STOS # 1 (Rewrite)

A while ago, I wrote about my initial failure to begin the revision of STOS # 1. I’m here to report that the rewriting had finally begun, with difficulties.

After finishing the first draft before Easter, I’ve already known that one of the characters was of no importance to the story. Michelle (the character’s name) will have to go. For some reasons, I thought it was going to be just a cut & paste job. Dream on!

After re-reading the story, the “taking out” mean a rewrite of the opening of the story. And by removing Michelle, I have to re-develop her father’s character. He’s now playing a major role in helping the protagonist to get what she wants. To complicate the matter, I’ll also have to restructure the sequence of events through out the story.

Apart from the above, another major task for this revision is to flesh out the motivation of the protagonist and to give the driving force behind her action depth and details. And I haven’t included works like tidying up dialogue, quality of the prose etc to the list.

While writing the first draft, I rely heavily on intuition to churn out the 200+ words per day. The writing becomes a thrill ride to me and there is a great sense of achievement after the daily writing.

With revision, it is a totally different scenario. I could not just slide into my chair and start punching away words on the laptop. A lot of the time is spent on thinking plus scribbling down notes and questions for myself. Actual rewriting is done in snail paces, hence I’m unable to work on the rewrite every day. This has completely thrown me off from the writing routine that I just started to get used to. And gosh, this is messing me up, big time!

I hope that give it some time, I’ll get used to the re-imagining of story and characters for rewriting. Wish me luck, fellow creatives!

P.S. As if I don’t have enough of mess, I started STOS # 4 (draft) yesterday!

* STOS is a series of stories which based (loosely) on the same theme.

I Salute You, Artists!

I’m writing this as my tribute to all the artists who visit this blog. So hear me out!

I’m now in the midst of revising STOS # 1 and the first thing I picked up was the need to kill off / delete almost 3 pages writing of a character. I had no problem with that as upon completion of the draft of the story, I knew that that character was of no use to my story.

As anyone of you who use computer, you know that to delete something is pretty easy. You just hit that little square which marked "delete" on your keyboard and whatever you want to go will disappear. Now, what if you want it back? Easy, especially if you’re like me – storage paranoia, you would have saved the original on a separate file. Anytime you want it back, you just call up the file and there it is. No sweat! And there is the magical "cut and paste" function which enables us to move text and / or images around the document in seconds. So all in all, we’re cruising.

Now, pardon me for my absolute ignorance of doing any art and craft work. I’m sure there must be ways and techniques that you could cover up whatever "wrongs" an artist find in h/her artwork. But by the large, a piece of artwork (unless you go for computer art, I guess) is a one-off done by hand project. If you decide to take out something after the painting is done, you might need to start from scratch.

Just like when I learn knitting from my mother as a young girl, I missed stitches all the time. By the time when I saw the hole made by missing stitches, I would have done 10 rows of knitting. Mum would make me undone all the rows back to the missing stitches to fix it. I always protest.

"No, I’m not going to do it all over again. I’d rather have holes in my scarf!"

"As you wish." Mum would answer.

And I ended up wearing scarf with lots of holes.

Same here with artworks - imagine the time and effort to work on a painting over and over again. Ah, I can’t bear to think about it! And to avoid such situation, I presume an artist will need to be extremely careful of each brush stroke. This would create huge pressure and impact on the free flow of creativity.

I'm beginning to realize that may be my work, as a writer, in certain way, is easy. I mean, unless I dislike my story to the maximum, I never have to start from scratch after the draft is finished.

So all of you artists out there, you have my absolute admiration!

I'd love to hear from all types of artists about how you fix your project as this will make me feel good about my work! ;)

(And you're right, I'm writing this instead of rewriting STOS # 1 ... I'm procristinating ...!!!)

Discovery from Writing A Story

The finishing of a draft of story brought on some discovery of my own writing process.

Discipline

Lots of people, probably including you, got the idea that I’m a disciplined writer. I don’t know why. But I’m NOT! Discipline is actually my No. 1 enemy. However something weird had happened during the writing of STOS # 1 (draft). I was able to work on it, especially writing the ending, almost every day if not every other day. Perhaps it is related to below.

Word Count

I once wrote that I’m not too hung up on word count. O.K. I changed my mind! I realize word count is a great motivator to me. Half way through writing STOS #1 (draft), I stalled. To get myself going, I sweet-talked myself into just write up 200 words a day. Nothing more and nothing less. With this, I was able to maintain a steady flow of out put. The draft finished at 7552 words. (Please, a round of applause!)

Time

I’m never a fast writer. What I mean is: fingers flying across keyboard and churn out 1000 words in 2 hours. On average it takes me about 2 hours to finish 200 words. One of the major reasons is that by the end of the 2 hours, I start hearing The Voice (the name I give to my internal critique). Some days, if I have enough of creative energy, I could shut Her up for long. But usually, the writing session is so intense that I could only hold Her at bay for about 2 hours.

Outline / No Line

I’m never big on outlining a story before writing. Nonetheless, I had mapped out an extremely brief outline for STOS back on December last year. When I sat down to write # 1, I thought I’ll be a very good girl and followed the very brief outline. Sorry mate, the only thing that I stick with is the ending, which is the first thing came to me when I developed #1. I call this my No Line Mapping, hahaha!

Overflow

This is the first time I held down The Voice long enough in all the writing sessions to allow the words spill over the pages. While working on the ending, I already knew that I will probably drop one of the character, cut out the first 1000 words, flesh out another character, drop in more back story and tighten the entire piece. I’m really glad I did that. Because now I have enough of material to do some major rewrite and editing. No words and effort is wasted as they continue to sharpen my writing skill.

Ritual

I haven’t done this for a very long time. I light a candle (day & night) whenever I work on the story at home. (see the pix on top of this post) It serves as a "cue" to the creative mind.

Achievement

I know this might mean a small thing to those seasoned writers, but to me, it is an achievement. Each story, whether it be a draft or a finished one, is like a small pebble which I lay in front of me to cross the writing river. Alright, you out there, throw me a bucket of pebbles …

What Next?

I’ll be starting STOS # 2 over the Easter holiday. Then come back to rewrite STOS # 1 in 4 – 6 week’s time.

Thank you all for listening. I feel GREAT!

Sorry but I'm Happy!

Sorry that I've been missing for a few days ...

I needed to concentrate to finish the 1st draft of STOS # 1. And yes, it's done! Hurray! I took Sun off from both writing and blogging as creative detox and turned to preparing home made Chai Latte. The result was a total failure! Not that there was anything wrong with the recipe I got from the Internet. It was me - being so high on finishing (even just temporarily) a piece of writing, I had no idea what I was doing. But who cares, I was happy!!!!!

Anyway, I'm back now and will put up some new posts later. Stay tune, folks! :)