Rewriting Old Manuscripts

You really should burn old manuscripts otherwise somebody might offer to publish them and then you have to rewrite. The problem with old writing is it is old and you just didn't know what you were doing. You thought you did but when you go back through that old prose you see someone who just wasn't there yet. Still, there is a story that might be worth something.

So you start hacking. And I mean hack. Like cutting the book by fifty percent and even then you aren't done Because the story is buried in seaweed and just about every other growth. You have to hack through the forest to see if there is a story worth salvaging and you wont know until you are done. And so out goes every bad metaphor you thought was brilliant and every overwritten scene and every sideshow and backstory.

Out the door one two three. And then once that is done you will have something that may or may not stand up on it's own. It is just amazing that at one time you wrote so badly. Like I said, really burning would have been much more painless.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Publishing Old Manuscripts

Everybody has them. All those books that misfired and never took off or just blew up on the launch pad. They represent years and years of toil and you would like for something to come of them because they represent your heart and soul. So in the new environment of EBooks, you think, well maybe there is something there that escaped the publishers eyes and these books should have been published except for a short sighted editor who couldn't see the diamond in the rough. And so you start tracking them down on your computers.

Usually they are a couple of computers back that you dig out of a closet and there they are; floating around your desktop like space junk. They have weird file names you started giving them after the twenty third rewrite and you have to piece them together like cars in a junkyard. Lets see, I'll use this beginning with this middle and where is the end...ah here it is. There it's a book. So you start to read your old prose. Dammit. This was good! This should have been published! And so you continue, getting excited. Yes. Yes. Readers will finally be able to discover this great story that has been stopped because of some nimrod of a publisher.

And then...somewhere along page thirty two, the thing goes off the rails. Maybe it is the tired prose, the lackluster plot. Maybe it's just sort of hackneyed and old. But there is something missing. Some bit of modernity that gives the book spark. The prose just dries up on the page and is dated and dead and the book turns back into that old manuscript in a moldy box in a basement. And you want it to be good. You really do. You want it to be the book that it could have been, but it's just not.

So you try and resucitate some others, but they fall from the sky like satellites gliding out of orbit. There were problems. There was a reason these books never saw the light of day. And even the ubiquity of e-publishing won't save them. So you pull the plug, let the dust motes settle, and throw the computer back in the corner where it belongs.

And that book stays in darkness....where it belongs.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The thousand and one things of rewriting

There has to be a thousand and one things you do in rewriting and more. Thank God you don't have to do them twice. But it is all those changes that comprise the final draft that hopefully will not come back to you again. And it is the tweeks that change the work. The big work is mostly done but then comes all the nuances that make a novel a novel. The minor changes of one word for another or the addition of a paragraph setting the stage or just the breaking down of dialogue and exposition all change the novel in ways that are immeasurable.

It is really at the end that the glaring moments taunt you. After rewriting something ten times or more you think you have caught the big inconsistencies or mistakes but of course they are the ones that are embedded in the text and your eye has become used to them. When they do make themselves known it is amazing because you have read that passage so many times and never have seen it.

Then you start back through swapping out words deleting sentences, breaking up chapters, combining chapters, fleshing out characters. It is amazing how some scenes stay so thin, so under imagined. So you go back at it and basically rewrite those scenes from the beginning to the end. And then of course you have to read it again to get out all the fat again. Fat is a big one. A paragraph bunches up and literally doesn't look right. Crowded. It looks crowded.

So you thin you fatten. The book is an accordion you expand and contract expand and contract. This goes on for months. This goes on for years. And finally you reach a point where you have completed the thousand and one things and you think that is it. No more. I am finished. Until you discover the one thousand and second.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...the American Dream gone bad

A Good Ending Worth a Thousand Words

Ending novels are rough. You roll along for about a hundred thousand words and suddenly you know this thing has to end. The question is of course how to tie up all the ends without looking like you are tying up all the ends. Of course Hemingway and Fitzgerald discussed and used the dying fall which for thier time was fairly radical. The dying fall is you really dont' end the novel but sort of just let it fade away like the protagonist at the end of A Farewell to Arms. He walks home in the rain after Catherine dies and that is it.

But most novels we need some sort of resolution and it is amazing how many novelists can't quite pull it off. I just finished a novel where the story kept me engaged all the way along and then it ended. I didn't know it had ended and turned the page looking for the next chapter. It was blank. I turned back and reread the final paragraph again. This was it. This wasn't a dying fall, the author just couldn't figure how to get out of the story and so the book ended with a whimper.

Its not that the end has to have fireworks, but there should be some circling back to fulfill the promise of the beginning. Maybe not a perfect egg but at least a circle. If the author is lucky then the end will surprise you. The end should reveal something that comes like lightning to the author and the reader. It might be a gentle epiphany or it might be the smoking gun. But the point is there should be satisfaction to reader and writer alike that this is the end and there will be no more. A good ending allows us to close the book and nod, ah good book. And that is what every writer and every reader hopes for.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out in the fall.
http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/0982139241/ref=tmm_pap_title_0
www.billhazelgrove.com

The Monday Morning Writer

Monday morning comes for the writer just like everybody else. Long ago I set my schedule to the five day work week and I rarely write on weekends. So like everyone else I have to find myself again after two days of not writing or even thinking about writing. Add a little partying in there and you have a foggy swamp you have to navigate through and you aren't even sure where you left the paddle.

Somewhere there is a novel that ended back on Friday. Amazing you can still track the thing after a few days of  doing just about everything else. But like every person in the country you are sitting down at your desk to find that other world again. It is the world that gives you the circles under your eyes and the death pallor. Conversations from dinners, parties, errant bits of trash float through your brain as you drink coffee and read and try and fire up the motor. It has become a little cranky after two days rest.

Like the rest of the world you wonder again at what the life of doing nothing would be like. Maybe you really don't have to work. Maybe there is a better way. You let that one go as your computer looks for that last file you were working on. Ah here it is. Stuck in a rewrite. Well at least it's not a first draft. Those are a real bitch after two days off...where did you leave that character and what the hell is he doing in a brothel?

But a rewrite is a path through the forest. Let's see, ah yes, this scene. Right. Another sip of coffee. What is wrong here. Only everything. Did I really stop here? Must have. Ok. Second time through, still loaded up with all the redundancy of the first draft. Start here. No. Cut that. Start here. Much better. Another sip of coffee. Right. Here we go. Sigh. Mondays....

William Hazelgrove's latest novel, Rocket Man due out in September. The story of a man who loses his mind after moving to the suburbs.
www.billhazelgrove.com