I lost my faith in the English language and trust in people in grade school where I was taught the 3 Rs – reading, writing, and arithmetic. On balance, these each have the R consonant sound on the stressed syllable, but it is otherwise misrepresented. Game over.
In this tradition, I’ve got my own 3 dodgy Rs: Write, Review, and Revision. This sums up my approach to writing.
Write
Duh, right? You’ve got to write to write. In fact, to be a better writer, you’ve got to be a reader, a leading-candidate for as fourth R – but I’ll call it a necessary precondition. Being exposed to reading allows you to absorb different styles and genres. It remind you that pedantic constraints of grammar need not apply. My grammar-checker reminds me often.
I took this route as a musician as well. Exposure to genres, styles, and approaches fortifies your craft. Some of the best groups contain members of diverse backgrounds. Sure, there are some groups where members are cut from the same cloth, but they are usually stuck in a particular niche. Nothing wrong with this mind you, if you don’t mind being painted into a corner. I’m too claustrophobic for this.
Review
Once you’ve written, review your work. In fact, this should be more than one representative R. Perhaps it should instead be read, write, review, review, review, review… or an alternative, read, write, review, write, review, write, review… To be honest, when I write blogs, I just write – stream of consciousness. No net, no review. Submit. Done. But this is not how I approach longer works. The longer the work, the more read-review cycles.
Hemo Sapiens: Awakening has already been published, and I would still change some things – perhaps many. It’s an art. Art is done when the creator (creatrix?) dies.
Revision
After you’ve dumped all of your thoughts onto the page, write, review, rinse, and repeat, you have to opportunity to revise your work before you release it into the wild – transplant it from your private greenhouse to watch in flourish or perish.
A revision is more than a review. It’s the opportunity to re-view, re-vision, re-imagine the work that arrived in the first pass with sequential editorial hining and rework.
Maybe you now imagine a new character or story line, a new twist, two characters can be consolidated. Perhaps even a different ending or beginning. It’s all clay. Sentences are malleable.
As a professional musician, I learned not to become married to your work. And just as your parents may not appreciate your choice in partners, your readers may not appreciate your art. And this is not important as an artist. This is only important in the commercial realm. I don’t find this realm interesting. It the reason I don’t enjoy pop music – disposable commerce. We don’t so much categorise books into pop, but we should. At least we can.
Now I’ve gone off on a rant. In a novel, I would likely delete this during an editing cleanse, but here, there is only forward.
In the end, you can just write with none of the ancillary activities – as I do here. Or you can take a different approach to harden your final output. I don’t prefer to call it a product.
You may not even opt for revisioning because you had it all in your head. You just needed to rush to capture it all on the page – 700 pages times 7 volumes. You’re the lucky type. That’s not my style, so I’ve not much to say on the matter.
My parting words – just write.
Ridley Park 