Not the Nova Round
In which I briefly surface from revision to talk about surfacing from revision...
Revision doesn’t leave much room in my head for other thought. Back before I had kids I didn’t notice this effect, because something that blocks out other thought by nature occasions little meta-thought, that is, thought about itself—resources which might otherwise be dedicated to meta dedicate themselves instead to work. Revision washed over me and I would emerge when it was done, wrecked and panting for air.
Without dependents, or the extra work of householding for three (“Can you imagine, we used to run the dishwasher every other day?”), the consuming task burns out in a few weeks of intense effort. I don’t find revision to have the same built-in physical limits as composition—it involves less repetitive motion, for instance, so raw physical signals don’t interfere with the ‘just one more potato chip’ compulsive aspect. And the scene, the chapter, the dialog line is already there on the page, like a stone in a sculptor’s studio. You’ve done the work of quarrying, carting, selecting. Now all you have to do is make it look more like David.
In the old days, writing full time with a partner who worked an email-at-all-hours sort of job, I could and did wake up after a major structural revision without noticing just what kind of absurd hours I’d been pulling for the last month. Or, without noticing the month at all. Gee, when did it turn summer?
Life doesn’t work that way when you have to pick up the little entity from preschool at 3:30 in the afternoon! Ideally, with dinner already prepped and a firebreak created around the most inflammable non-revision work. Now it feels like I’ve barely started to drown before I have to get out of the pool.
When I was revising Last Exit back in the depths of the pandemic, without any child care, I didn’t feel the contrast in quite this way. Maybe that’s a false memory, but I think there’s truth in it. Since we didn’t have any child care resources, I wasn’t holding myself to a Before Times standard of production. (Well, okay, that’s wrong—I absolutely was, but on some level I could recognize that those standards were the product of a mind that is not always my best friend, even if it really thinks it’s trying to help.) Now, though, with preschool etc., it feels like I should be able to work a ‘full day.’ It’s just that my standards for a ‘full day’ were set when we were a two-workaholic household.
The fact of the matter is that I can't nova-round these revisions any more. Even if I had a time machine that would let me pull those hours, I can’t wreck myself physically and emotionally like I used to. A part of me rails against that. But—I’m entertaining the thought that there are advantages, many of them, to giving the work more space. And after all: if your work feels like drowning, that’s probably not a great sign?
Slow isn’t bad. It can indicate underlying bad stuff—slow progress in any practice (writing a book, getting back into the gym, playing a game or reading a book) might mean you’re encountering emotional (or other) obstacles which it may be useful to approach with care and curiosity. But slow and smooth have their own efficiencies. And with revision as with any other complex problem-solving task, time not thinking about the project creates space for it to reassemble itself in your mind. Even when that doesn’t lead to the sort of sudden epiphanies that cause one to sprint dripping from the shower to the nearest pad of paper—I rarely get those—I find myself sitting back down to work with a new perspective, a refreshed awareness. That’s particularly useful when the project is structurally complex, with many different elements or factors or influences in motion, all balanced against or in tension with one another like a room full of interlocking rubber bands.
Writing invites and rewards obsession: with the project, the character, the image. It invites and rewards, also, distractibility, after the fashion of the tracker seeking spoor or sign—who else needs to be in this story? Why do I want to shift focus right now? It involves and rewards great pride and confidence: “Yes, this project is worth a year of my life.” “You should read my book!” It involves doubt and humility: “Can this line be better? Do I need this line at all? Is this, really, the right thing to say?” My old approach to revision went hard on obsession, but that’s not the only path. One may have a sense of one’s balance—but centers of gravity shift over time.
And with that—back into the pool! But first, a few items of interest:
If you’re a D&D player looking to broaden your horizons after the evolving OGL mess of the last few weeks (and if that clause makes no sense to you, don’t worry about it), may I suggest the wonderful world of American freeform gaming? Ross Cowman’s Fall of Magic is a stunning example of the genre that would feel comfortable to any fantasy lover, and fits neatly into the “party/adventure” D&D headspace while being rules-light and collectively GM’d in a very natural sort of way. I’ve heard that many Fall of Magic games seem to be 3-session affairs, but it can easily expand to fill an entire campaign season. The physical game is printed on a beautiful scroll, and there’s also a Roll20 version. (And it has a followup game, City of Winter, in Kickstarter fulfillment now.)
I had the pleasure of reading Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors last year. I loved it—an expansive, weird, fantastical, lived-in fantasy, a work with heft and depth and pathos that also made me punch the air in triumph. My favorite delightful and non-spoiler element is that the main character is in a support group for former Chosen Ones (or almost-Chosen Ones) who’ve left their various Chosen-ness behind to try to make it in the big city. It’s great, and out this July. Preorders are love!
Dead Country is coming soon! Sooner than you might think! I want to write more about it—but my head’s full of the next book at the moment. Perhaps in February. Wild times.
Love all these posts :) I've been feeling a lot of the need for "slow and smooth" work recently. Nothing as intense as childcare, but with the move to our new place I started off by trying to Unpack And Organize All The Things in the first week, and realized I was burning out. I have switched to doing like, one thing for the house on days when I am up for it, with great success. Same with writing, after a pretty frenetic few months prior to move (when writing helped me not think about Everything), I switched to a more slow and steady pace. I was afraid I'd fall into the "I don't want to write anymore" mode, but no -- yesterday, I could not keep myself from doing some. Very happy to hear you've been able to slow down a little and feel less like drowning! <3
Max - thank you once again for putting into words the actual feelings and senses of that life transition called "getting older, having a family, and still trying to be as productive as you were before all that." Really - it helps to know that this is a thing, and it has a description, and is common among workaholics - a condition of sorts. You are therapy for that condition.