Begin the Beguine

Just when I think I have finished writing my novel, I learn something new and then the rewrite begins again.

I have been in the process of rewriting my first novel since 2012. During my first year of study (Certificate IV- Professional Writing and Editing) my rewriting concentrated on editing. My long sentences were shortened. All double quotation marks were substituted with single ones. Exclamation marks were obliterated along with most of my adjectives and adverbs. Attributions were substituted with character’s actions.  I indented my paragraphs and took a new line for a new speaker.

The following year (Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing) I concentrated on ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’ and all but eliminated anything that dared to resemble a description. Through workshops I discovered that my characters struggled to move from scene to scene. They never worked or engaged in anything that was not to do with the story at hand. They appeared and reappeared exactly when I wanted them to, and had no mind of their own, in short they were superficial contrivances brought into action only to forward my plot. Worse than that I came to realise that I had no voice. And worse again, my voice was not in keeping with my protagonist (I learnt that term in Certificate IV). My nine-year-old protagonist was too knowledgeable, too articulate, too well read; overly philosophical, overly mature, overly introspective; and much too wise, much too intelligent and much too perceptive to be credible. I also learned that if you list things you must do so in threes, or in three groups of threes, or three groups of three groups of threes. 

In this my first year of the Bachelor of Writing and Publishing, I have been encouraged to: rediscover my voice; to celebrate detail; to become ‘particular’; to embrace figurative language; to explore senses; to evoke the sixth sense; to explore the difference between points of view, focalisation and different narrations and to create suspense, atmosphere and setting. The list goes on. I had hoped to have completed my novel by now but I am reluctant to rewrite, in fact I am reluctant to write at all, for it is as I began this posting:

Just when I think I have finished writing my novel, I learn something new and then the rewrite begins again.