Revisiting and Revising by Prscilla Brown

From its first incarnation, this contemporary romance was ruthlessly reworked; 

the character on the cover received a new name and personality.

http://books2read.com/Class-Act

  

I've been involved in a textile arts exhibition showcasing items which the artist has revisited, upcycled, recycled, remodelled, or transformed in some way.  Think jeans cut off above the knee, rebirthed as shorts and decorated with bright fabric, or, with appropriate stitching, reappear

as a bag again embellished.A floral skirt way out of fashion is reconstructed into a shade for a table lamp; several kinds of textiles, fabrics, knitting, crochet, in pieces of carious sizes and colours, are hand-stitched together covering all surfaces of a second-hand wooden dining chair.

 

As I chopped up boring old scarves into sections and reassembled them onto a length of fabric, the new cloth to metamorphose into a wrap, I thought about how I use the rethinking terms for this kind of creativity in my fiction writing.

With all my novels, having reached what I initially consider to be the final draft, I print them out and put them aside for an indefinite time. I do enjoy editing and prefer to edit this "final version" on hard copy.

Write without fear. Edit without mercy. 

(Quotation found on Internet, source unknown.) 

For me, returning to a manuscript always reveals assorted plot holes, inconsistencies, repetitions,

weak characters and other glitches. Class Act (not its original name) remained in the drawer for the

longest period, four or five years. When I revisited it, I was shocked. Is this the best you can do?  Too long. Too much detailed backstory. Too many secondary characters. Extraneous events and trivia. Unbelievable female protagonist (insufficient qualifications and experience for the job she's appointed to). I wrote this while I was working in the same environment as the story is set, and this version now read as if I'd wanted to include several incidents which did happen but which were entirely out of place in the novel.

A major revision was required.

The prologue had to go, all 4000 words of it. Necessary information was salvaged and worked where appropriate into the first and second chapters, which also better defined the personalities of the protagonists. Realising I was making more changes to her than to him and to some of the scenes together, I severely chopped up and altered her backstory, reassembling the pieces into a shorter and more credible version (her one-time Mexican lover was not necessary), and stitching bits into the story where relevant.

 

A number of secondary characters lost their places (she did not need to have a childhood nanny with whom she keeps in touch). I found several scenes which did not move the story along. Some were beyond redemption and permanently discarded (whyever did they go to the zoo?); those I had fun writing and wanted to keep received remodelling so that they did provide forward momentum (adding a thunderstorm while they were eating outside at a restaurant nudged their growing attraction up several notches); others could be reconstructed and their timewise position in the story relocated. These and many other repairs, including a re-vamped ending, in this extensive revision transformed both the energy and the length of Class Act, sending about 30 000 words to the bin.

And now, it's time to take out another manuscript from its incubation in the drawer. I'm wondering how much editing will be required for this one!

Enjoy your reading. Priscilla.

http://bwlpublishing.ca

 

https://bookswelove/net/authors/brown-priscilla-romance 

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

 

 

Bananas by Margaret Hanna

Visit Margaret's BWL Author Page for Details and Buy Links

Bananas!

Yes, the fruit.

Several years ago, I was scheduled to present a paper at a conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In early May.

Those of you who are familiar with prairie weather know, only too well, that “spring” in the prairies can bring any and all kinds of weather. Including blizzards. That’s exactly what happened that spring.

Four days before the conference was to begin, a blizzard hit the southern prairies. It raged for three days. All highways, including the Trans-Canada Highway, were shut down. Nothing, not even semi-trailers, moved. Traffic stacked up at both ends of the blizzard zone.

By the second day, grocery stores were running out of fresh produce. A woman roamed through my local Safeway, crying, “Bananas! There are no bananas!”  The manger informed her, “I don’t know when we’ll get more, the trucks are stopped in Manitoba.”

The third day, the blizzard began to blow itself out. The fourth day, the sky was blue and the highways were clear. A friend and I jumped in the car and began the six-hour drive to Winnipeg.

East-bound traffic was bad enough, but the west-bound traffic was constant, and consisted mostly of semi-trailers. Suddenly, the Safeway truck screamed past. We yelled, simultaneously, “Bananas!” and laughed.

                                                                          * * *

Addie learned what a prairie blizzard was like during her first winter on the homestead. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Nine: “First Winter” in “Our Bull’s Loose in Town!” Tales from the Homestead.

The first blizzard came in early January. The wind had been blowing from the southeast for a couple of days – a keening wind that didn’t stop day or night. It whistled and whined around our house and went straight through you. Abe brought extra coal into the house and banked snow around walls. He strung a rope from the corner of the house all the way over to the stable. “When the blizzard starts, sometimes the storm is so bad you can’t see more than a couple of feet. People can get lost trying to cross the prairies in a blizzard.” At first, I thought he was joking but he certainly sounded quite serious. I began to get a little worried.

The day the blizzard hit started off nice enough. There was hardly any wind and the sun was shining. “Seems that blizzard you promised has decided to stay away,” I teased.

“Just you wait, it’ll be here sometime today. Now come help me put extra bedding in the stable.”

We walked the few hundred yards to the stable and pitched a wagon load of straw and extra feed in for the livestock and chickens. It took only an hour or so, but the world changed in that time. The wind was stronger, from the northwest, and it sent snow snaking across the ground. And it was cold, much colder.

Then I saw the clouds, grey ugly-looking things coming in fast. They hung low over the world and looked angry. I wondered if this is how the last judgement would begin. The first snowflakes were not those huge soft things that fall like feathers; they were hard, stinging pellets that cut into your skin.

“It’s going to be a bad one,” Abe said as we scurried back to the house.

Sympathy for the Devil

http://amzn.com/B00P9TW046

From childhood on I have been fascinated by myths. I wasn't selective; I began with the Greek and Roman ones, like any European American kid, but soon discovered a book in my mother's hand-me-down library called "Fairy Tales of All Lands" which was a thousand pages of stories from all over the globe. I read this during a long, long recovery from the German measles when I was not supposed to be reading at all because of “the strain on the eyes,” but of course books were my habitual refuge and it was just too hard not to sneak in a few pages during long lonely hours in my sick room.  In those days the world was black and white--the good guys and the bad guys--and the divisions were clear. 

In college, I read translations of the Icelandic Eddas. These stories have none of Wagner's Ring Cycle Victorian romantic overlay and many more god/demon characters. From these, I learned more about Loki, one of those ambiguous, powerful trickster figures that inhabit mythology world-wide. Loki, it seems, could be male or female at will. Sometimes, in the stories, he's helpful, usually pulling the wool over some antagonist's eyes to help out a more obviously central figure, like the Father God, Odin.

Loki, in different forms, had a whole series of monster children. As a mare, he conceived Odin’s horse, the eight legged Sleipner, but let’s not get bogged down in the fascinating details of that story. J The ones I’d like to discuss are Fenrir, a kind of wolf on steroids, Jormungandr, a serpent—also on steroids—and a little girl, Hel. Hel would be beautiful, if half of her face were not a skull. Hel gave her name to our Christian Hell.  

http://amzn.com/B00FKKAN98

Odin, after hearing a prophecy that Loki’s children will destroy him, Asgard, and all his god-kin, decides to kidnap them. This is a serious breach of Norse morality well beyond the kidnapping, because earlier Odin had sworn an oath of eternal brotherhood with Loki.  “Oathbreaker” was the most serious charge that could be leveled against anyone. (And it probably still should be!) Neverthless, Odin figures his first duty is to save himself and his kingdom, so he steals the children anyway. His first move is to co-opt the terrifying Hel with the gift of a kingdom of her own, Helheim. Hel is now ruler of the dead--the ordinary souls--not the few chosen warriors who will feast eternally in Odin’s royal hall of Asgard.

Fenrir is just a puppy when he is taken. He longs for his mother and he longs for someone to love him, as puppies do. The gods are all afraid of him, however, because of the prophecy. Only the God Tyr is brave enough to feed him and be kind to him, and so Tyr becomes the only god poor Fenrir trusts.  The snake, Jormungandr, Odin tosses into the ocean, but this doesn’t get rid of him or his propensity to grow. Jormungandr goes on growing until, hidden beneath the sea, he encircles the entire earth. Earth becomes his adoptive Mother, and he becomes her secret protector and friend.

Meanwhile, Fenrir goes on growing. More and more afraid of him, the gods go to the Dark Elves for a special magical chain capable of holding him. When they return, they pretend to play a game with Fenrir, putting on different chains and encouraging him to demonstrate how strong he is by snapping them. Every time he does do, they clap exclaim at his strength and power. At last, they bring out the Elven chain, but Fenrir senses their duplicity. He refuses to allow them to put this one on until Tyr puts his sword hand in Fenrir’s mouth as a show of good faith. “If you cannot break this chain, you may do with me as you will.” Such a heart-breaking story! Tyr has sworn loyalty to his master Odin but he’s also bonded with the wolf and he knows full well when he puts his hand in that hot mouth, what is about to happen.

The great wolf, trusting Tyr, allows the gods to “try out” the strength of their new chain. This one, so full of magic, cannot be broken. Tyr loses both his sword hand and his monstrous friend, while the hatred of Fenrir for the gods who have so abused him will now grow ever stronger. This is one of the saddest tales in the long string of the broken oaths and broken friendships which litter the ancient story.

Actions have consequences, although it seems the gods have so far believed these could be avoided. Too many rules have been broken, too many laws disregarded, and the finely balanced harmony of the universe goes spinning out of control. The time comes when Fenrir, as foretold, at last breaks even that magical chain. Then, he will kill the oath-breaker Odin and finish his vengeance by swallowing the sun. Jormungandr will arise, carrying the ocean over the land. Hel will unleash her army of the dead and the world-wide apocalypse the Norse called Ragnorak will bring utter ruin to gods and men.

When I was younger, I remember only being afraid of Fenrir,  Jormungandr and Hel, those black monstrous terrors, that break down of order. The rationalizations presented for Odin’s actions: “the ends justifies the means” seemed an inevitable part of the cruel, cynical "realism" that was part of adulthood.

Now, re-visiting the story, I have had the dizzying experience of seeing the old black and white change places. My heart breaks for Fenrir and the other stolen children; I can better understand the natural forces they represent. With a shock of recognition, I see Odin’s lies, his self-service, his delusion of total control, and also have a spine-tingling vision of how some forces are too huge for gods—or men—to imagine they can command.

  

 ~~Juliet Waldron

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