Revision and Re-vision + opening lines, literary equity, & newsletters

So many drafts, let's walk through them together!; muse & the marketplace; equity database; great american novel; baldwin fellowship; newsletter faves; survey question; delicious crackers

Greetings readers & writers,

Happy spring equinox! I’ve been reveling in the sunshine this week, after several gray and rainy weeks. New England is experiencing what is often known as “fake spring”: a weird temperate week or so in March that makes an innocent person think maybe spring is just around the corner. The rhubarb is poking up, chickadees are making a nest above our front door, and the ground bees have begun their warm-sun-loving frenzy. And yet we have snow forecast for this weekend.

I struggle with shifting gears and expectations. Sometimes it’s because I have an idea of how I want a thing to go and its just not going that way. Other times its the other extreme: hyper-planning mode and mental juggling that is hard to downshift from.

As in life, so in writing. I’ve been working on revision lately and am bumping my head up against these mindsets. I’ll know how I want a story to feel, but a feeling doesn’t always make a story. I have lots of plans but only so many words and characters to fit them into.

It can be helpful to think of revision as not just polishing up a raw story, but a sense of “re vision”; taking a fresh look through the eyes of both what your project currently is and what your goals for it are. In some cases, you may have to re-think critical components of what you thought the story needed, to match what you want the story to be. As an example, I thought I’d share the evolution of the opening lines of the story I’ve been working on for the anthology. Buckle up!

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I started working on “All the Time in the World and None at All” in early December. I knew I wanted it to be about a therapist and a time traveler. Think Time Traveler’s Wife but with a nurturing therapeutic relationship, instead of a co-dependent romance + what traveling through time does to a person’s psyche. Look, when it comes to short stories, I have a tendency to try to pack as many ideas into as few a words as possible.

Draft 1:

January 1, 2000

Anjali spent the first afternoon of the new millennium, strolling through the crowded Chinatown street market. Glittering confetti swirled in the gutters and around her boots as she walked past stalls piled high with pungent green onions and earthy mushrooms, prickly rambutan and shiny red apples. The colors and smells threading the temperate weather made her feel as if winter was already thawing into spring. A beginning.

First crack at it: I almost always get into a story through sensory details. I could feel, smell, see the market she was in, the sense of hope. But it gave no hints about who the character was or her situation. What was this story about? Good question. Also… I only have 4000 words. I have to make sure every one of them counts.

Ps. Does anyone else write questions into their work as they’re trying to feel their way through a story (“a beginning”? yes? maybe?)

Draft 2

January 1, 2000

Y2K had not killed her. In fact, as everyone around them scream-counted down to what could have been Armageddon but wasn’t, Anjali kissed a man she’d only just met. He tasted like champagne and had a nice laugh. She thought she might want to kiss him again. She hoped he’d call. It was a new millennium. Anything was possible.

This felt stronger, more to the point. It immediately tells us who Anjali is, her outlook, her willingness to take risks. But I struggled to get the actual story — the one with time travel — started from here, before she meets the time traveler.

Draft 3

January 1, 2006

The time traveler is late.

It is 3 AM and Anjali is at her office, despite the federal holiday and winter-darkness outside. Despite the ludicrousness of being in her work heels in the middle of the night. But the time traveler only comes for an appointment once a year and she is determined to be professional. If not, she might have a psychotic break.

The time traveler doesn’t have a name, at least not one he’s given to her….

Thanks to an initial round of feedback, I realized the story needed to start later and in media res¹. This is a time travel story, it doesn’t need to be linear! This is the draft where I found my first line. This opening immediately sets the stage, both for the kind of story this is, Anjali’s character, and her relationship to the time traveler.

I’m a discovery writer; up to this point, I still didn’t really know what the full story was going to look like. I tried out different time travel tropes to see what fit. None of them, it turns out. I had a sense of the vibe, the setting, the circumstances I was aiming for, but hadn’t quite grokked how to get there. Feedback pointed to building up the time traveler’s character, so that was my next attempt.

Draft 4 (or maybe 4000th by this point, I don’t know anymore)

January 1, 2006

12:01 am

The time traveler is late.

3:05 am

Sometimes he found himself staring at the sky and forgetting what time he was in. Haze, cloud, stars. Sometimes it seemed as if he could feel the earth turning beneath his feet, time unspooling around him. One moment, he was in his hometime, sweating in his winter gear, waiting for his transfer. Now here he was in a New York City that no longer existed, skyscrapers looming up around him, slush in the streets. Then he was 18,000 years ago, when there was no calendar. Only ice, a thousand feet thick.

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The doctor is in her office, despite the federal holiday, the abysmal hour, and the ludicrousness of being in work heels in the middle of the night….

After a lot of trial and error and basically a complete rewrite (or several), I figured out the structure: both the therapist and the time traveler’s points-of-view, braided tightly together. I started experimenting with how to portray them side-by-side, part of which became using different tenses and specific section breaks.

Bringing in the time traveler’s POV right at the beginning also became an efficient way to work in my beloved sensory details and some world-building. You’ll also notice that the characters no longer have names — they are now just “the doctor” and “the time traveler,” which gives the story more of a timeless vibe.

Drafts 5 & 6

January 1, 2006

12:01 am

The time traveler was late.

3:05 am

Sometimes he finds himself staring at the sky and forgetting what time he’s in….

After two more rounds of feedback and more big revisions, the opening still proved solid. But as part of a bigger shift towards the time traveler’s story, I took the suggestion of flipping the tenses I’d given my characters. By giving him the active (present) and her the grounded (past) tense, it shifts the reader’s perception of who these characters are because of when they are in relation to each other and the movement of the story.

This is where I am now. The story feels close to completion but I’m still 250 words over word count, so it’s getting one more pass from the anthology’s editorial team. Did I incorporate every piece of feedback? I did not. Do all stories need three or four rounds of feedback? Nope. This one is particularly ambitious and it’s for a group project, as it were, so I have both extra support and extra incentive.

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The truth is, I wanted to write about revision to remind myself that this is doable, as I’m shifting gears again to work on a project where I’m back of the stage of wait, what is this about?? It takes time and self-compassion and a through line: making sure you’re writing towards—and preserving—what you want the story to be. Because a story is more than just a plot or a character or a cool, sci-fi set piece. It’s the sum of its parts. And revision is where you get to make that beautiful math total out.

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Writing/Marketing Resources

• Attention querying authors! The Equity Directory is a database of BIPOC literary agents created by Literary Agents of Change to help authors and illustrators find and connect with BIPOC agents and to foster community between BIPOC agents and their publishing peers.

• The Atlantic has taken a crack at defining some of the Great American Novels of the last 100 years {free link}. I was very pleased to see a number of speculative fiction novelists on this list. Can you spot them? Any books you think they missed?

• Baldwin for the Arts 2024-2025 Fellowship is now open to applicants from the global majority! Founded by the incredible Jacqueline Woodson, a Baldwin Fellowship includes a one to two-week private residency, exclusive use of a solo workspace, daily meals prepared by a local chef, and all transportation costs.

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The Muse & the Marketplace

Are you going to The Muse in May? I’ll be there giving TWO sessions this year, Where the Speculative and the Literary Meet on Friday and Writing Like a Parent, Parenting Like a Writer on Sunday! It is pricey, but it’s a great conference if you can swing it. If attend, please come on by and say hello!

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Reading Corner - Newsletter Edition

I am always so grateful that you choose to open my newsletter! Here are some other newsletters that are current auto-opens from me:

• Happy Dancing from Charlie Jane Anders

• Blog Updates from Nicola Griffith

• Multiplicity from KW Onley

• The Third Place
  from Max Gladstone

• Whatever from John Scalzi

• Hot Dish with Sohlafrom Sohla El-Waylly

• The Practicing Writer 2.0: A Newsletter from Erika Dreifus

What other newsletters should I subscribe to? Share your faves!

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Speaking of newsletters…

I’ve been thinking about creating a sub-newsletter, linked to this one, for short essays on speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, etc. mostly in books and storytelling. It would certainly start as free, but that section specifically might turn paid, depending on how much work it is.

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My favorite thing right now:

A friend generously brought a box of Top Seedz Crackers to an event as a GF offering and these. are. ridiculously. addicting. Like, I bought a box this weekend and they’re already mostly gone? They’re not cheap, but they feel fancy and are delicious plain, with hummus, or with your current favorite cheese + a schmear of jam. Heaven.

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After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted.

― Willa Cather, from My Ántonia

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You’re awesome and don’t forget it. Thanks for being here.

~Allison

Writer & Marketing Coach
Keep Writing, Keep Connecting! Substack | Facebook | Website | BlueSky | Anthology

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1. in media res: beginning a story (traditionally an epic) in the middle of the action