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It's hard to believe it's been almost two weeks since I began revising. Time passes differently when I'm writing. Sometimes it feels like living in fast forward. But it's going pretty well so far. It's always nice to discover a passage you like that you can't even remember writing. It's really amazing how much work you can get done in a relatively small amount of time, or how little. Just a friendly reminder - always make multiple backups. Keep a thumb drive, or preferably two, and update them every day. There's no reason to give yourself more work than you already have. The idea of losing even one day's work has made me nervous enough to make it a ritual at the end of every writing session.
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I keep telling myself that editing and revising is easier than the actual writing, but I'm beginning to have serious doubts. What makes this stage so hard is that it's mostly technical work. Playtime is over, and now it's time to clean up. There are so many moments that I've stared at the same paragraph for an hour trying to rework it. What the reader doesn't see is the inflection points, where a dozen or so considerations converge into a tangled word puzzle. A lot can hinge on one or two sentences. These are the things no one will ever notice if you do them right, but it's important to pay special attention to them because often the smallest details are what really bring a story to life.
I watched The Dead Don’t Die last night, and in spite of the mediocre reception, I thought it was very good. It’s a zombie movie with an experimental flair. There a ton of great characters and interesting plot choices. My only real complaint is that it’s not a series. There is so much going on, it was really too much to cram in under two hours. The way it’s structured, switching between the townsfolk, was an interesting choice, and it almost works. But it never quite fully lives up to its promises. For instance, the storyline involving the kids escaping a juvenile detention center was entirely unnecessary, while many of the characters who were killed abruptly could have benefited from more screen time. I’ve long been a fan of Jim Jarmusch, so I was prepared for his particular directorial style, but this is without question his most mainstream, accessible film, which is why the way it was pretty much universally panned surprises me. It never quite comes together as well as say Shaun of the Dead, but it’s clear that its ambitions were even greater. A dry-witted horror flick by one of the masters of independent cinema, The Dead Don’t Die is chock full of great ideas, and while most of them don’t get the chance to be fully fleshed out, there’s still a lot to like here.
I've given myself a little time now to catch up on a few other things and reboot before jumping into the first round of revisions on the next book. Like many writers suggest, I find it's good to take a little time out between drafts. The biggest benefit of which, in my experience, is having a chance to forget. If you can't remember every single line that's about to come, it makes it easier to be objective about what needs fixing and what doesn't. I figure for Space Junk, I went over the entire thing at least ten times. I'm hoping to cut that down now that I have some more experience under my belt, but I won't know until I get there. There are a lot of small story alterations I make as I go, but most of what I worry about is wording and flow, and then I repeat the clean-up process until I stop running into awkward passages. It can be tedious, but I can actually see my writing improving with each pass.
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