A busy week, and a bit on drafting and editing

Thank God last week is finally over I can get back to just being run off my feet!

I submitted my proposal/bid for funding on Thursday, which felt good, but rather scary too - a bit like handing a child over to someone you've never met. I just hope it manages to get through the long list of stages on time, and reaches its destination with all the boxes ticked, not to mention looking as pristine as it did on Thursday morning!

Teaching on Thursday and Friday ranged from inspirational and fun, to dentistry i.e. pulling teeth - my own! Was this due to my own exhaution, or it being the end of the week for them too? Whatever it was, there seems to be a general unwillingness by students to enter into discussions these days. They seem to want more and more teaching and less and less thinking, debating, chewing the fat. In response to "What do you think?" there are sighs and shrugs, indignatious looks of, "Aren't you supposed to tell us that?!" My favourite lecturer/teacher ever, was Pam Jackson. She never told us the answers. She gave us the text and discussed it with us. She was/is brilliant. She knew her stuff, but she encouraged us to find out for ourselves. She explained difficult concepts but she did not read the text for us - that was our job - and I loved her for it. She allowed long pauses, patiently waiting for someone to speak up, and we always did. I've been trying to do the same - leave long pauses - but how long do I wait? An hour? Two?? Until the seminar is over?!

Today I've been putting together a handout on drafting and editing for my writing students. It's taken me all day, but it's been a worthwhile process, as it's made me break down what it is we actually do when we move on to the second draft and beyond. I've been re-reading The Creative Writing Coursebook by Julia Bell and Paul Magrs, particularly the sections by James Friel and Paul Magrs.

Here's a summary of some of the points I thought important.

Magrs
1. You’ve got to be quite brutal with yourself at times.
2. If something isn’t working, get rid of it.
3. If it’s too opaque, too obscure, get rid of it.
4. If it’s too explicit, too expository, get rid of it.
5. Get rid of lines that are not meant for the reader, but notes to ourselves.
6. Readers like to be told just enough to work it out for themselves.
7. Readers do not like to be told everything, making them patronised and redundant.
8. Revision can go on forever. Part of the skill is knowing when to stop.
9. Take out all the material that anyone could have written so that you are left with something that only you could have written.
10. Show your work and listen to feedback. Some will be useful or surprising , at other times it will be spurious and partisan. Utilize or jettison it at will but listen to it all before you make up your mind.
11. Dialogue: is this how the character really talks? Is that what they’d really say?
12. Ask how each component connects to the broader theme.
13. Is the plot twist necessary or does it seem contrived?
14. Have you shown where you should have told, or vice-versa? (Lindsay Clarke)
15. Are we being dragged through the story too quickly in one part?

Friel
1. Be Kind – Don’t judge your first draft too harshly.
2. Be Patient – Put it aside for a while and let it brew.
3. Be Calm – Type up your first draft without changes, even though you may be itching to. Just see what is there in black and white first.
4. Be Colourful – “Once you have read it, read it again. This time attack it with red pen, pencil, scissors, glue, cut it, cross things out, tick the good bits.” Or like Tony Warren, get a set of markers and go through it making a line in the margin; one colour for plot, another for dialogue, for subplots, character development, style policing etc.
5. Be Versatile – John Steinbeck says be 3 people; one to speculate, one to criticise, and one to correlate. It usually turns out to be a fight! (And Dorothea Brande says 2: Creative, and Editor – it amounts the same.)
6. Be Curious – Ask questions. All the time. Is this what I want? What is it I want?
7. Be Heard – Read your work aloud. Note where you stumble over your own prose.
8. Be Flexible – Sometimes great changes must be made. Salman Rushdie wrote Midnight’s Children, all 900 pages, in the 3rd person, and then decided to tell it in the first person. That meant every sentence had to be changed.
9. Be Meticulous – Sentence level.
10. Be Dependent – Check for punctuation/spellings/grammar. Get help if you need it.
11. Be Independent – Use readers but don’t abuse them. Know your own anxieties, worries, fears.
12. Be Stealthy – Most drafts are either under written or over written, or a mixture of the two.

After all of this I'm giving them a first draft of something to play with. I wonder what they'll do with it?!