A number of years ago I got a book called Revising Fiction. The book was about how to revise . . . well, fiction.
One of the author’s big points was that the revision process is very distinct from the writing process. (It had better be, or he’d have no reason to write his book.)
He therefore stressed to writers that they should not try to revise while they are writing. Write when you write; revise when you revise. Don’t mix the two or you’ll get into trouble.
And you will.
If you let your inner critic drive you to start editing what you’ve just written, you’ll fiddle with it forever. You’ll get bogged down–repeatedly–as you write, and you may never finish your manuscript.
Revision is incredibly important. It’s how you get all the bad stuff out of your writing. But it’s a separate process, and a very important one. This led the author to an interesting perspective: Why do writers write? Frequently, so they can have something to revise. That’s not true all the time (certainly, it’s not true of me when I’m writing an article or a special report on deadline), but at times in a writer’s experience–particularly in the beginning–it may well be true.
His overall point about keeping editing separate from writing is extremely important, however. When one writes, one frequently should get the words down as fast as one can, without worrying about how good they are. You can fix them later, but finishing that first draft is vitally important.
In my own writing, I try whenever possible to follow the advice, "Write in a fury!" Do whatever it takes to bang out that first draft. Fix it later.
One of the things that means is that I don’t stop to look up citations. If I stopped to look up every Bible verse I need to quote, or type in all the bibliographic info for a book I want to cite, it’d break the flow of my writing and I’d lose precious time by getting sidetracked to look stuff up. As a result, I don’t (when I can avoid it).
Instead, I drop unique strings into my writing at points I know I need to revisit. For example, if I know that I need to insert a Bible verse, I frequently will write "(xx)" for the citation. Then, after I’m done with the first draft and am in the revision stage, I’ll go back and do an electronic search for all the "xx"es and replace them with the missing citations.
If the needs of the manuscript are more complex and I need to mark different kinds of places to revisit in the revision process, I’ll use other unique strings. I don’t want a combination of letters that will likely appear in the text, though, so I’ll use something uncommon, like "jj" or "qq" or "xjxj." It’s then a snap to look these up electronically.
Using the word processor’s highlight feature also can help. I may put a yellow highlight on the whole first draft and then go through it, turning the yellow highlight off as I revise individual sections. (That way if I need to skip a section for some reason, it’ll still be yellow and thus obvious that I need to go back and finish fixing it.)
I understand that for some in the publishing industry, typing "00" has been an equivalent of my "xx." I don’t like that as much, though, because (a) "00" can look too much like "oo" or "OO" (making it hard if you’re visually scanning a secion) and (b) the zero keys require one to take one’s fingers off the letter-keys and hit the less-familiar number-keys. "xx" doesn’t require that.
So for me, any way, double-X marks the spot.
If you’re the New York Times writing about the death of Pope John Paul II, the string is “need some quote from supporter.” >:(
Invaluable advice. Well said.
Heh. Of course, that string has the disadvantage of not being searchable in final pass revisions… as the NYT found out. 😀
8\ I don’t get it. Don’t double zeroes turn up with some frequency in any text where large numbers, centuries, etc. figure prominently? Even granted that it works most of the time, why wouldn’t XX (or, say, QQ, which I use just as frequently) be the industry standard?
My understanding is that 00 became standard in the pre-word processor days, when all scans for the string were made visually. The problem of texts with numbers, though, remained.
There is some good bibliography software (I won’t plug any brand specifically) that can be integrated with your word processor to cut citation time significantly. I’m not sure how well it works with bible verses, though.
As a programmer, I use X or XXX (while trying not to think of what it means in other contexts.) Seems to work..when I actually decide to go back an revise my code (scary that I don’t always revise my code 🙂
With the double numbers thing, I agree with it looking too much like the letter ‘o’ (note for newbie programmers, never use the letters ‘O’ or ‘l’ for variable names. Trust me.)
I remember some of the old control codes for Epson printers and whatnot were embedded in the text you were sending to the printer. {{control code}} I believe. That may be a good type of ‘comment’ format. {{bibleverse}} is searchable by ‘{{‘ or ‘}}’.
Just my input.
It may only be for page numbers, but roleplaying books use XX. Quite often, even from big publishers, you will still find a citation in text, “See page XX.”
If the story I heard is accurate, the late Isaac Asimov never revised his writing.
Revising while writing is what bogged Douglas Adams down a lot. He would write a sentence, and then edit and re-edit about a dozen times until he tried to get it absolutely perfect. That’s why he wrote so few books (although the quality was much higher than most) and he spent 10 years trying to write the Salmon of Doubt and never finished it. Even if he were alive today, I wonder if he ever would have actually finished it.
I think it was Heinlen, not Asimov. Heinlen once advised beginning writers never to revises “except to editorial order”.
Heinlein’s advice was for after you think it’s done enough to submit.
The beauty of the internet is that you can approximately quote a Bible verse without bothering to look it up, and then later enter the string into Google and have the reference and half a dozen translations right there.
Of course, it also helps if you grew up with KJV and NIV exclusively so that you’ve got a ‘standard’ translation in your head that’s easy for the search engine to find when you quote.
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