geek at work

I just doubled my geek rating by making the “Last Supper” Battlestar Galactica cast photo the wallpaper on my laptop. Because it’s so cool.

Instead of jumping back into the new novel after my trip, I’ve spent the week revising some short stories. I have several stories due for anthologies next month. I wrote the rough drafts in January and February, let them sit, got some critique feedback, and now I’m fixing them. “Fixing.” Trying to fix. Grrr.

Here’s the problem. It’s a little like tail chasing. The stories are all okay. In fact, two of them are probably publishable as is. I’d send them to the editors, they’d say “Great!” They’d get published, I’d get the check, everyone’s happy. Except the stories could be better. Should be better. But the ways to improve them are hard to ferret out. It means picking apart character motivations, subtle points on the character arc, little bits of the plot that maybe aren’t quite well thought out. In the end, working on these points means the difference between having a reader say “Well, that was okay,” and instantly forgetting a story in the midst of the dozen others in the anthology. Or having the reader say, “Hey, that was pretty good, this is one of my favorites of the bunch!” Often, not even the reader would be able to identify the specific points that made one story memorable and another not.

This kind of deep revision involves a lot of hair pulling. The actual changes aren’t very extensive: On one, I changed a few lines of conversation. On another, I added a bit of emotional conflict that gave the main character more of a stake in the ending. I’m not sure people who read the first draft would be able to point to the exact changes I made. But I bet they would say, “Hey, this is better, this makes more sense now.”

It’s actually a pretty big issue for me right now. These stories were clearly a case of not knowing quite what the story was about in the first draft, then refining the second draft to create an arc, tension, and a more memorable/logical story. But I probably could have gotten away with stopping at the first draft. I don’t like this. I don’t want to be a lazy writer.

This kind of picky, subtle revision is the difference between “okay” and “good,” and also between “good” and “better” and “great.” This is where reader feedback and critique is important for me, because while it may not give me specific solutions, it shows me the cracks in the story, the places that maybe aren’t as convincing, that need a little more kick.

Gotta keep working…