WRITING LESSON: From the End to the Beginning

Okay, I need to take a break from editing/assembling the galley for They Came in Peace…If it weren’t for writer’s block, days of crippling self-doubt, the frustrated rage of having to start a chapter/project over from scratch because It Just Wasn’t Working, or eliminating a beloved character because They Are Superfluous, I’d say editing is the worst part of writing.

So, thematically I should be putting this under “Writing Advice,” but the Acolytes aren’t there, yet; they’re still waiting on the first lesson. You see, I really want to talk today about a strange experience I’ve had today, while editing.

The best way to describe it, is I was reading a book backwards, but knowing both what has happened and what will happen…and several times this morning I found myself unable to distinguish the book’s past from its future, because I knew both.

So, clarification and context. My editor taught me that one of the best ways to edit a book (when not working with an editor) is to work with an editor. Failing that, edit the book in a series of passes: Front-to-Back, Asynchronously, and finally Back-to-Front as you assemble your final draft. Work chapter by chapter each time, keeping the chapter completely in its own context and not in the context of the overall story.

In other words, do everything you can to detach yourself from the story.

Now, I have TWO different edges when it comes to putting together the re-edited author’s edition: I already put in all the hard work for the first edition of They Came in Peace. First and foremost: Most of what I have to do now is just polishing up a few rough edges, and adding a few necessary details to give the story a little more cohesion.

The second edge I have is this: I have, in one form or another, lived and breathed this story for more than a decade. The initial launch failed because it got killed by the COVID crisis; it never had the chance to get any traction and get read. Ever since, until I decided to relaunch it a couple of years back (the re-editing has taken a hot minute) I’ve been unable to write, unable to invest creative energy into anything. I even read and reread the complete book on my Kindle app…and don’t get me wrong, I’ve been told by my editor, my publisher, the few people who bought it and got back to me after reading, they all tell me what a great, thought-provoking story it is. The thing is, I am SICK of it.

Ten years is a long time to go over a book that started with passionate inspiration and creative urgency which gradually turned into the cubicle-farm like feeling of rote that comes from making pass after pass after pass of the story to ensure that it is fully polished, as absolutely perfect and readable as possible. So after all that time, do I feel that what I wrote is as fantastic as everyone who’s read They Came in Peace say it is?

Maybe; probably. I am fed up of the damn thing. I’m tired of it. I’ve turned it into a career project, and at this point honestly, I feel like I want to be done, put it out there, and finally, hopefully, see some return on all the work I’ve done. I’ve done a lot to create the best possible work I could; at this point I feel like I’ve been cooking, tasting, cooking, tasting, cooking, tasting all day and no longer want to have the big meal I’ve spent the day preparing.

All that to say, while I did the Front-to-Back edit of the book, I skipped the “shuffle chapter” edit. I just took time off (several months) before assailing the Back-to-Front edit.

This is the Ready-to-Publish edit; the second Ready-to-Publish edit, technically. Before that, back in 2017 all I had was a Ready-to-Sell edit. Yes, the Ready-to-Sell edit of a story is not the same animal as the Ready-to-Publish edit. In many ways with the Ready-to-Publish edit, you feel the loss of what was cut away, but in most ways you marvel at how streamlined your story has become.

And, I’m digressing.

I’m having this weird deja-vu feeling, as I work on the book, backwards. I know how it ends, I know how it begins, and here I have the characters in the middle of this, aware of their future but not their past, in spite of knowing both; as I edit backwards, what I read as already having happened has yet to occur for the characters.

The closest feeling I’ve had would have been while watching Christopher Nolan’s Memento for the first time: You know what WILL happen, but not the steps that led to it. Until you step through them, backwards.

It makes me want to take up the challenge of asynchronous storytelling: like Nolan, telling a story from back-to-front.

Anyway, that’s all I wanted to share; just the weird feeling of deja vu all over again that I’ve been experiencing.

Writing tip: A blog post is a great procrastinatory justification.