Theresa de Valence's blog

First, we must concede that I’m probably not as good a writer as I think I am.

Yet.

Second, everybody had to learn how to write once. Recently, an author wrote she had completely rewritten her story 13 times over 9 years before it was published. Ugh.

Did the writer’s skill improve during that time? Yes.

Did the writer feel the story was better at the end? Yes.

Was this the only way for the writer’s skill to improve? No. There are less painful ways to go through the job of tightening up a story. To say nothing of accelerating the learning curve.

I suppose having to revise my story is what really blew my gasket. I interviewed my local police crime scene investigation (CSI) officer during a slow Easter week when the citizenry weren’t committing homicide. Having nothing more demanding to do, he shot gaping holes into my plot. By the time he was done, I had rather a lot of work to do. Since I had to rewrite some of my story, I decided to incorporate all of the changes I had noted.

Therein lies the problem. With 65,000 words already written, I had to take apart the story in fine enough detail to allow insertion of new Threads (plot lines) and plot elements.

I thought I would die. The tools authors have to work with are laughable.