November’s over. NaNoWriMo’s over for another year. You’ve got a manuscript, a solid body of work.
First off, take a bow. Didn’t finish? That doesn’t matter. More on that soon. What counts is you got down and wrote something. A lot of people in the world don’t write anything. At all. But what now?
First off, check this out. I didn’t do NaNoWriMo. I had publisher contracts to meet and the time available for writing had to be focussed. But there’s a story therein for NaNo authors.
Just over a decade ago I wrote a one-volume general history of New Zealand (488 pages/120,000 words). The book sold well, but has long gone out of print. Last year I had opportunity to re-publish. Second edition time. The book had to be re-created – the old plates and files are gone – and that created an opportunity to re-work the content.
Some authors don’t do this; they’ll let an old book re-appear with minimal change, insisting that it has ‘stood the test of time’. Yes, sometimes books do stand up. But not often when it comes to non-fiction, and I had good reasons for wanting to revise this particular one. The first edition wasn’t wrong, but 11-12 years is a fair period in the career of a writer. Ideas change. So does writing style. More particularly, it is also a long time in terms of what we know about New Zealand’s pre-history, meaning the first chapter had to be re-written. I also have a pet hatred of history books that ‘update’ the last chapter by adding a hasty list of events. That, to me, is only the first step; history is really about what events mean. Often those trends aren’t evident when events occur, or soon afterwards. So the last chapter, 1985 to ‘the present’, had to be re-written to accommodate meanings evident from the vantage of 2012.
My own research hasn’t stood still either. So I found a lot to tweak, re-nuance, even re-cast, through the whole text. If the book was a house, it was more than just a re-paint, it was a complete refurbishment. And why not? Musicians do it all the time. Wendy Carlos re-made Switched On Bach (1968/2000). Jeff Wayne is re-making The War Of The Worlds (1978/2012). Rick Wakeman has just re-made Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1974/2012). Battlestar Galactica got re-imagined (1978/2003). So did The Bionic Woman (1976/2007). These things do not invalidate the old; instead, they give us something new – something more, something we can enjoy anew, alongside the earlier incarnation.
This applies to fiction, too. Perhaps more so - and there is good precedent for a re-imagining. I discover that J R R Tolkien did this with The Hobbit, which he started re-writing in 1960 along the lines of The Lord Of The Rings. And if Tolkien did it…well, what more need be said?
That is where the old NaNo manuscript comes in. How to do it? That’s for the next post. Meanwhile – what do you think of taking your NaNo MS – or any MS that’s been sitting in a drawer gathering dust – and sitting down with more leisure to re-cast, re-imagine and re-model?
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012
I feel like I could sit and edit, edit, edit my life away. That’s where publication is so handy. It’s the turning point where publication means “I can now move on to other projects.” I understand the desire to tweak and polish, but it impacts future projects. This all is said with a huge caveat that I write fiction, and that I can absolutely understand revising fiction to encompass new data . . . and perhaps revisit other portions, too, while you’re already there.
Absolutely true; the chance to re-publish, in print, is so rare that it is not to be missed.
That’s why I love the blog, the work never gathers dust and the editing must be efficient.
NaNo wasn’t for me either this year, but I do think I profited from the collective consciousness of all that writing energy out there in November, by at least being inspired to start a new writing project.
There’s no doubt about the energies swirling around! Definitely inspirational for me, too. Good luck for your new project – what is it?
You may have seen it already, just a wee collaboration on my blog with my daughter, called A Silent Education: Our Quiet Challenge in Provence – our story of dealing with selective mutism, which I can write about now that we’ve surmounted the last hurdle, after 5 years she has finally spoken to a teacher for the first time this year.
So she’s doing the drawings and I’m writing the episodes. Not what I expected to be writing, I prefer fiction for it’s distance and element of the unknown, but trying to shake off the self-conscious shackles and have some fun at the same time. On verra
The first couple of NaNos I wrote I sometimes go back and look at, shudder, and shove them right back in that drawer. On the other hand…since about 2006 I’ve been doing better. There are a couple of books (aside from the trilogy I started in 2010) that I wish I could just find a better idea for, something to actually make that nebula coalesce into a star. The bits and pieces are there, good characters, good scenario, it’s just…somehow that story doesn’t hold together, doesn’t quite work. So, with a sigh, back into the drawer it goes. But one of these days…!
That ‘time out in the drawer’ period can sometmes do wonders – all sorts of ideas pop up, on re-consideration. One day it’ll happen! Even if the MS merely provides the trigger for a from-clean-sheet start on a re-imagining of the project – as it happens, I’ve got a post scheduled for tomorrow with my thoughts on that one. There’s always hope and I am a firm believer that no writing work is ever wasted, one way or another.