Evon Davis

I’ve been devouring Carlos Castaneda’s books again.  They definitely teach a path toward power if one is willing to take it serious, study, pay attention, and put it into practice. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that for me being an impeccable warrior-sorceress is more important than anything else I could possibly do in my life, because it directs and oversees everything else. 

For example, writing can become a warrior-sorcerer’s discipline, which makes the writing practice more powerful, but it doesn’t work the other way around.  If you make writing the higher priority, it diminishes what can be gained from the practice of sorcery, which in turn probably diminishes the writing practice.

I’ve been suspecting it for about a week now, but I fully realized today, that my latest novel has reached the point of being over-workshopped.

I’m a firm believer in getting feedback, especially from people who know something about writing (others you have to take with a grain of salt).  It helps to know if a piece of writing is having the intended effect.  But at some point it crosses a line from suggestions that can truly improve the novel, to suggestions that have nothing to do with the craft and are only the reader’s personal opinion about how the story and characters should be written.

At that point, it’s a matter of splitting hairs and workshop feedback has diminishing returns.  Here’s an example:  my novel is set in the UK and one of the characters sometimes says, “Bloody hell,” which people in the UK really say, but one (american) reader thinks it sounds silly and I should take it out.

Secondly, although one of the rules is “show, don’t tell,” sometimes you just have to say, “she was frightened.”  I mean, you can only have a character’s heart racing and pounding so many times in a novel until they start to sound like they’ve got a congenital heart defect.

Although we want to know the character’s emotions and bodily reactions, some of that should be obvious from the situation.  If the character is fidgeting in her seat, craning her neck to look out the window, and asking about the dancing lights in the sky, it should be obvious that she’s curious.  We don’t need the author to then tell us that she’s curious about the dancing lights.

I’ve finished revising of the first 9 chapters… 33 to go.  And I’m seeing that there’s still room for improvement, but not every suggestion that’s been offered is useful at this point.  One person likes it one way; another likes it the way it is.  Who decides?  Uh… I guess that would be me.

And I’ve decided I am not going to have my characters emoting in every other sentence.  That, in my mind, is excessive.

For those who have never reached the point of being overworkshopped, the simple realization doesn’t mean it suddenly becomes easier.  I’ve made up my mind that this novel won’t be workshopped anymore, but I still have to decide which of the suggestions to take seriously, and which ones to ignore.  That comes down to confidence and that’s something most writers struggle with.

But at some point an author has to be able to look at his or her writing and believe that it’s good.  I’ve got too many voices in my head right now.  Time to shut some of them up.