improvement with time

[eimarra]

It sounds so lovely. We get better with practice. The more we write, the more we edit, the better we get.

It has its downside, though.

Earlier this year, I edited (rather too quickly, I'd say) my 2004 NaNo project, Christmas Tree Farm Murders. Both Val and bonniers critted it for me.

Five years.

Having read through both of their crits, I can say that the best option for this book might be to start a new file and rewrite it from scratch. I've improved a lot in the past five years, and a new draft would need a lot less work than the editing that the current one needs.

I find this depressing. Not that I've improved -- that's good. But I've already written this, and I don't want to start over. So am I better served chopping it to bits and effectively rewriting each scene and adding new ones anyway, redrafting it from scratch, or moving on to something else entirely?

I don't know.

No decision will be made this week. I was, however, planning to edit for October. If I'm not working on Christmas Tree Farm, I suppose that means diving into the hard work for Pepper's edit. At least that's only two years old.

Edit: For the record, I'm not complaining about their crits. They were both spot on.

Comments

[bonniers.livejournal.com]

You're right. You have improved that much *g*

I think in practice the edits and the redraft from scratch are going to wind up being very close to the same thing and the same amount of work. If it helps you psychologically to approach it one chapter and one scene at a time, then go for it.

The same thing is pretty much what did in the dragons story for me. I wrote it slowly, per 2YN schedule, instead of diving in the way I usually do, so it migrated over the course of a year and a half, and the ending no longer matches the beginning in style or content or approach. It's fixable, I'm sure, but I'm just not sure how. It's like three different stories smooshed together -- siamese triplets that need surgical separation :p

[eimarra]

Honestly, I'm not sure what helps psychologically at this point, really. All I can see is the looming mountain, and for some reason it seems larger for editing than for writing. Maybe because for editing, I see the whole thing in front of me, while for writing, I have to be a significant way up before I've noticed?

Hugs on your own Siamese triplets.

[bonniers.livejournal.com]

Hm, that's an interesting perspective on the differences. I often feel the opposite -- editing seems like a smaller task because it's all tied to what's already there, whereas new writing requires venturing out into unknown territory.