5 Sure Signs That I Can Let Go of My Manuscript (Finally!)

By Lisa Alber

Over the weekend, I read a printed copy of my manuscript for WHISPERS IN THE MIST (August 2016). I read it fast, looking out for loose ends and moot remnants still hanging around from previous versions.

At this point in the writing process, I always know that I'll feel compelled to read the manuscript just one more time before hand off, and I know I'll still find things that need fixing, and I know I'll worry about whether the newest changes have themselves caused inconsistencies (or typos!) that will require me to re-read the manuscript AGAIN ... 

It could go on forever, but there comes a point when I have to let my baby go. Given that I can always continue improving my stories, when do I feel that "yes" feeling about letting a manuscript go?

1. The latest manuscript read-through was mostly clean. Changes were only for clarity, consistency, and pruning. Nit-piks.

2. I have no more questions to myself about nitty-gritty plot points. (My stories are kind of complex.) Yes, all the bits and pieces are there.

3. I've considered every piece of beta reader feedback. I've incorporated what my gut says "yay" about, and I've ignored what my gut says "nay" about.

4. I've gone through a copyedit (as best as I can since I'm not a copyeditor) on my own. I catch a lot of weird prose quirks when I focus on the line-by-line. We all have our easy-way-outs when we're writing. For example, I love m-dashes, but they can be used in place of properly crafted sentences.

This is also when I deal with rhetorical questions, such as this example from a previous draft of WHISPERS:   

Danny still couldn’t fathom why Malcolm had offered up the alibi unless it was to humiliate Danny. But why? Because he was pissed that Danny hadn’t prioritized the graffiti vandalism? Because he didn’t like Danny prying into McIlvoy’s life?

This is just lazy writing. Really. At least for me. A bunch of rhetorical questions in a row tell me I need to go deeper and get to the heart of the matter in a more precise fashion. This might mean adding word count, but that's OK. So now it's this:

Danny still couldn’t fathom why Malcolm had offered up the alibi unless it was to humiliate Danny. He hadn’t prioritized finding the phantom graffiti artist, true, but surely Malcolm understood that vandalism didn’t rate as high as murder.

No, the alibi had to be a good-old-fashioned diversionary tactic. Most likely to distract Danny from prying into Malcolm’s relationship with McIlvoy.

 
5. Last but not least, I've word-searched words I know to be problematic, such as the "just"s and "really"s. Excess adverbs. The verb "was," which could indicate a yucky passive voice sentence or a sentence that needs rewriting with a stronger verb. I have a word list that I keep handy for this tedious, final task.

It's not that I get rid of every "just," "really," and "was" -- but I do consider them carefully. It's so easy to fall back on them -- another easy way out. (Oh, look at that, falling back on m-dashes again!)

Also, during all of this, I'll have noticed other words -- not the usual "blah" words -- that I fell in love with for some reason. For example, while writing WHISPERS, I used "flicker" a lot. Everything was flickering, from candle and sconce light, to gazes, to birds in flight. It was a positive flicker-fest, enough to cause a migraine!

All of this may be tedious, it may add to my writing time, but in end, I love the satisfaction of knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I've done all that I can do.

There's no such thing as perfection; there's only doing the best we can.

5 Things Revision Has Taught Me About Myself

By Lisa Alber

I'm having a fantastic time revising WHISPERS IN THE MIST. Aspects of the story that had been bothering me have finally achieved clarity. Yay! I got to thinking about how the revision process illuminates some aspects of my own character.

1. It's funny how sometimes our characters' lives parallel our own. Merrit Chase, one of my  protagonists, is an American living in rural Ireland. As I worked through her plot line in an attempt to get to the heart of her, I started thinking about the concept of "home." This year, for the first time, I bought a house. My very own sanctuary with no shared walls, a blank canvas that I could make all my own. It took me no time at all to feel like I was home. It's a soul thing--for me and for Merrit. As soon as I realized that Merrit was missing a little soul, I knew exactly how to revise her scenes to better bring out her story.

2. I may be having a fantastic time revising now, but you should have seen me a month ago. I might have written a different blog post entirely. At times, I got to wondering: WHY am I putting myself through the ringer like this? What's the point? After all, I'm not motivated by some of the usual things like money, power, and vanity. I mean, I'm a poor and lowly, not to mention disheveled, novelist. I'm joshing, but it's sorta true. So what does motivate me to work through the doldrums and frustrations? Authenticity, connection, and personal achievement. It helped to clarify these for myself. When I do my character development, I call these "core needs."

3. I'm an introvert, to be sure, but I'm less of a lone wolf than I like to think I am. Self-sufficiency is a sham game I play with myself. The truth is, when it comes to my life and also my stories, I can't figure everything out on my own. I've learned this over and over during revisions as I turn to others to provide feedback on my drafts. Sharing is a good thing, risking vulnerability is another good thing. Sometimes it's difficult to cop to my flaws or to my story's flaws, but once I do, the flaws lose their power. Come to find out that I like the communal aspect of the revision process.

4. I hang on to my little darlings for too long. This includes darling notions that I carry around with me that I don't need anymore, like outmoded emotional crutches and avoidance tactics. A writer friend recently said (related to writing), "If you're not sure you should hang on to your little darling, it probably means you should let it go." In my revision, I've been doing quite a lot of darling deletion lately. And you know what? It feels great! Time to take some of that and apply it to my life.

5. I do have pretty good instincts -- I need to trust them more. When it comes to fiction, I sometimes don't know what the exact problem is, only that something's not quite right. I can't let the manuscript be finished because in my heart it's not. The niggling feeling may be related to a plot point or character, anything really. And then, lo and behold, I engage with my community (#3) and receive feedback that gets the A-HA going. I'm vindicated! I wasn't just being a crazy perfectionist or an Eeyore. In my life, the same thing goes: listen to the niggle and trust it.

Recently, I felt the "fill the well" niggle, so next week I'm going to the Oregon coast to relax for a few days before Christmas. Will I work? Oh probably, but only after sleeping (lots of catching up to do!), reading, walking the beach, staring at the waves, and sleeping some more.

Wishing you all the best for a wondrous holiday and happy new year, cheers, Lisa

What do you do to fill the well? How can you tell when you need well-filling?

WHISPERS IN THE MIST is available for preorder here.