I’m doing my third revision of Sliver of Light now, after meeting at Comic-Con with the editor who has been working with me and getting some notes. I wish I could say that this third time go-round, I truly know what I’m doing, but it’s a go-with-instinct thing. Writing a novel isn’t scientific. There are so many processes and so many outcomes, all of them valid. It doesn’t even stay the same with the same writer, I don’t think — every time I write something the process is different; every story has its own alchemy.
As I was re-reading the first chapter, I realized that I had to instill the book with more mystery, so that there is a true reveal of the past — there will be hints and tiny details that form pieces of the picture, but the whole picture will only become clear in that interstitial chapter after chapter thirteen. That takes care of some of what I need to accomplish with this revision, but there’s still more, and exactly how to accomplish it will come to me as I read. Or at least I hope it will.
Maybe someday, when I’m more experienced, first revisions will be only revisions and first drafts will be close to final ones. Until then, I’m getting to know how my writing works. First, in my early twenties, I wrote with abandon. Then, in my late twenties in grad school, I assessed myself, tried to work out what kind of writer I could become. And now I am in the process of becoming that writer.
It’s work. But it’s all on-spec, that’s the thing. There’s no surety of a weekly paycheck with writing fiction, but I want this to be what I do, so I’m doing it. There is no other way.
