Donna Maree Hanson, Author and PhD Candidate

I’ve been on a bit of retreat, trying to get that revision done. I told myself at first that I didn’t have a goal. Then I thought I would get half way through, which I did. However, that is just the first run through. Annoying as it seems I’m not done with it. I try to be one of those who write very close to final draft, but I find I am not. I don’t seem to be able to frame everything at the same time. For example, I’ll write an action scene and map it all out. I have to go back then to add the character, the thoughts, emotions etc. Checking the punctuation too often is done last. I put commas in and I pull them out. I rearrange sentences. Often  I find when I’m drafting I do the dialogue and I get so into it, they end up being talking heads so I have to go back and add the action, the scene etc.

This time I struggled with my frustration. I wanted to get it done and done right. Yet I had to own that I was really trying to rush things, being impatient, when what I needed was to take my time and consider what I am doing. This also leads to laziness. If it reads okay I’ll leave it alone. That’s just naughty I reckon. I’m so focused on making it to the end that I am not paying attention where I should. So I will plod along now and get things done in a focused, but considered manner. I go back to work tomorrow so I don’t have the luxury I had over the last week or so. This weekend is rather busy and I have to study for my editing exam.

My problem is that I love first drafts. I love being free to immerse myself in the story. Second and later drafts require thinking, hard work, perseverance, better writing and crafting of the story. So I wrote a story down but crafting it makes it better. It is making a scene edgier, scarier, grittier. Or it is making that dialogue sing rather than clunk, clever and elegant instead of a grunting mass of words.

Editing I find has processes like writing too. There’s the substantive or structural edit where things are moved around, re-sequenced to make the story flow, reorder it. Then there is the copy edit, fixing up the grammatical stuff, changing words, deleting things, fixing continuity errors. Finally, there is the proofread, which picks up everything (or tries to), making sure the sentences are complete and make sense, making sure all the editorial changes are correct, checking facts. For some proofreaders it takes a few run throughs to pick it all up. Myself, when I am working on a report, particularly the copy and proof stages, I will concentrate of different things on each run through such as headings, footnotes, then the tables and and the figures. When I think about it that way I don’t feel as bad about how many times I have to work on a draft. It sort of seems natural

So I should stop writing about it and get back to it.