The work of creativity
I have bad news
Sometimes creating is work.
You knew this. I knew this. If you’ve followed this newsletter for some time, you know that I love to emphasize the fun, free side of creating and to share approaches to creative work that make it an accessible part of your daily life. But today, I need to remind you (and myself) that sometimes creating is about the slow, tough, tedious work of showing up and plugging away to finish something that was endlessly fun to daydream about until it became a concrete Thing that (in my case) demands long hours staring at a computer screen and typing until I can’t stand it anymore.
I wrote a new novel, one that I love. It was a writing experience like I’d never had before, where I almost felt sorry for anyone else who didn’t get to live in that world with me during the year I worked on the first draft. I had the best time.
When the story was complete, I read what I had and knew I was ready to query again. (If you’re not familiar, querying is the process where writers send samples of their works to literary agents who are open to taking on new clients, in the hopes that the agent will take on their novel for further revision and then pitch it to editors to try to get their book published. In other words, it’s the “proper” channel for getting published traditionally.) To prepare for querying, I needed to revise my manuscript.
Here’s what I did for my revising process:
I printed out my manuscript, read it, and wrote notes as needed.
I re-typed out the entire thing into the writing program Scrivener, revising the whole way.
I did two rounds of reading through again to revise on a sentence level and clean up copy edits as needed.
Step 2, at times, felt like it was going to kill me. If you’ve never used Scrivener, it’s a software created specifically for writing novels, by nerds who find joy in making people want to tear their hair out. After downloading it more than four years (and five novels) ago, I still use it on a surface level because anything deeper seems to require going down a rabbit hole of tutorial videos and forum posts to figure out how to, say, make sure all the pages are included when you export your document to PDF. (If you know what I was doing wrong, please reply to this email! I gave up and exported to Word instead.)
But there are two reasons why I wanted to take the novel I wrote in Word documents and type it into this frustrating software. First, here’s what Scrivener does (and why I reluctantly use it): It makes going back to individual chapters and scenes in your novel for revising very easy and clear. You have a map of your novel that lets you plan in beats and scenes and dive in wherever you know it needs extra work.
The second reason for the Scrivener rewrite was simple and kinetic. There’s something about being forced to physically re-type a word, a phrase, a sentence, a chapter, that makes you think about every decision all over again. I noticed sections where I repeated ideas or phrases. I caught some writer tics that I might not have seen if I’d copy/pasted the novel scene by scene into Scrivener, which is what I’ve done in the past to revise. To list just a couple of examples, I noticed metaphors that were repetitive and an over-use of the word “shimmer.” I moved sections of text around so ideas could flow better.
But perhaps most importantly, letting the story flow from my brain through my hands onto a screen again put me back into the world I’d created and showed me what was missing. I added one more step to my revising process.
I wrote the “missing” chapter.
When I say “missing,” I don’t mean that the story didn’t make sense logically, or that I’d forgotten a chapter I planned to write. The sequence of events was there, but I realized that a crucial relationship wouldn’t have the right emotional resonance without a little more background. So I went back to the daydream phase for a while and asked questions about those two characters and how they came together, and I wrote another chapter to flesh out their history.
That “new” chapter isn’t perfect and doesn’t cover everything that’s needed for that character relationship, but it makes the draft stronger. And more than that, it taught me that — as painful as it was at times — I can go from the work of creativity to the fun of creativity and back again.
What’s inspiring me lately:
This Coffee with Claire newsletter about what it’s like to read your 1-star reviews and why writers write stories.
Oppenheimer — I checked out of the Oscars race for a while after the Academy decided not to recognize Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie for creating a cultural phenomenon and literally saving the film industry during the strike(s), but I’m back. I loved Oppenheimer for many reasons, but from a creative standpoint, I find it encouraging that Christopher Nolan could make something as bad as Tenet and then something as good as this movie.
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff — I finally got the Book Club nudge to read this slim volume of (real) collected letters between a New York writer and a London bookseller, and I adored it.
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family by Paul David Tripp — My version of nesting appears to be reading ALL the parenting books that have 4-star-plus ratings on Goodreads. If you’re a Christian parent, and/or if you also happen to be someone who was a kid in the religious South and you need some healing ASAP, I highly recommend this book about parenting as ambassadorship.