Well, this is the day I should be going to class, but I am not, because the community college was closed, and rightly so.
I submitted my chapter via email, and supposedly people will be reviewing it and commenting on it. I’m not really sure if it will happen. I commented on one person’s submission. Somehow she thought I was the instructor commenting, which is awkward, and I don’t really know her well enough to correct her.
At any rate, this chapter was a revision of the second half of Jerry’s chapter about the oil well breakthrough. Again, it took eight hours, but I ended up with 12 pages this time. And once again, the revision parts took far longer than the invention parts. I must not be accustomed to revision. Observe the blog. (Waves around generally.)
I added scenes to make Joe’s lack of emotional self-control more of an issue, and an exchange to add his backstory. I re-read it this morning and it needs many more tweaks.
The scary thought is that I’ve written forty pages, which amounts to ten percent of a short book. It seems 8 hours = 10 pages, so 80 days at 1 hour a day = 100 pages, times 4 = 320 days. Well, actually, that doesn’t seem so bad. And then I would have a first draft. Well, hobbies usually last me at least a year.
9 responses to “Rewriting the Novel: Chapter Four”
Unless it’s just a typo-fixing run (and barring extraordinary circumstances), yes, revision generally takes longer than rapid production of raw materials for me as well. (with a few exceptions where the genre itself thwarts me)
Sorry about the case of mistaken identity; that is very awkward.
I hope writing and oil painting can overlap as hobbies – I’ve been enjoying your oil painting progress!
(have you thought of doing an oil painting of The Hat?)
KC – Celebrity Hat immortalized in oil is an appealing thought, but I would paint the live model and get oil paint all over her.
Yes, you would want to immortalize Celebrity Hat in oil paint from a distance, rather than preserving Celebrity Hat via a coating of oil paint…
(I had no idea oil painting was that splashy!)
KC – not splashy … it just gets everywhere. I just painted an hour ago, and all I did was hold a tube while I unscrewed the car. In less than a minute paint was on both sides of my hand, the paintbrush, and my paint box. It spreads easily.
That’s impressive stuff! Yikes.
(could you put Celebrity Hat behind a pane of glass, or would that make her feel too much like a museum exhibit?)
KC -That is a thought. I would use plexiglass, which doesn’t shatter. But then, the light I would use to illuminate CH would just bounce off the plexiglass, or any glass, for that matter.
Museum curators and stop-motion animators (weird groups of people, I know) have tricks for how to set light and glass up so that in photos the glass isn’t visible and isn’t reflecting anything; a lot of that comes down to controlling the other light sources in the room, figuring out what angle you want to optimize for, and setting things at oblique angles, though. But it would probably be possible to work out something similar for a portrait session with Museum Hat if she would tolerate it.
Sorry, sorry, Celebrity Hat, not Museum Hat. (will she ever forgive me?)
KC – CH forgives you. She knows someday she will be in a museum.