Writers: Planning, Revising

I suggest that Fail More, Fail Better: On Writing a Novel Without Knowing or Planning Anything (Literary Hub), From 10 Core Practices for Better Writing: Revising Your Writing (Writing Forward), Flow Alone Won’t Make You a Writer (The MIT Press Reader) are different pieces of the puzzle of writing a novel. I have been working on a novel for many years now, several, and I started not knowing what I was doing. Outlining helps - with knowing what I wanted to say, where I wanted to end - but always seems to go askew. Revising seems to be complete rewriting, all too often I find a better way of putting the story forth. See what you think.

From Fail More, Fail Better: On Writing a Novel Without Knowing or Planning Anything:

This is the folly of planning. In my limited teaching experience, I have seen the ways many students try to plan too much ahead. I see this is as them trying to exert a control over the work they are creating, a control which when left unrestrained, more often than not, leads them to overexpose their work.

They, as I was, were trying to give shape, give form to something that cannot yet have form or shape. Those things come in the act of writing itself.

And almost always, the students who would do this would stop what they were creating and begin something new. Why? I would ask. I lost interest. They would reply.

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There were also things that I knew that didn’t survive: each chapter would revolve around an object, it would be a novel about the way in which we construct ourselves with words, it would have nine chapters. The act of writing is like straining something with the tap flowing above it: things disappear, others appear. But we mustn’t begin with our plate full, we must allow for accident, for fortuity and for disaster.

To paraphrase what William Faulkner once said about literature: writing has the same impact as a match lit in a field. The match illuminates little, but enables us to see how much darkness surrounds it. 

And From 10 Core Practices for Better Writing: Revising Your Writing | Writing Forward:

Most writers seem to get the best results by plowing through the initial draft and then revising several times. This allows ideas to stream without interruption. Then, through a series of revisions, the work is slowly improved until it’s polished. Some writers revise chapter by chapter, others revise scene by scene. I’ve heard writers say they do revisions for particular elements: one revision to fine-tune the plot and characters, one to strengthen the scenes, one for dialogue, and so on. This allows you to focus your attention on specific elements with each revision. Some writers work through the entire manuscript from beginning to end several times.

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Find an old piece of writing that you haven’t worked on or looked at in a while. Save a copy of the original, and then open it in a word-processing program. Read through the entire piece once, then go back through a second time and make major changes to the structure and content. Move sentences and paragraphs around, make better word choices, fix issues with plot and character or concept. Then go through a third time and check strictly for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and typos. Use highlighting to mark sections you’re not sure about (such as whether you’re using a word properly or whether a sentence is technically correct). Wait a day, then review the original and the revised copies side by side. How much improvement were you able to make? Could you go over it a couple more times?

I cannot revise on the fly - I get bogged down, like the Wehrmacht in Russia, 

Flow Alone Won’t Make You a Writer may not be so obvious - it wasn't to me at first.

My favorite quotation about writing comes from Thomas Mann:

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

That’s counterintuitive. If you’re a professional writer, then writing should be easier for you, right? But creativity research shows that successful creativity is effortful. Flow is enjoyable but it’s not enough.

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In flow, you realize your fullest creative potential. You lose track of time. You’re not distracted by little things around you. Flow is like a drug. Once you’ve experienced it, you want it again. This is why people write without a clear purpose: to experience flow. It’s a stark contrast to writing for a job, where the motivation comes from external rewards — what psychologists call extrinsic motivation.

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I’ve published 20 books, each the result of intense dedication and hard work. But I also experienced a lot of flow. I often lost track of time and became completely absorbed, sometimes to my wife’s dismay. But for me, periods of flow are interspersed with equally long periods of revising, editing, and fact-checking. Everybody loves the flow stage of writing but most people don’t like the hard work stage. That’s Thomas Mann’s point: To be a successful writer, you have to work hard. Creativity research has shown that the most successful creatives love the tiny tasks that others find tedious.

 Seems to me one can flow during revision - I guess that is how I see a piece differently - yet is seems more related to the first essay's do not plan too far ahead in too much detail. 

Finally, I offer up the video, "Why Yukio Mishima Hated Hobbyist Writers (or screw your pen name and your "fun" book)" for the purpose behind writing; the conflict between Life and Writing. 

Use the flow and revision process to enact the purpose of your writing?

Just my shooting my mouth off. We will see how it works out.

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