Improvements

[mrissa]

In a locked post, one of the people on my friendslist asked whether the people reading it think we write better now than we did years ago, or whether our writing is different without qualitative improvement. The person specifically asked us to discount workshops and editors unless we think those changed the way we write and not merely the stories affected. I had an answer that I was willing to share beyond that locked post, so here it is, with some additions:

I don't know if I draft better now than I did, but as I'm (slowly, stealthily) reading through my second novel with a red pen in hand, I certainly revise better now than I did then. My first novel has gotten successive revisions for various reasons, but my second novel is a sequel to the first, so after the first pass of revisions about four years ago, it's been untouched. I notice that there are things I would have caught on the first pass now that are still hanging around in this book, and there are combinations of scenes that I would have spotted as not working and reordered/rewritten.

(This is why I haven't been letting my friends read this book, mostly: I knew it needed enough revisions that it's better for me to go through it and scrub it a little before handing it off to even the friendliest of readers.)

Critiques and editorial input have changed some of the things that I spot in revisions, but a lot of it is just doing more, reading more, writing more, seeing more. Just getting there, I guess.

Another thing I do better now than I did before is deal with the whole mess. If you'd told me in '99, when I started writing my first novel, that it would still be unpublished in '05 -- and that I would still think it was worth publishing -- I would have collapsed in despair. I still collapse in despair sometimes, but then I get back up and get going again. When I run into hard bits to write or emotional bumps to get over in the process, I'm much better at seeing them as normal and going on, so I've learned from that.

I think it's valuable for me to look at how I've improved right now. It's very easy to think we're getting nowhere, but the improvements to my writing since I revised The Grey Road about four years ago are really not "nowhere" at all.

And those of you who write, can you see improvement in the last few years? (And are you willing to talk about it?)

Comments

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I've been attempting to write fiction for about 4 years. I think my first novel manuscript was just vomited up from the depths of my subconscious. I'm better at being more thoughtful and deliberate now, but on the other hand I miss being in that story flow that has its own life and energy. I think I need a happy medium, or a way to switch back and forth. :-) Two steps forward, 1.5 back?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of us have pendulum swings around various issues, yep. Frustrating but true.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough, I don't see improvement in my writing.

I hate it so much when I'm done with it that I don't ever want to read it again, which makes every piece a disaster in my mind.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

a good question mrissa. The short short answer is: Yes, I do see improvement. I think I'll tackle the long answer tomorrow and link back to this post, if that's okay? I tend to be slow thinker, and I need a little time to order my thoughts on the matter.
Michael

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course that's okay! I have not nominated myself the Grand Dictator Of You.

Icon aside.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

Good. For a moment I thought I was going to get the "Royal We" when I saw the Queen Icon. :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We don't go in for that sort of thing.

[greenlight711.livejournal.com]

Another thing I do better now than I did before is deal with the whole mess. If you'd told me in '99, when I started writing my first novel, that it would still be unpublished in '05 -- and that I would still think it was worth publishing -- I would have collapsed in despair.

Me too! Of course, if you tell me now that in '10 I will still be unpublished I will likely curl into a ball in the corner and rock myself into unconsciousness ...

I am a gazillion times better writer than I was three years ago. Not only have my sentences and paragraphs and chapters improved, but the entire way I approach storytelling has changed. Thankfully for the better as well. :)

(Hi, BTW. I'm Heather. Holly sent me over here!)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course, if you tell me now that in '10 I will still be unpublished I will likely curl into a ball in the corner and rock myself into unconsciousness ...

I think unreasonable optimism fuels a lot of what I do. Not ignorant optimism; I know that things will very likely not turn out as I'd like them to. But they might.

And hi, welcome!

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I just read an interview with M. Rickert not long ago where she said that for five years there was "nothing". I hold that up to myself as an example, especially since she's now such a regular contributor to major magazines.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

It's very easy to think we're getting nowhere, but the improvements to my writing since I revised The Grey Road about four years ago are really not "nowhere" at all.

Amen, sistah. I began writing seriously almost one year ago. The change since then (for the better, I think) is frightening. I feel like I'm improving so fast that I don't know what kind of writer I am yet. I've yet to settle in. *shrug* But it's EXCITING because improvement means progress, no matter what the sales record shows.

Hmmm...I wonder though, if this same enthusiasm will prevail 5 yrs from now. I sure hope so.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I doubt that it'll be the same enthusiasm, but a different enthusiasm is also sometimes good.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Short answer, yes, I've improved. I'm bemused by the notion of people who keep practicing things and don't get better, though I suppose it is possible. Hm.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, think of something like ballet. I could practice ballet and continue to improve for quite some time, since I haven't done it in nearly 16 years. But I am not physically capable of becoming a prima ballerina. Period. No matter what. I don't have the body type for it, and I'm already too old. So at some point I would hit a plateau that there was no overcoming, no matter how I practiced, unless I hit a steady downslide instead.

It's not nearly as obvious that some people are not capable of being novelists, because it's not as overtly physical in most cases (and the RSI stuff, for example, doesn't stop people from writing novels, it stops them from using certain methods to write novels, or it at least slows them down). But some people simply can't write a good novel, no matter how much they learn or how much they practice. I suppose they could asymptotically approach greatness, but at a certain point improvements become too minuscule to note.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

I've come to that conclusion about myself, actually. I flatter myself that I could produce a passable, pedestrian novel if it were simply a matter of following x rules and generating y words, a la some of the boilerplate potboilers out there. But aside from not wanting to waste other people's time and money, it doesn't make sense for me to flounder about in the shallows of the novel pool when there are so many things I still need to do to improve my poetry stroke-and-kick.

(Including refraining from metaphors that try too hard. Sorry!)

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Hm. Ok, then, I think I'm too much of a still-sorting-it-out writer to even consider those days yet.

I see your point, though. I guess I just can't imagine getting there--with anything. My interest usually dies out before I approach such plateaus with other pursuits.

My thinking is also that I would sidle sideways if I did plateau with something I truly loved. If I could no longer improve as, say, someone who does line-drawings, I might move to oil painting. I'm not quite sure what kind of sideways sidling one does with fiction writing, but I bet my first thought would be to jump genres, or possibly jump to nonfiction--perhaps biographies, or newspaper writing, or screenwriting. And if I had truly flat-lined on all the possibilities... well, I'd be eighty years old and ready to finally maybe sit still.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But as much as you can feel like you're on the bottom rungs of the fiction ability ladder at this point in your career, you're really not. There are plenty of bright people reading this journal who have never written a short story of their own volition, much less a novel, much less sold a short story or started in with revisions on a novel. Right now, Mer, you're kind of like one of the youngish girls in the corps de ballet: you've already established you can be a writer. Figuring out the prima ballerina thing...well, we have more time ahead of us than dancers, mostly.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I suspect, then, that there's a ballet instructor out there, who, if paying attention to me, could tell me if I was too tall or graceless to be a prima ballerina... but as for me, I have not yet figured it out on my own. (I wouldn't believe the instructor anyway, so it's moot.) When I figure it out, I'm sure I'll have a different answer to these questions.

Right now, I see improvement every month. And I think "If I see constant improvement, there must be a ways to go still." If I were leveling off yet, I might think differently.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What I was saying with the corps de ballet is that you've gotten past the obvious bits of the sorting out and are into the murky hard bits with lots and lots of hard work. Which is good. No, really.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Or as one friend of mine was told early on (which proved to be the best advice she was ever given, as she mentioned recently in my LJ)--You don't need to limit yourself to being one kind of artist. You can transition yourself as often as necessary.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I'm taking a year off of figure skating largely for that reason. No matter how much I practiced on my own, I was getting nowhere, and the frustration was making it not fun anymore.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am.

It may be odd, but the more serious I've become about writing poems, the more I've been able to view the getting-them-published roulette with equanimity. (This is not to say I don't sulk. Oh, boy, do I sulk. But somewhere in recent years I became significantly more playful *and* professional about the whole enterprise and less about "sitting down to commit great acts of literature" (to borrow Billy Collins's answer about how he *doesn't* approach his writing)).

It also helps that, at this point, my bibliography includes poems I no longer think are all that hot, so I figure ten years from now I'll look back at some of the stuff I'm circulating now and wince at my lack of judgment.

I'd love to have a poetry collection in libraries by the time I'm forty. But I'm guessing I'm at least a couple of years away from completing a full-length manuscript that can stand out from the pack, and while that sometimes bugs me (e.g., whenever I succumb to the stupid yardstick game, and forty is the cut-off for the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition), I also can't take myself too seriously about this. The book is unlikely to make the bestseller lists, I don't have a tenure committee to worry about, and I'll still have to wash the dog. So while I'm aiming for sooner rather than later, later will still be ok.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are stories on my bibliography that don't make my heart sing, and in some ways that's comforting.

"Later will still be OK"

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I get miffed at myself for not getting serious about trying to publish until I was 33 (in other words, last year), but...I've talked to plenty of folks in the older generation of my family and one of the constant themes is "I wish I'd done this..." As in, something major they wanted to do in their lives but didn't think they could, or should (society or someone else telling them it was stupid). If you take into account that their average age was 80, even not starting something until they were 50 would have given them thirty years of joy.

I also remind myself that my uncle didn't really get serious about writing until he was in his early 30's, and he was still able to put out dozens of novels and dozens more short stories before he became physically incapable of writing anymore.

Re: "Later will still be OK"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a fine balance between "calm down, you have time, don't ruin things by stressing over them" and "make sure you do the things that really interest and delight you, carpe the hell out of that diem." An extremely fine balance indeed.

Re: "Later will still be OK"

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I have an odd impatience--not a NOWNOWNOW instant gratification impatience, but this nagging in the back of my mind that I won't have nearly enough time to do all the things in my life I would like to. That includes writing, and the impatience often colors that too. (A big part of what I need to conquer about my sending out stories too often before they're ready.)

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I don't know about better on the sentence-level. I suspect that my ability to write a respectable sentence has held steady ever since I finished the second draft of Casual Violence, back in college. My word choice and ability to be painstakingly specific developed a bit in Vicious, but as micro-scale improvements go, those are fairly minor.

On the other hand, I've gotten much better at *structuring* my stories, and marginally better at revising them, inasmuch as I can actually bring myself to revise without completely scrapping the first draft now.

The more I write, the more it becomes clear to me that what we call writing ability is a host of interconnected and interdependent skills, and that you don't have to be more than competent at every last one of them. In fact, I would even go so far as to argue that an excessive degree of interest or talent in one area can actively undermine your capabilities in others. Witness the slavish fixation on the well-crafted sentence and surprising/evocative word choice in the contemporary navel-gazing sub-genre.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've noticed structure things right off the bat in The Grey Road. Luckily they're structure things that can be fixed. Still.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I've gotten vastly better at the micro stuff (sentence-scene level) in five years, and even in the past two years. (I'm currently revising chapters that were "done" in 2003.)

Not sure if I've gotten better at macro stuff like structure and plot. Probably won't be able to tell until I'm revising the novel I wrote last fall.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Oh my lord, have I ever improved. I won't count high school writing, since that's supposed to suck, but my early college writing was...less that stellar. Maybe not 'eyes that sparked defiance', but pretty close. I've also improved a lot since starting Dreams, and that was the first thing I don't count as juvenalia.

And miles to go before I sleep...

Will you be at Wiscon?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, no Wiscon for me. I believe we'll be partying here, though I'm not sure.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think I have improved over the past seven years, quite a bit.

I think I am better at distinct voices. It used to be that I was basically good at people within a certain range of Very Like Me - geeks with my sort of emotional balance - and good at people a long way from that - aliens, angels, and interesting values of mentally dysfunctional - and lousy at anyone else. I think I'm getting better at expanding into the range of "somewhat like me" that encompasses most humans.

I think I am better at endings. I hope. At least, the last quarter of The Shroud of Turing did not double in length on the second pass the way the two previous novels I finished did.

I am certainly better at being able to go back to something with an eye to revising and improving and seeing what needs changing in a shorter span of time. It sued to take me a year to see things I can now find if I go back in a couple of months.

Most of the things I'm thinking I want to learn to do better are things I'll be attempting in projects soon. The Perfection has two sections, one from the POV of a teenager and one from the POV of the same person in his forties. On the Wire has an asexual adult protagonist and is set in real places the real world - which I find peculiarly challenging because of the paralysing fear of getting any details wrong. The Third Ether is doing things with omni narrators and with making a less than entirely likable narrator sympathetic. and so on.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Endings terrify me. I seem to have been able to write the ending to each novel I've finished -- I don't have any books missing their last pages -- and occasionally I've even written more than one ending to the same book (that is, I wrote the last chapter and then decided it needed an epilogue). But they still spook me.

I don't mean "making the arcs come to an end," though, I mean "the words that finish the book.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Oh, I tend to have the very last words in place well in advance; last image of Hands of Smoke and Steel frex, was I think the third thing that came to mind for it. It's doing the last bit of plot where everything has to resolve that stresses me, because the way I write seems to involve finding out new things from every scene as I go along, and getting it to balance bwteeen heavy-handedly severing any thread that does not want to go in as neatly as I would like, and having the least bit feel like the first chapter of a sequel, is a real pain.

Both Rays in Diamond and Shroud of Turing needed explicit epilogues from completely new POVs to wind up satisfactorily; the first needed three, the second two. I so want to not need to do this any more.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I tend to have the last words in place well in advance, too, but it's out of sheer terror that if I don't write them down right now, they will go away and never come back.

But yes, the balance between closure and open-endedness is frustrating, to be sure.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Overall I know I'm improving in some areas--when I spent two years writing The Course of Heaven I could see myself improving almost with every passing month--or at least relearning, since before I worked on TCoH I hadn't done much serious writing for a long time.

But I still have the same problem that I ever did: overwriting. This is getting better too, but I can't seem to trim very well in my revisions. I like my sentences too much, still. And as a consequence I'm still getting stories bounced for reasons of length (well, not so much length, but too many words). I feel like I'm constantly missing something obvious, but until I figure out what I'm not doing that I should be, I'll just keep plugging away.