The Cave of Eternal Revision (and Writing Your Way Out)

So I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s because I’ve been stuck in here:

 

 

It’s a tricky little cave, this one. There’s this wooden sign staked outside, like the sinister THIS WAY signs you see in horror movies after you pass the toothless gent in overalls at the gas station, and it says EZ QUICK MANUSCRIPT TUNEUPZ HERE. I’m a pretty trusting person, overall. So last fall after HTRAMH came out, I strolled inside with a manuscript I’d written nearly a decade earlier and a foolish plan: tidy this book up in seven months, and publish it when the daffodils come up.

 

Oh, Cave of EZ Tuneupz. You and your empty promises.

 

I should’ve suspected something was wrong in December, when I decided the entire beginning of the book needed to be rewritten. I ventured a little farther into the cave with my lantern and Slanket and elderly Sony Vaio, and that’s when saw the first heap of bones. A skeleton in a READING IS SEXY shirt slumped next to a long-dead Macbook, the rags of story notes still caught between her finger-bones.

 

Etched on the cave wall, in what appeared to be blood, was a message:

 

IT WILL NEVER BE DONE

 

Silly dead writer, I thought. I’ve got this. April’s a long way off.

 

In response, her jawbone dropped off and fell at my feet. I put it in my pocket, out of respect. Then I found a comfy spot, away from the faint smell of decay, and started rewriting.

 

Weeks passed. Months passed. I discovered what I should have anticipated all along: when you change the beginning, you change the whole thing. I reshaped and re-outlined the entire book. I threw out words by the thousands and agonized over their replacements, stopping only to gorge on Milano Melts, make stupid Twitter jokes that belied my misery, and heckle my 2005 author-self: Don’t you know ANYTHING about chapter endings? Nice pacing, doofus. No, you go ahead and describe this whole room, George R.R. Martin. I’ll wait. As the winter trudged on, I edged farther and farther into the cave: drafting new scenes and then deciding I hated them, tearing my hair over plot holes, crawling over the bones of those before me who failed to escape.

 

Last week, I took a break. I got frustrated and exhausted and stopped writing for a while. I thought about blogging, but I didn’t have another post about teen magazines or thrift stores in me, so I wandered into a dark corner of the cave, curled up on a pile of skulls, and went to sleep.

 

I’m not sure how long I was out. I woke to a flashlight in my eyes and a warm hand shaking my shoulder.

 

Dude, a voice said. You were totally talking in your sleep.

 

What did I say?

 

You were all like, what if this completely sucks and what if no one wants to read it and what if the old version was better and OMG Goodreads and blog tours and eARCs and cover designs and book trailers and asksjsjlfdfjhgrgikggnbkeiflogff IT’S TOO MUCH FORGET IT JUST PASS THE HEMLOCK ALREADY

 

I said all that?

 

Well, yeah. Look where we are.

 

The flashlight beam lit the wall. THE NOOK OF INFINITE DESPAIR. The opening I’d wandered through was sealed shut now, a boulder rolled in front of it. I squinted at my companion; she had red pens stuck behind both ears and claw marks on her face, and her hair looked like the last three seconds of a ZzzQuil commercial.

 

How do we get out? I asked her.

 

Dunno. She trained her flashlight on a small circle of gaunt writers, clutching their broken stories and huddling together for warmth. We’re pretty sure we just have to write our way out.

 

That sucks.

 

Yeah.

 

No shortcuts?

 

Nope. We looked. Want a bacon cupcake before you start?

 

There are cupcakes here?

 

She made room for me in the circle and thoughtfully arranged my Slanket on the ground.

 

Where there are writers, she said, there are ALWAYS cupcakes.

 

So here’s what I’m committing to this week, with YOU as my witness:

 

• Opening up my book file (TONIGHT) and picking up where I left off
• Trying not to get bogged down in rereading early chapters
• Setting aside worries about publicity, my release date, the cover art, or ANYTHING that isn’t the story
• Not comparing myself to other writers and envying how fast they get things done, because that way madness lies
• Trying out some new strategies so this story feels fresh again (writing all the dialogue first and then filling in everything around it, or maybe setting a timer and seeing how much I can write in a half hour)
• Taking breaks to hang with the lovely and amazing writing community on Twitter, ’cause with them it’s all good times, good laughs, and good advice. I dunno what I’d do without them.

 

Are you in the Cave of Eternal Revision? Have you wandered into the Nook of Infinite Despair? Tell me about it, and share your strategies for getting out. And then COME HERE FOR A HUG.

 

We’ve got this. I promise.