Bloody Pages

Red pen scribbles all over bloody pages. First drafts are exquisite euphoria. Anything is possible. Nothing out of bounds. Her characters can try anything, be anyone.

She revels in sheer creation.

Revisions are a viscera of words. Her eyes ache and strain and cross; red ink swishes over everything. Why did she think that scenario worked when she wrote it? What’s with all this skipping around? How many times can she use the words handsome and soul in the first three chapters?

Words slam into her, make her dizzy. Coherence never comes from chaos.

And these bloody pages are chaos. Making sense of the noise is what makes the first major revision daunting. How can she improve what stays, massage it into tight, unforgettable prose?

Ambition forces her to try; and ambition is usually her undoing. Ambition is an unattractive quality in a woman. She isn’t supposed to want or strive or expect.

Voices burble through her weak fissures. Nobody will read this. Why do you care who reads? Why can’t you stop making everything about you? Do you know how many people are trying to do what you’re doing? That’s already been done. It won’t work.

She stops talking about her work because talk robs it of meaning. It wastes energy she could pour into her stories, keeps her from digging deeper.

As painful as it is, she hacks to the bone.

She trashes words that don’t fit the frame. As she revises, she may rework discarded scenes and share them here. Even if she refuses to talk about her word baby, it’s hard to bleed alone.

Especially with this story, the most impossibly ambitious thing she’s ever done.

REVISION TRACKER:
CHAPTERS MARKED UP – 3
CHAPTERS REWRITTEN – 0
NUMBER OF TANTRUMS THROWN – 5

To see what Andra has been writing in series fiction, visit The Aftermath of Death, She Was Venus in Fur, Grief Out of Balance, For the Love of a Gun, Death by Toilet, Biscuits, Gardenias and a Funeral and Everything Dies.