fine and I'm able to infer my reasoning by reading the piece through. Rarely, I'll get lucky and wonder what glorious stroke of inspiration guided my pen. A lot of the time, however, I am left completely lost. Either I'll be unable to parse what my past self meant, or I'll just be confused as to why I organised things as I did.
This phenomenon has plagued me greatly in these past couple of weeks of editing. Every time I approach a new aspect of the section I am left wondering why my past self decided to write it this way. It is no wonder there were difficulties when my tutors read through, in fact, I can only imagine why I was so convinced that the piece was perfect. There is definitely a lot here, and a lot of it is really good. But I am beginning to realise that this isn't going to be a quick and easy process.
When I started editing the whole novel lived in my mind under the writer's haze. I was viewing my own work through rose-coloured glasses, and it was to its detriment. There will be a lot of work moving forward, a lot of rearranging and rewriting. But I feel like I have cracked into the surface of something really worth getting my teeth into.
For my fellow writers out there. Do you often find yourself a stranger to your own work? And if so is it a pleasant expereince?
Apologies for the delayed update life has taken the reigns and made things far more complicated than I would like. Next week should be back to our normal programming, all going well. And I may even have something interesting to share. Until then...