Novel revisions galore

While I've been letting Water Magic sit for a month, I've been working on a new novel, a young adult science fiction set in a Martian colony. It's been fun and exciting writing new characters and a completely different story, and I'm enjoying the change in genre. But nevertheless when the thirty day quarantine on Water Magic was up last week, I was filled with curiosity, joy, and terror to return to the world and characters of my first novel.

My impressions so far? When I started reading, there was relief. Thank goodness! This isn't as bad as I thought it might be. In fact, a lot of this is really good. I'm a genius! Then I moved on a little bit to a series of chapters I'd written in the very beginning. Ouch. This sucks. I'm a hack! Delete, delete, delete. And it's pretty much gone back and forth between those two voices ever since. The good thing, I think, is that I can recognize when the writing is terrible. Knowing what to delete, rewrite, revise--that's half the battle. The other half is actually replacing it with something good.

My plans are to finish reading the draft, then draw up a revised outline, making notes on all the changes I need to make. Then I'm going to open a new Scrivener document, transfer over whatever text I'm going to keep from the rough draft, and fill in the gaps from there.

I'm curious to know--what are your methods for revising? Do you outline and make notes, or do you keep everything in your head? Do you struggle with what to keep and what to throw? And at what point do you bring in beta readers?

Global Reading Challenge: NERVOUS CONDITIONS by Tsitsi Dangarembga

ISBN: 9780954702335 [UK]

Continent: Africa

Country: Zimbabwe

Title: Nervous Condtions

Author: Tsitsi Dangarembga

First published in: 1988

"The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition... Men took it everywhere with them" (p. 118).

Nervous Conditions is the story of Tambudzai, a young Shona girl trapped in an impoverished life in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1960s. When Tambu's older brother dies, she gains the opportunity to study at the Mission school, where her rich, educated uncle is the principal.

Global Reading Challenge: BELOVED by Toni Morrison

ISBN: 9780099511656 [UK]

Continent: North America

Country: USA

Title: Beloved

Author: Toni Morrison

First published in: 1988

Awards: Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 1988; Frederic G. Melcher Book Award, 1988

My pick from my home country, the USA, is Toni Morrison's Beloved. A dark tale about an ex-slave who is haunted by the ghost of the baby daughter whose life she ended, Beloved is easily the most powerful novel I've read in recent years.

SONG OF SOLOMON by Toni Morrison

Well, the Internet connection setter-upper men arrived yesterday (a day earlier than scheduled, as I discovered when I opened the door in my Eeyore pajamas and blinked in confusion at their chipper faces), so now I once again have Internet access without the 15 minute trek to my local library (not a moment too soon, as overhearing semi-literate teen boys trying to sign up to online dating sites using the library computers was getting a mite depressing). In short, I'm happy to be back on Blogger and Twitter with the rest of you fine people.

Since it's February, and February is Black History Month (in America and Canada; it's in October in Britain), I've decided to read a couple of books by one of the United States' greatest authors of any color—Nobel laureate Toni Morrison.

Global Reading Challenge 2011

Recently I came across this Global Reading Challenge, hosted by Dorte H (via Ari at Reading in Color). The idea is that you read a certain number of books from each continent (for Antarctica, you can substitute a genre such as historical fiction, sci fi, or fantasy), with each book from a different country or state. What an awesome idea! Since I've been meaning to expand my reading this year, I decided to sign up for the expert level and read three books from each continent.

I've already read one from the USA (Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison), so I want my other two North American books to be from Canada and Mexico. And I've read one from Europe--Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (UK).

I've also reserved two African novels at the library--Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), and Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe).

I could really use some suggestions for the rest of the books, especially Asia and South America. Please feel free to make recommendations in the comments. Also let me know if you're going to sign up, and what books you are planning to read.

Libraries and writers

Big Chimp and I moved into a new house over the weekend. The new place is great, and it even has an office/writing room where we've set up a creative space with our typewriters, notebooks, writing and editing books, and art supplies.

The only thing is, we won't be getting our Internet connection set up until the beginning of February. So, until then, I'm using the computers at our local library. It's small, but quiet and peaceful. With a possible drawback of having lots of books I want to take out but won't let myself until I've finished the ones I've already renewed three times.

So, what about you--how important is your local library in your writing? Do you write there? Edit there? Do your research there? Or do you prefer to work at home? How important are local libraries to writers?

Exercise and creativity

When I'm stuck on a writing project--the words just aren't flowing, I'm getting distracted, feeling frustrated, etc.--I find that there's one solution that pretty much always works: exercise. I'm not the world's greatest runner--my endurance isn't very high, I get stitches all the time, my lungs ache, and my nose gets all runny and gross. But I find that getting out in the fresh air, seeing other people (and hoping they don't look too closely at my red face and runny nose), and getting the blood pumping to my brain really puts me in a creative zone. There's something so invigorating about running along the pavement with a good playlist on my MP3 player. I find that this is a great time to think through writing problems--plot points that just aren't right, flat characters, whatever.

But the real magic happens when I get back from running. After a run and a hot shower, I can concentrate crazy well, like an ADHD kid who's taken his Adderall. I feel calm, relaxed, and really focused.

And I'm not alone. Apparently, the link between exercise and creativity is well documented. This is from Newsweek:

"Almost every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and creativity is no exception. The type of exercise doesn’t matter, and the boost lasts for at least two hours afterward."*

Cool, right?

There has been some debate about whether exercise improves creativity on its own, or whether the increase in creativity is due to the good mood that most people experience after exercise. Some people from the British Journal of Sports Medicine wrote a paper on the subject in 1997, suggesting that these two benefits of exercise--good mood and creativity--may occur independently of each other.

Whatever the case, the end result is the same. For writers, artists, musicians, and other creative types, exercise can be an amazing (and, importantly for starving artists, cheap) tool that can help us reach our creative goals.

So next time your WIP is bugging the crap out of you, try 30 minutes of vigorous exercise. Your brain will love you for it.

*From the article "Forget Brainstorming," July 12, 2010.