At least, that's the best analogy that comes to mind. Here's the scenario I'm referring to:

You've written a story, and read it through a few times to satisfy yourself it works and is the way you want to tell it. Maybe you've even left it a day or two and then looked again, to make sure you're still happy with it. Then you put it to bed, as you think (upload it to WW, send it somewhere to be published, or just email it around your friends).

Then, a month or two later, you look at it again and think, What?! Why on Earth did I do it like that? It would have been much better if I'd...

Anyone else ever had this experience?


Alex

Yes I know that feeling so well, but usually when I didn't leave it long enough in the drawer before re-reading and then circulating it. Three or four months is long enough for a story, eight months to a year is more like the quarantine I need for a novel.

Sometimes I need that long to see that what someone else said about was right all along. If they're really kind and generous people they resist the temptation to say 'I told you so'.

Emma

Alex,

I think we could all do that with most things we write. I know I have written something, left it for days, revised it, left it again and contined doing this for a couple of weeks, maybe more until I thought it was the best I could do.

Then months later I've read it and seen something else that I could have changed. It's maddening, but all part of the learning curve I suppose.

Kat

Kat, you're right about the learning curve, but I don't think the need for that break and re-read with fresh eyes ever goes away. It's an essential part of the process. I've just been to a seminar by Kazuo Ishiguro, and he was eloquent about how much changes with each re-draft.

And yes, gazing at the second proofs of my novel, I can still see some things I want to tweak, three and a half years after I started it... argh!

Emma

Worse still is the scenario where you look at something you've written and think: 'you know that's pretty damn good'. And then a little later you look at it and think: 'Actually, no that's just dreadful you moron' and then you read it later and think: 'Maybe I was a bit harsh, because there are elements here that are pretty goo' and then...

Well, you get the picture.

I know exactly what you mean. I've taken to keeping copies of all previous drafts of a story, so that if I decide I actually liked something I've now deleted, I can go back and fish it out of the appropriate draft.


Alex

...gazing at the second proofs of my novel...

Isn't it amazing how different it looks in "real" print, as opposed to a laser-printed document? I saw things in the proof copy of "Take a Waif" that had never been evident before.

On the positive side, I did once see a newsgroup discussion with Terry Pratchett, where he implied that he has much the same experience of his published novels. Someone asked him if he was ever tempted to issue a revised version on this basis, and he just said, "No. What would be the point?"

So even the real pros have this experience. It must be the writers' equivalent of an irate customer on the phone.


Alex

Could there be a link here between why a manuscript is enjoyed by one agent/publisher/reader and rejected by another?

I've always reckoned this is where the element of luck comes in.

If your MS is being read on a Tuesday mid-morning by an alert reader who has had a hot date the night before and is brimming with confidence about their work, then will they see what you see when you feel good about it?

But if it is being read on a crowded tube on a wet Friday afternoon by a reader whose love life is in the toilet and who hates the world, then will they see what you see when you feel rotten about it?

Maybe I need an envelope that plays "Love Story" when opened, to put the reader in a good mood. But then it would be just my luck that this was the music playing when he/she got dumped the night before.


Alex

I'm reworking a novel for which I finished the first draft in 1987. I can just see the publisher's blurb: This book was twenty years in the writing'. It spent most of them in a drawer, though.

Sheila

A bit like the actor who said, 'I was an overnight success! And it only took me twenty years.'

Emma

That's a long night. I've heard of plays like that...


Alex