Absence and Fondness

I'm finally getting back to revisions on Trouble, the next story queued up on the assembly line for release. I sent it out for a round of beta feedback and am now making a pass to incorporate suggestions and look for enhancement opportunities which is a kindly way of stating "places where I read the draft and go... what was I thinking?" The passage of time is a clarifying tool for certain. I'm actually enjoying it now, reuniting with this title after it had been suspended for a while. The clear eyes of editing don't come as easily to me when I am staring at it all the time.

I hope also that this is my growth as a writer, slow and awkward as that process may be. I wrote three drafts of Trouble, and the story evolved dramatically among each, from the initial setting in time, to the nature of the protagonist and the deuteragonist (a term I'm still learning), to the consequences of their actions. I kept approaching the story from new angles, trying to determine the ending so I could apply direction through the middle. Re-reading it from the start is in many ways connecting with that original draft, the "establishing shot" draft that became where the voice of the narrator and the setting of the story sketched out. The second first-draft was wandering into the middle and glimpsing a possible end, and the final first-draft was the full start-to-finish skeleton that I worked from. Each one built of more of the scaffolding to the next, until I believed I had something complete enough to be called "story" and was willing to let people tour it. I felt pretty good about that draft. Unpolished, sure, but good.

I still do, though my astute readers caught details and raised questions and points for some additional work to be done. Their fresh eyes and ignorance of the history of the piece is an asset, because they see all the seams and gaps and bumpy overlays where ideas abut. They find and call out the areas that I overlook, either willingly or accidentally. And now with time, I see many similar seams. And it's exciting, which is not a mindset I thought I'd attain.

I am taking what I think of as the "George Saunders approach" to the revision, sweeping through and making small corrections as I see them versus spending hours tuning each passage before moving ahead. I want to keep the freshness and the fondness in my mind as momentum for progress, if that makes sense. More passes through with small adjustments will nudge the river of story into a new, better course.

This work comes at the cost of One Last Quest, the title that emerged from my past and which I'm also revising for a new edition, hoping that the additional dozen-plus years since clicking "publish" have made me a better writer. Also, it's got a sequel that never left the draft stage, and which I haven't looked at in forever, but, like Trouble, I remember there being a story I enjoyed sitting in the middle of it. I'm learning again to be fond of my own works, and that's a welcome gift.

🧩🦏