Creative vs. critical voice

I’ve been reading Dean Wesley Smith’s article entitled: Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing (http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4477) and it’s making me think about creative versus critical voice. What Dean says is that we should always write in creative voice even when editing.  Furthermore, he doesn’t believe in the editing we all think we have to do—draft after draft after draft all in the name of improvement.  I’m puzzling over this because of how many drafts I’ve done on my trilogy and what I’ve accomplished—for one thing I know that I did not stay in creative voice.

My husband says the first draft of The Moonstone was the best. It meandered all over, with lots of description with no hook at the beginning. I changed it because I wanted to have an agent pick it up—and so I had a hook in the first line. It didn’t go over the requisite 65,000 words. The first pages moved rapidly into the plot line. Did an agent pick it up? No. But by then I was on my way to cutting and slashing, taking out descriptive passages that “didn’t further the narrative” and making sure that the plot moved forward at all costs.

Dean writes his first draft, corrects for mistakes and typos and so on and then hands it to his reader—of course he’s a professional, having written numerous books. We can’t all do that, especially as debut authors, can we? And what about staying in creative voice? I’m not sure I understand how to do so since my internal editor is  strong and opinionated. Clues need to be noticed when we’ve left creative voice, I suppose—I ran some changes by my husband recently—I took out articles, ‘the’ specifically, since I had two of them in a sentence. When I read the sentence with and without ‘the’, the one with flowed better. Maybe that’s a way to decipher the code for creative or critical—reading aloud…

One thing I can say is, if I feel energy behind what I’m writing then I should keep going. If not, wait until the muse is there again, whispering in my ear.

What do you think about creative versus critical voice? Do you know when you’re in one or the other? How many drafts do you do?

long time...

It has been nearly a month since I've had the time or the wherewith-all to even think about posting a new blog! Despite the unpacked boxes stretching from floor to ceiling in the basement I have decided to go on with my writing life. Whether I can write anything worth reading is another matter altogether!

I am editing my fantasy novel (you remember--goddesses? Finna and Catriona?) once more after getting it back from the editor. It is now divided into three books, a trilogy, to be marketed accordingly. And...since it takes place in the Highlands of Scotland I am pursuing the Scottish agent and publishing market. Don't know if this will get me anywhere--for some reason I feel that people might read a bit more in the U.K., is this true? All I know is that this is an avenue different from the forty submissions I've already sent out. So, I ordered the 2011 yearbook of agents and publishers in Scotland and will be working on this for the next few months...why can't I just go with self-publishing, you ask? especially after all the interviews and success stories I have on my blog. I think because lately I've been hearing horror stories about authors losing their rights and wishing they had not gone with this or that company. It takes a tremendous amount of research, not to mention cash outlay to go this route. But I am definitely not ruling it out. This book WILL NOT languish in a drawer for the rest of its papery life--something about my stubborn capricorn nature I guess. It needs to be sprung in order for me to get on with the other writing projects I have going, like the memoir I've been posting excerpts of on this blog.

So, that's this week's update. When I receive the yearbook I can begin the slog through it--but I've done it before and I actually find this part fun--it's the marketing of myself and my work that sends me careening into the abyss...sending out queries is the easy part.