I don’t know. It doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The actual presentation is more about staying in the creative state of mind rather than editorial.

It’s good advice if you are stuck in endless re-writes.

Trust the sub-conscious writer in you, not the conscious editor.

Get your internal editor out of the way.

It’s good at all levels. You could easily find that this additional editing ISN’T making for better books for you.(I doubt it, but it could happen.)

Certainly an experienced writer can THINK they have learned more about writing/story telling and over-edit themselves and still need the advice. This is not to say ALL writers need that.

Trust your sub-conscious creativity.

Use the Force, Luke.
That advice ALWAYS applies.

What I know is that the good advice I had when I was a newbie writer is STILL good advice now, and I gather will be good advice for ever. “Love the book, not the scene.” “Leave out the parts people skip.” Etc.

And this is what Kris said SHE does… but she does not call it revising; she calls it ‘notes to add necessary details’ or something like that…so there is a little bit of semantics going on here…is she doing one thing and just calling it something else?

When you can show me what he changed and we can debate whether or not he wasted his time on that…if he indeed did do that…

The pertinent quote:

“I am obsessive about the revision of each page–the word fussbudget is embarrassingly apt when I am brooding over whether to use a comma or a semicolon.”

And:

” Although the book was done, I felt that something was wrong with Chapter 63. The action worked, the characters were in character, the mood was sustained…but something felt wrong with it, some fine point of the villain’s motivation. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I worked 12-hour days, trying to identify the source of my doubt, but couldn’t specify it to my satisfaction.

Nothing like this had ever happened to me. Previously, my worst struggles with a story had come in the first two-thirds, and the final third had been, if not a sweet swift toboggan run, at least a sleigh ride.

Sunday, I got up at 6:00 and set to work, revising, looking for the thorn I could feel but couldn’t see–and ended up working 22 hours, eating at my desk, before tumbling to the problem at 4:00 a.m. Monday morning. “Eureka!” I cried, but I was so weary and my voice was so weak that my shout of jubilation came out as a squeak.

The revisions required to Chapter 63 were minor…”

Diana, thanks for the insight.
I’m sort of processing this. I don’t think Stuart Woods was lying, but I’m thinking this. Stuart is on book 38 or so, around book 12 was his break out into bestseller. Now he’s 26 books more into that bestseller big novel process, it’s not unrealistic to think that he doesn’t need to edit, because he has it down.

By comparison, each of your books are getting ‘bigger’ in depth and scope, you’re learning. It makes sense that you would be revising. You’re learning! But by the same token, what you have is probably publishable.

They do say in the advice that it is for new writers who aren’t selling, saying that they shouldn’t revise, because they have no business revising because they are too new at writing to know if their work is anygood. I think that’s good advice for many because you’ll learn more writing more stories not staying on the same.

Carrie, some really good suggestions there. Thank you! I agree that if a book isn’t working you need to step away from it–it’s not working for a reason, and if you can’t see it yet, you need to take a break and go work on something else. Even if the something else is watching Project Runway.

However — and I think this is key — at a certain point you have to let go and step back from the book. You have to stop relying on tons of people to tell you what to do with it (though having an outside reader can really point out trees when you’ve only seen forest and vice versa). I know a lot of writers who rewrite, rewrite, rewrite the same novel for years. The thing is, once you sell you’re pretty much going to have to churn out a book a year so you might as well start working on that pace now. If the book isn’t working after a rewrite, then maybe that book isn’t going to work and you need to set it aside.

As for me, since I don’t outline I figure out a lot of the plot as I go along which means having to go back and retroactively change things to keep up with plot points later in the book. So revising is pretty important for me!