Revising (Like a Boss)

Yesterday I gave up entirely on the idea that I could work productively, meet my teaching responsibilities, meet my interpersonal responsibilities, and still find large chunks of time to revise the horror novel. I did $16 worth of contracting work (I try to do $80-$100 per day normally), and after lunch I plunked on the couch and put on Joanna Newsom and dug in.

I wrote a good book. I'd like to qualify that with "I think", but it would be false humility. I'm sure I wrote a good book. It took me 6+ hours to get through it completely, keeping in mind the one big piece of feedback Matt gave me as well as the few smaller ones, and at the end of it I was dazed and optimistic. I really have faith in this one; I remember a great deal more uncertainty about the Greenland book than I have here. I'm planning to take today and implement the revisions I found I need to make, possibly spilling over into Friday. After I sleep on the revisions, I'll take some time this weekend to reformat it, send the PDF to Lulu, and have it printed. Then the few of you who've enlisted will start getting copies in the mail.

I had started to feel, yesterday, as if the book's progress was slipping away, and I was forgetting that this is the work, this is the important stuff. Work for money is required, but to go back to thinking that it's not the important work of my life is not something I want to do. That attitude is in the past, I'm finished with it.

I do need some help with the first paragraph. Matt suggested that I reorder the sentences in the paragraph to put the stuff with the emotional punch first, and I edited and read it over both ways and I just can't decide. I like locating the punch at the end, and the first sentence was one of those poof inspirations so I hate to move it, but I can't shake the feeling that he might be correct. It's the first paragraph, the first sentences of the book, so out of everything in the not-quite-90,000 words, it needs to be the most perfect. I'll excerpt it and embed a poll below, so you can tell me which you like better. (I won't say which is which.)

And now, to revisions.

Version 1:

There was a picture on the bureau that Elaine never looked at. She left it turned at an angle, so the light through the blinds bounced off the glass obliquely, and there was no way for her to look at Lucy's eight-year-old smile unless she picked up the frame and wiped the dust off of it and looked. She kept it on the bureau because she was sure it was the right thing to do, because the little red-haired girl in the picture had been her sister. But Elaine didn't want to think about Lucy, didn't want to acknowledge the coming and then going of Lucy even in quick glances as she got ready for work. So she never did.

Version 2:

There was a picture on the bureau that Elaine never looked at. She kept it there because she was sure it was the right thing to do, because the little red-haired girl in the picture had been her sister. But she didn't want to think about Lucy, didn't want to acknowledge the coming and then going of Lucy even in quick glances as she got ready for work. So she left the picture turned at an angle, so the light through the blinds bounced off the glass obliquely, and there was no way for her to look at Lucy's eight-year-old smile unless she picked up the frame and wiped the dust off of it and looked. And she never did.

Which one do you prefer?