Let it be known, I am not a great reviser of my own work. More accurately, while I am happy to really muck around with the text while I am drafting, once I think it's done, I have a great deal of trouble opening it back up and making significant changes. I tend to simply add things that are suggested, without changing much of the existing text--this sometimes results in ideas coming a bit out of order, things expressed redundantly, or the persistence of ideas that seem naive or obsolete even in light of other ideas expressed in the text.
It also usually means the word count goes up.
Since the contract specified that the word count could be no higher than 100k words, and the draft was already at 101K, this revision process has been a significant challenge. I plucked a couple thousand off with some of my revisions to the intro, but the final chapter's worth of revisions found me back in my old habits of adding without cutting. I'm going to try to go back over it one more time with an eye specifically to trimming, but I wanted to check my word count just to see where I was for the complete ms. with this last bit of chapter revisions.
The total count: 99,918 words.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Monday, July 18, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
What else is nice
I learned that although revisions on the book were requested, I have a standard contract, rather than a provisional one. Fewer hurdles to clear, and with an August 31 revision deadline, I'm really looking forward to finishing up this project with a little room to breathe.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Counting
Please indulge me for a bit, while I do a bit of counting:
The dissertation was about 70k words. I excised one of three sections from that to save for a later project, leaving me with about 50K words to work from.
Given that I completely rewrote the introduction from scratch, we're actually talking about 45K words that formed the basis for this project, when I began rewriting in earnest in Fall 2008, five years after I defended the project.
Since then, I've seriously revised much of that baseline, plus written another 50K words, few of which I could've written in 2003. I don't know what this says about the pressure to publish a dissertation as a book, but I can say that I needed those 5 years to rethink the central claims of the project, to let the ideas simmer, to teach them a few times and test them against skeptical undergraduate and graduate students, and to generally get comfortable with them.
After cleaning up the notes and doing a complete bibliography, the project with all of it is just under 100k words, and ends on page 316. When I defended, and my family felt impressed that I had written a book, a demurred. This, though, feels like a book. I started writing it as a dissertation 9 years ago, defended it 7 years ago, and barring a few more revisions, feel good about sending it out to a press only just now.
The dissertation was about 70k words. I excised one of three sections from that to save for a later project, leaving me with about 50K words to work from.
Given that I completely rewrote the introduction from scratch, we're actually talking about 45K words that formed the basis for this project, when I began rewriting in earnest in Fall 2008, five years after I defended the project.
Since then, I've seriously revised much of that baseline, plus written another 50K words, few of which I could've written in 2003. I don't know what this says about the pressure to publish a dissertation as a book, but I can say that I needed those 5 years to rethink the central claims of the project, to let the ideas simmer, to teach them a few times and test them against skeptical undergraduate and graduate students, and to generally get comfortable with them.
After cleaning up the notes and doing a complete bibliography, the project with all of it is just under 100k words, and ends on page 316. When I defended, and my family felt impressed that I had written a book, a demurred. This, though, feels like a book. I started writing it as a dissertation 9 years ago, defended it 7 years ago, and barring a few more revisions, feel good about sending it out to a press only just now.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Smell that burning?
It's the fire that just got lit under my ass.
I had been working on the notion that the end of the summer was a loosely set, self-imposed deadline that the press really didn't care one way or the other about. I mean, they've probably got a backlog of good work: why would a month or so matter to them at all?
Except for in my email last evening was a not from the acquisitions editor checking in on the status of the manuscript. I said end of October.
So there. Now it's been said. Now, I just have to write it.
I had been working on the notion that the end of the summer was a loosely set, self-imposed deadline that the press really didn't care one way or the other about. I mean, they've probably got a backlog of good work: why would a month or so matter to them at all?
Except for in my email last evening was a not from the acquisitions editor checking in on the status of the manuscript. I said end of October.
So there. Now it's been said. Now, I just have to write it.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Pat on the back
Look! right over there! on the right!-->
See that the writing progress meter has logged some more pages. Right now, I'm at 221 revised pages (although not all totally polished: I'm fudging the little clean-up things I have to do here and there).
I finished another chapter draft today. The last chapter was a delight to write: the argument was in my head, I wrote quickly and forcefully, and the ideas, while running against conventional wisdom, still add up.
This chapter, not so much. Twenty of its 42 pages were close-readings lifted from the dissertation, and in fact, they may be among the few pages that survive from the diss unscathed, for many of the other 50 pages of "drafted" material that I started with have actually been completely re-written. The problems were these:
The next chapter is not unlike the previous one, but the close readings in draft form are even more fragmentary, which means I'll be doing a lot of writing from the ground up. I need to give myself permission to let this chapter be a bit shorter than the others (I've estimated about 25 pages), so I can push through to the end of this draft.
I had initially aimed for the end of the summer, which I first interpreted as the beginning of the semester. That came and went, and now the end of the seasonal summer is nigh. I don't have a natural deadline for the remaining chapter and conclusion, but I'm now aiming for the end of October. Halloween and the twins' 7th birthday would go nicely with a completed book manuscript, don't you think? Keep your fingers crossed, 'cause the going gets tough here.
See that the writing progress meter has logged some more pages. Right now, I'm at 221 revised pages (although not all totally polished: I'm fudging the little clean-up things I have to do here and there).
I finished another chapter draft today. The last chapter was a delight to write: the argument was in my head, I wrote quickly and forcefully, and the ideas, while running against conventional wisdom, still add up.
This chapter, not so much. Twenty of its 42 pages were close-readings lifted from the dissertation, and in fact, they may be among the few pages that survive from the diss unscathed, for many of the other 50 pages of "drafted" material that I started with have actually been completely re-written. The problems were these:
- These were close readings that didn't actually have a stand-alone argument that was separate from the previous chapter. They had a theme, a common thread, but no argument. They now have one, but not after fits and starts.
- This would have to be the first piece of this writing push that has happened successfully while classes were in session.
The next chapter is not unlike the previous one, but the close readings in draft form are even more fragmentary, which means I'll be doing a lot of writing from the ground up. I need to give myself permission to let this chapter be a bit shorter than the others (I've estimated about 25 pages), so I can push through to the end of this draft.
I had initially aimed for the end of the summer, which I first interpreted as the beginning of the semester. That came and went, and now the end of the seasonal summer is nigh. I don't have a natural deadline for the remaining chapter and conclusion, but I'm now aiming for the end of October. Halloween and the twins' 7th birthday would go nicely with a completed book manuscript, don't you think? Keep your fingers crossed, 'cause the going gets tough here.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Affirmation
Nice little bit of news arrived yesterday: my Spring 2009 article on Equus published in one of the stronger journals in my field, earned an honourable mention for outstanding essay.
The recognition is nice in an of itself, but it's also good affirmation that in a period in which I've been producing a great deal of writing, kind of in a vacuum, that my work is at least deserving of mention.
The recognition is nice in an of itself, but it's also good affirmation that in a period in which I've been producing a great deal of writing, kind of in a vacuum, that my work is at least deserving of mention.
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