Necessary and unnecessary gestures

I am finally revising my YA novel, moving from first draft to a sort-of second draft. This is where I am rewriting my too-much-telling-not-showing first chapter; cutting unnecessary adverbs; and starting to add "texture" and "layers."

One of my attempts at texture is to add gestures to my characters. I figure when they're talking to one another, the reader should be able to know what they look like in that moment—otherwise, they're just mannequins with dialog coming out of their mouths. But this is so much harder than I had imagined it would be. In rereading what I've written/recently rewritten, I've found at least two characters who tap their feet when they talk. Yikes!

So I tried to think about recognizable fictional characters and what their signature gestures might be and all I could come up with is Harry Potter rubbing his scar. Surely other characters in Harry Potter had recognizable and repeated physical gestures, but I can't think of any. Maybe the gestures become so much a part of their whole physical portrait that nothing particular can be pulled out. I can envision Ron slumping around and Hermione intently studying, but if they tapped their feet or rubbed their faces, I don't remember it.

The problem with Harry Potter is that the characters in my mind are often replaced with the actors who played them in the movie, e.g., Dolores Umbrage is now Imelda Staunton cruelly strutting around in her pink suit, wand ready to inflict pain.

Perhaps I should try to imagine actors playing my novel characters to see what gestures and other stylish flourishes they might take on.

56 drafts and three little kisses

After I wrote my post about Mary Amato's talk on revisions, in which she confessed that her last novel went through 56 drafts, I kept wondering—how did she keep track of it all?  Did she have 56 different computer files, 56 print-outs, or 56 of something else? So, I emailed her and asked.

Here is what she said:


When I'm writing, I don't print out until I'm "done" with a draft. After I'm "done" and I print out, then I read that draft and make notes in pencil about what I need to do when I revise. Then I go through the revising process and only print out when I'm "done" with that entire revision. So, when I say 56 revisions that means that I printed it out 56 times. Those revisions were not minor. Each one was major.

I haven't always used the most efficient titling system for my drafts. My suggestion for version management is to abbreviate the title and put the date that you're working on in the title.

Example: ILSept16.
If I'm working forward (writing new material and not revising old material), then I keep the same title and just keep saving the new material in the same file.

Let's say I work on that manuscript for a month. And after a month of writing, I realize I need to make a major change that involves revising from the beginning. Then, I will I save as a new filename: example: ILOct12 and use that file as the working file. If I decide to go backward and make revisions later on,  I'll rename it. That way I'll still have my old drafts saved (and not written over) in case I need to go back and look at an earlier draft.

How do you know where you left off? Do you make changes in (MS Word) tracking or do you write a sticky note to yourself about which page you stopped on?

I always leave myself three kisses... xxx. Then I go back and do a search for three xxx and find the place I left off.

Is time the best editor?

A tiny sketch of San Miguel de Allende, which I drew while living there.

As I quickly scanned through some of my old journals in preparation to write my last post, I was surprised at what caught my eye—not the dreams I wrote down in detail and tried to decipher, not the complaints about particular men, not the jejune explanations of what life is all about.

I mostly liked the things outside the usual text—quick sketches, found-word poems, photos glued in.

Almost everything that I like now was originally put in my journals in the spirit of play (maybe because I never thought of myself as an artist, I always thought of myself as "a writer"). Of course, skimming through many handwritten pages, it's easier to notice any visuals. But I began to hope for them as I picked up random journals; they were refreshing in the midst of so much dull prose.

And yet I once hoped that some of that dull prose was worthy of publication, in the footsteps of Anaïs Nin, et al. Back then, I thought it was all brilliant. I see now how pedestrian most of it is. I have the benefit of an inner-editor who is several decades older; she is better read, more experienced, a little wiser.

That's great, for all the stuff I've written at least 10 years ago, but what about the stuff I'm writing now? Should I put it in a drawer and not take it out for five years or more? Is time the best editor? Or is there a way to cultivate that wiser/older reader in the present?

Often when I write, it is like I am a child again, rambling through the woods, letting thoughts flow. Then the adult/editor comes along a little later to discipline her, to make her walk straighter and in a more perfect line.  Perhaps balancing those two personae, and knowing when to draw upon them, is the key.