Fiction Forge Indy: Revision III: The Long and Arduous Journey

Monday, August 8, 2016

Revision III: The Long and Arduous Journey

Funny thing about revision is the misperceptions. Even if we deny them, most of us writers have felt these lies.

Acknowledge these lies about revision:

1. The most genius, talented writers don't revise. They create masterpieces on their first try.

2. When I revise, I must admit that I write crap. Everything that I write is crap (or at least that is how it feels).

3. If I really have to revise my work tremendously, then I'm not a good writer.

These are lies and are somehow ingrained in us as writers, and as a result, make us defensive. We see the imperfections in our own work, and we (I) hate to see how much work I put into my work to make it palatable to myself. And then, in the end, I'm never satisfied, it is like finding a point in which I just give up. Not that I'm satisfied or happy, but I just say, "I'm done."

As we struggle with our work and our stories, we make our work better. The more we revise, the more we struggle with our work, we become better artists and writers.

This is the truth of revision. Only in the struggle do we give birth to amazing stories, the stories that are a part of our own struggle as writers.

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Mike

Hi. My name is Michael Moir and I'm a writer.

I don't know when I became addicted to the printed word, but over time I have found that I can't put it away from me. My therapist says it has to do with the little yellow books that were forced upon me in Kindergarten (See Spot Run...Run, Spot, Run! RUN!!!), but in the depth of my soul, I know it is deeper than that. I was born with this in my very DNA. Phrasing, grammar, and plot structure are as sure in my being as cytosine is to guanine. It is a dark and wildly fantastic creature that gires and gimbles in the shadowed places of my soul. I have been told that I must find a way to purge the wordful animal within (my therapist recommended me to a witch doctor in the Andes), but I have decided to learn to live with it. This desire, this compulsion, this demon that is writing is me and I am it.

I call him Steve.

Randy

Hi! I am Randy. I'm pretty sure that I started writing when I held my first crayola. Unfortunately, I grabbed the white one which left little proof of my brilliant earlier works! I write fiction that's often centered on gay characters - but sometimes off-centered gay characters, too -Ha! Because of the poor recording or admittance of such affairs due to prevailing political and religious views, such historical possibilities of gay relations are difficult to accept, let alone imagine. But, of course gay relations occurred, and much more often than the historical records dictate. I like to give honor to my gay brothers and sisters of our hushed past by conjuring such situation backdrops of history and breathing life into what I cannot know really occurred, but what I feel is closer to reality than it is to fiction.