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The revisions that weren't
Jan. 26th, 2009 12:57 pmAs part of my writing process, when I finish writing for the day I'll print out the pages I've just written. Later I'll mark them up, and then the next time I sit down to write I start by inputting the changes and then move on to the new stuff. It's the equivalent of warming up, a way to stretch my creative muscles and get back into the flow of the story, which is vitally important if you're not on a schedule where you can write every day.
Yesterday as I was having my morning coffee I pulled out the hardcopy of the last scene I'd written before work went crazy. As soon as I started to read it, I knew I'd made a mistake. These pages were old, and had none of the changes I'd planned. There was still that awkward info dump on page 3, the order of events was off, and I spotted a character that I'd already decided didn't need to be in this scene.
So I set it aside, went to the computer and printed off the pages again. But they were exactly the same as the ones I'd looked at earlier. Confused I checked to see if I'd saved it under a different file name. No luck.
"Ah ha!" I thought, "I must have been working on the laptop and forgotten to copy the file back to the desktop." So I checked the laptop, but that version was even older.
I retreated back to the kitchen and stared at the offending pages. They were wrong, wrong, wrong! I knew that I had fixed them.
Except, it seems I hadn't. Or if I had, the changes had been lost when someone decided to reset the universe without telling me.
I finally did go ahead and revise the scene, but the entire time I had to fight off the sense that I wasting time making changes I'd already done before.
Yesterday as I was having my morning coffee I pulled out the hardcopy of the last scene I'd written before work went crazy. As soon as I started to read it, I knew I'd made a mistake. These pages were old, and had none of the changes I'd planned. There was still that awkward info dump on page 3, the order of events was off, and I spotted a character that I'd already decided didn't need to be in this scene.
So I set it aside, went to the computer and printed off the pages again. But they were exactly the same as the ones I'd looked at earlier. Confused I checked to see if I'd saved it under a different file name. No luck.
"Ah ha!" I thought, "I must have been working on the laptop and forgotten to copy the file back to the desktop." So I checked the laptop, but that version was even older.
I retreated back to the kitchen and stared at the offending pages. They were wrong, wrong, wrong! I knew that I had fixed them.
Except, it seems I hadn't. Or if I had, the changes had been lost when someone decided to reset the universe without telling me.
I finally did go ahead and revise the scene, but the entire time I had to fight off the sense that I wasting time making changes I'd already done before.