Open Thread: Oracle Hotline

[mithen]

How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?

AHHHhahahah, um. Not much. My beta goes over it and I make changes and it's up and off to the next thing! I can't afford to revise too much or I get carried away--I've spent way too much time tinkering and re-tinkering with my Yuletide stories, I'll be so happy when they go live and their life cycle is done...

A fair amount of writing done this week, which feels good! Hoping to get one more chapter up of a story before a week spent traveling with all the lack of productivity that brings... How about you? I hope everyone is having a very good Christmas/holiday season!

Comments

[me_ya_ri]

Not much, honestly. I have to limit myself to three rounds of revision because I have, literally, gone from a 6000 word first draft to a 50K second draft to a 100K third draft. I am a major putter-inner so yeah, too many drafts and I have a bloated monstrosity that I can't fix. Limited drafts for me.

On the other hand, as I'm writing I'm constantly going back and forth, cycling through the story to improve phrasing, grammar, spelling and such as I write so the first draft is generally quite clean. It works fairly well for me though.

I've done fairly well this week, too. Not as many words as I wanted but that's because I'm taking a new short story online class and well, the teacher pointed out some weaknesses (openings, it's always openings and getting in depth into the character's opinions of the setting) that I'm working really hard on. That plus our assignment this week is a mystery short story for the fake anthology titled The Lady Says Die. And, well, I don't really read mystery so I've had to do some research and serious thought. But I think I finally have a handle on the story. If I'm lucky I'll finish writing it today and then I can work on getting last week's story plus a collection I've had half-done for two weeks out.

And then I'm off until the New Year so I can work on editing out the three novels I have backed up. *snort* Too much writing, not enough publishing lately. ;)

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas!

[mithen]

I have to limit myself to three rounds of revision because I have, literally, gone from a 6000 word first draft to a 50K second draft to a 100K third draft.

*grin* That is so literally not how it's supposed to go--and yet I have a hunch that's worked out just fine for you! I kinda love it.

On the other hand, as I'm writing I'm constantly going back and forth, cycling through the story to improve phrasing, grammar, spelling and such as I write so the first draft is generally quite clean. It works fairly well for me though.

Because time has been tight for me, I've actually ended up doing this more as well--which sounds odd, but it means that although I'm having less time to write, I'm more likely to use times when I can't write to pull up a fic and tinker with the wording and phrasing of things.

OPENINGS. CURSE THEM. I really should take the advice I've seen to start the story and then go back and lop the first quarter or so of the story off and start in media res. I have an awful tendency to frontload exposition--and describe the weather. That's gotta go.

I hope your holiday and novel-editing goes well! May they be merry and bright!