On Rewrite Projects, and Why They Help

I've mentioned before that when I get stuck/frustrated, I sometimes work on a rewrite project to help get the creative juices flowing again. I don't believe I've ever actually sat down and explained the rewrite projects, though, so here goes:

It's pretty much what it sounds like: I take a story I've written previously and completely rewrite it, from beginning to end. The pieces I choose are usually years old and have problems that I didn't see when I was writing it the first time.

For instance, my most recent rewrite was on a Supernatural story I wrote in 2007 called "Child's Play." It's a pre-series story about a young Sam and Dean meeting the ghost of a little girl who's haunting the motel at which John left them during his hunt. Over the course of the rewrite, I tightened up the language and also changed two things: how little Lucy was killed in the first place, and why neither Sam nor Dean told anyone on staff at the motel about the kidnapped child staying in one of their rooms.

I changed Lucy's manner of death because, in all honesty, it was too hard to prove and thus seemed too convenient that John and Dean caught onto it relatively quickly. I originally had the kidnapper drugging her food and overdosing her by mistake. Since a five-year-old (for that's how old Lucy was) wouldn't understand much other than "This tastes funny and makes me sleepy," it was just really convenient that she not only described it like that but also that John made the leap from funny-tasting food to drugging food to overdose as quickly as he did.

The whole thing with Sam and Dean not telling anyone in charge about Lucy was something I never thought of at all during the initial drafts. Because, well, I knew that Lucy was a ghost. It wouldn't have mattered what Sam or Dean told anyone because Lucy had been dead for eleven years. But when I was doing the rewrite, I realized that I at least needed to acknowledge the thought process of people who don't yet know that she's a ghost. So I had Sam offer to go tell someone and Lucy beg him not to, and I had Dean on his way to tell someone when John came back and the two of them figured out that Lucy was a ghost. So the intent was there, at least, even if neither of them managed to follow through.

The rewrite project I want to do now is on a Charmed story I wrote back in 2004 called "With a Vengeance." The basic premise of the story, that a demon/bad person/whatever wants to turn the Charmed Ones by using Prue's guilt over Andy's death as a way in, has a lot of potential, but the execution of it was ... not so good. There are too many things I spelled out way too much and too many things I didn't spell out enough. There are bits that are clunky and bits that are melodramatic and bits that are rather good. Basically, I want to even it out, and I think the distance from the piece will help a lot with that.

Now, as to why these little projects help with the current one. There's a lot less pressure on the rewrites, because the story's already done. It was posted in various places many moons ago. I only update my own personal files/archive with the rewrite information, so mostly they're for my eyes only. Because there's less pressure, the words usually wind up flowing nice and easy. And when the words flow, it loosens you up. Makes you realize that yeah, maybe you can do this after all.

Then, when the rewrite is finished, you have gained not only a little bit of distance from the project on which you were stuck/burnt out, but also a little more confidence in your talent and abilities. You're closer to and more in tune with your own style.

In a way, it's kind of a palate cleanser, a chance to clear out the cobwebs so you can return to your current project bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for anything.

Maybe ...

My write goal for this weekend was to spend at least one uninterrupted hour on The Witch of November. To ensure that I would have no distractions whatsoever, I unplugged the router. That's right, no Twitter or Facebook to capture my attention!

So I took the laptop into my room, put Vertical Horizon's Burning the Days album on the CD player, and started Chapter One over again. Yes, I've written and rewritten Chapter One about seven zillion times (give or take), but this time, I think I might actually be happy with it.

I don't quite know what the difference is except for that I think I loosened up a little. I wasn't as focused on making it all sound perfect; I just wrote. I kind of took an example from the writing exercises and just went with it. 

And this is some of what I came up with:

Allie Sullivan knew the second the Frisbee left Charlie Davis’s hand that she was in for a very long day. With one hand shielding her eyes from the late-June sunshine, she watched the neon yellow disc slice through the humid sea air like a hot knife through butter.

It soared high above her head and finally disappeared from view after clearing the tall wrought-iron fence surrounding the property all the way across the barely-two-lane side street. Allie spun on her heels and fixed Charlie with an exasperated glare.

“Oops!” The boy’s best I’m-so-cute-and-innocent smile brightened his face.

Allie heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes heavenward. Charlie hadn’t even managed to last ten minutes before doing something obnoxious and aggravating. She shouldn’t have been surprised, though; Obnoxious and Aggravating should have been the kid’s middle name.

Charlie Obnoxious and Aggravating Davis, she thought. Had a nice ring to it.

A mischievous glint lit the boy’s bright blue eyes, and any doubt Allie had as to exactly why her friend had whipped the Frisbee so hard disappeared. “I am so not going over there to get that,” she informed him.

Charlie raised a single eyebrow at her. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word, and Allie realized that he was simply waiting for to give in and head over to retrieve the Frisbee anyway. Well! Two could play the stubborn game, and she crossed her arms over her chest and returned his calm stare to prove it.

The two of them deadlocked, staring at each other, neither willing to let the other win. For quite possibly the first time in all of their eleven years, it was Charlie who relented, though he did so in typical Charlie fashion.

“You’re such a baby,” he snickered, playfully rolling his eyes at Allie. Then he brushed past her as he started across the street.

No, it's not perfect. But it's more "me" than what I had before, and I think I like it.

Self-Deprecating Notes

Since I am still massively unhappy with the voice in The Witch of November, I'm trying something I should have tried many months ago: I'm starting over. Not completely, mind you, (again, I have not lost complete control of my faculties) but enough that I'm not trying to simply reword what I have to make it sound better. I'm actually rewriting the damn thing line by line, much the way I do for a second draft.

A good chunk of my problem right now is getting back to the heart of my style. In trying to find that perfect voice I had in my head but could never make work on paper, I must have reworded things a hundred times. And the more I reworded it, trying to make it sound "cute" or "punchy" or "witty," the less it sounded like ... me.

I recognized that a while back but I didn't stop fiddling and now it doesn't sound like me at all. It's okay, I guess. Some parts are a little clunky, and some parts are a little trying-too-hard; those kinds of fixes are easy once you recognize them. But the problem I have with it now is I don't see me in the writing at all.

It was in trying to fix the mess I've made of my first few chapters that I came to realize a few things:

1) There is such a thing as using too many fragments. I tend to use fragments for emphasis or to give the writing a more conversational tone. However, using too many fragments one after another or in conjunction with each other makes the writing read choppy and look sloppy. Oops!

2) I'm not remarkably witty. Or consistently funny. In trying to make the writing wittier than I actually am, it winds up smacking of trying way too hard. It's better when I just let the humor come when I feel it should rather than trying to inject some kind of droll remark in every line.

3) I have a bad habit of explaining things forty-seven ways from Sunday. I started writing first drafts this way because I had the opposite tendency at first: I'd just write whatever popped into my head and by the time revisions rolled around, I'd reach sections where I had absolutely no idea what I meant. So now I explain everything, mainly so when I get back to that section in edits, I'll have some idea what I'm talking about. The result is exposition in the narrative, the dialogue, and in the inner monologue. Which is a lot of freakin' exposition. Oy.

4) I tend to be very all or nothing. My characters are eleven, so I have it in my head that the narrative has to be in kid-voice. I'm a long way from eleven, so kid-voice is hard to maintain over the course of a novel. As a matter of fact, the only time in recent memory that I completed a project in kid-voice was a 13,500-word Supernatural fic called "Corpse Fire" (oddly, one of my favorites, if it's cool to have favorites of your own work.) My usual style is a tad more adult. Why it can't be okay in my head for me to write the narrative in my normal style and leave the kid-voice for the dialogue, I can't tell you.

5) I tend to write a lot in the passive voice. You know, the "The floor was littered with debris" construction rather than "Debris littered the floor." Or "He was sitting on the sofa" instead of "He sat on the sofa." Again, oops!

Also, I start sentences with "But" and "And" a lot. And while that's okay sometimes (see what I did there, did ya?), it's totally not cool all the time.

Accepting Change

Part of the exercise of writing something as large as a novel (current word count: 81,457) is being comfortable with change.

As a rule, I kind of dislike change. In my personal life, I mean. I like things the way they are because ... well, it's the way things are. You know what to expect (for the most part). Change brings the unknown. Change is the unknown.

But with writing, change is kind of necessary. Sometimes it's something as simple as the story taking a direction you weren't intending (like I said before, that stuff about the characters writing themselves is no joke). Sometimes it's accepting the fact that a story just wasn't meant to be written in the voice you were envisioning.

I had intended on making The Witch of November read as kind of conversational, like you're inside the kids' heads or that the kids are telling you the story. I've successfully managed that voice once or twice before, but that's not my usual style.

Out of all the edits I've done, I edited the diary entries and letters from the 1870s the least. I actually like and am pretty proud of those, and I think it's because I let the voice fit the writing rather than trying to make the writing fit the voice.

Part of the reason I think I found the conversational kid voice so hard is because I was trying to make it funnier than I am. Because I'm really not all that funny. (Well, not consistently ... I'm funny in fits and starts ;)). Trying to force humor is never a good thing, and trying to force a voice on a story that doesn't fit it isn't a good thing, either. Even worse, every time I wrote and rewrote the first chapter (I seriously lost count on what revision I'm on), it sounded less and less like ... me.

So you know what? Screw that voice. I've decided to just write the dang thing in my own style, and in all honesty, it flows a lot easier when I'm just being myself.