Dystel, Goderich & Bourret » our office http://www.dystel.com/blog Fri, 23 Jun 2017 16:41:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.15 Broken Glass and Other Painful Metaphors about Revising http://www.dystel.com/blog/2015/09/broken-glass-and-other-painful-metaphors-about-revising/ http://www.dystel.com/blog/2015/09/broken-glass-and-other-painful-metaphors-about-revising/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2015 17:58:19 +0000 http://www.dystel.com/?p=11929 August tends to be a quiet month in publishing but the past couple weeks have been anything but here at DGLM. The building is doing work on the roof, so we’ve enjoyed a constant racket of drilling, hammering, and buzzsawing. Not to mention dust showers everywhere and occasionally the stench of propane. It was supposed to take just one week, but then they broke some windows in the process. And not just windows – the very ancient tall skinny skylights loom over our entire office! Replacement panes had to be special-ordered, and now the workers are back, hammering, vacuuming, and moving drop-cloths around as they hustle through their repairs.

All this reminded me a little bit of the revision process. It can be torture. It goes on forever! It gives you a headache! You have so many other things you’d rather be doing! And just when you think you’re finished, you realize a beneficial reworking in this part of your story messed up a plot point several chapters on. Back to the computer…

But, just like our roof work – which they tell us is for asbestos abatement, yikes – it’s gotta be done. Revisions lead to a better, stronger book that will stand up to criticism. Maybe you suffered a little broken glass along the way, but now your book is brighter and cleaner, and full of light!

 This metaphor is done now, and we hope the workers soon are as well. In the meantime, stick with it, all you revising writers!

 

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