Kevin watching (and being) Batman.
Do you send your stories out immediately or let them sit for a while?
A bad answer for me. By the time I am done with a story (which often takes some weeks) I send it out and often regret it. A few weeks down the line I can detect problems I didn't see at once. Sometimes small ones but sometimes large ones.
Michael Bracken does the same thing but he is often writing to a deadline or for a specific publication.
Although I have two novels I have hardly sent out at all. Go figure. What about you?
13 comments:
I read an interview with James Lee Burke where he said something like when he was writing stories, he gave himself 36 hours from the time he finished them until he sent them out. Now I don't write a lot of stories, but I do try and maintain a similar philosophy, otherwise I'll edit them to death.
I usually have sent them out as soon as I think I've finished them, but two stories I have await final drafts, and one of those has been waiting for that draft for two years.
I tend to edit and edit and edit, and then get tired of that and send the story out. Not a great process. Now I'm just trying to leave em on the hard drive for a month before taking another look.
I edit to death but then I send it out too quickly. I think a week is probably the right amount of time. 36 hours I would still be reading what I think is there.
A month if possible. It still won't be perfect, but close enough.
I once had a chance to revise a chapter I wrote for someone else's book a year after I wrote it. (The book's publication had been delayed.) It was terrible; made no sense. I threw out a third of it, and totally overhauled the rest. Glad that first version isn't out there in print somewhere.
Depends on whether I have a deadline or not. At times I send it out as soon as it's done. Most of the time not, though, and I prefer not to. I like to give it about a week.
Mt two books took 20 years from when I first wrote them until theyw ere published. They went through a number of extensive rewrites during that time.
I've switched in my MFA program from the novel that always sucks to short stores I'm more comfortable writing. I write the drafts pretty quick, a few days to a week, but then my wife rips them to pieces and they go through months of revisions (with week at a time at least breaks). And like you, Patti, soon as they're sent, I panic ...
Can't imagine your novels sucking.
I send out to beta-readers too quickly, sometimes to publishers, but sometimes it's good to just let them go and see what comes back. It's all a learning process. If it never goes out, then I'll never learn.
It varies tremendously, but Bismarck Rules, my story that made The Best American Mystery Stories 2010, was in rewrite for almost ten years. It's my only story that I can reread and find nothing that makes me cringe.
So, revise and rewrite for ten years. How's that for practical advice? :-)
Sometimes I find the ones I rewrote a lot are the worst. The air has gone out of them.
Interesting thought. Maybe that's happened without my realizing it.
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