The Autistic Writer: Revision Process
When I write a first draft, especially for a novel, I go right through without reviewing anything. No fixes, no editing, no correcting. I may or may not use an outline, or adhere to same if I start with one, but there is no pausing during the drafting process.
I learned this years ago when I first tackled NANOWRIMO. (National Novel Writing Month.) Before that exercise forever changed the way I approached my work, I’d choke everything with my own skewed sense of perfectionism before ever finishing a whole book.
In fact, I have only one example of a completed novel from my time before NANOWRIMO, and I have never published it. Never intend to. Because even with all that stopping and starting during the “first” draft, it’s still a mess.
Now, I finish one “blind” draft, and let it sit for two or three months, depending. Then I begin the first of several editing and revision passes until it’s ready to publish.
No fixed number of revision rounds. I’d put the average in the 7-10 range.
Perfectionism is its own problem to which a writer must no succumb. But if one is inclined toward to an exacting (and exhausting) standard, best to save it for the revision process of your work.
It’s during revision that I am fixing something that doesn’t work. While I know longer am a perfectionist, I am very much in tune to both the art and science of finding and “feeling” what works, what doesn’t, and cleaning it up. Improving it.
This more productive approach, as well as my ill-advised former perfectionism have their roots in my Autistic mind, I believe.
Part of it is pattern recognition. On some preternatural level I read through my work and come across a wrinkle in the shirt, if you will. There are certain patterns and flows to my best writing, and when a sentence, paragraph, sometimes a single word breaks that pattern, I know it, and I change it during the revision process. I sand rough edges, sharpen dull stretches.
Though I am no longer a pure perfectionist, the revision process allows me to hone in quite narrowly to nuances and beats that the reader may or may not actively detect, but that I will always know are there, and hence try to make “smooth.”
Revision, in many ways, is Autistic. Autistic in a positive way.
My former first draft perfectionism was, I feel, also part of the Autistic mindset, but in the negative. The judgmental and the unfair aspects of Autistic perception that, if ignored cause more harm than good.
Obviously all authors have drafting and revision processes. Those not on the Spectrum draw the distinction between the two as well. But from my own perspective, it is revisions, all rounds of them but the later rounds especially, that benefit most from my Autistic tendencies.
The Autistic Writer: Pick a Genre, Any Genre
Like many Autistic people, I have difficulty lying. Hell, in many cases I have difficulty merely fudging facts.
I can do it, and have done it on occasion. Which is more than can be said for certain people on the Spectrum who physically cannot say something that isn’t literally, 100% true to the best of their knowledge. Nevertheless I need a pressing, usually moral reason to flat out lie. Most of the time an intense greater good is at stake.
Fudging comes somewhat easier. If for example I am experiencing a bit of Autistic burnout and no longer want to attend an event or meet up with someone, I can tell the other party that I have a head cold instead. In both cases I am not feeling well enough to participate; I am just shifting the true nature of my reasons for feel poorly so it takes less effort to explain.
On the whole, accuracy is a crucial aspect of my everyday life.
As I wrote in a post several weeks ago, this trait of mine bumps up against the need to market from time to time. It’s especially palpable when it comes to placing any given one of my novels into a genre.
Genre is the first marketing decision an author makes. The greatest thriller ever written will not do well if shelved with the Westerns. Categories matter. A great deal.
As does my need to choose the correct one for my novel. It’s not straight-forward for me.
Most of my novels to date have some element of fantasy/magic to them. Yet when it comes to claiming to have written a fantasy novel, I hit a snag. Why? Because there is a long tradition of tropes and characteristics indicative of fantasy fiction that don’t appear in my stories.
This goes beyond mere distinctions such as high fantasy (Think Lord of the Rings) vs low fantasy (think American Gods.) I am 100% certain I do not write high fantasy. Yet every time I think a novel of mine would fit into low fantasy, I read about other expectations and trends within that subgenre that would exclude my work.
This doesn’t hurt my feelings per se; I write the stories I need to tell, regardless. Yet to label my novel as a “work of low fantasy” suddenly feels inaccurate. Dishonest. An attempt to deceive book shoppers.
So I classify it as “general fiction,” because it is virtually impossible to be wrong under a huge umbrella such as that. “Speculative fiction,” works at times.
That means of course that someone looking for a fantasy read will likely never see my book among the ocean of novels out there. Despite a fantasy element being key to the story, I dare not call it “fantasy.”
Let’s be real though. A Greek god visits a modern community theatre? (Flowers of Dionysus) Fantasy. Low fantasy, yes, but fantasy even if it doesn’t check every box technically.
A young woman with the power to physically see human promises? (The Beacons I See), or the adventures of assassinated president James Garfield in the afterlife? (There Is Pain Here)? Fantasy is fair enough, no? They sure as hell aren’t police procedurals. And though, as I said, any could fit into some form of speculative fiction or general fiction, for marketing purposes they could be in fantasy. Should be in fantasy, even if I fudge the details around the edges.
True, fantasy readers are known to be quite protective of traditional definitions of fantasy, and I am not on a crusade to change their minds. But I’ve got books to sell!
All of the above are in fact now tagged under “fantasy” as a secondary genre in most online stores I use. I allowed myself. Eventually. And as genres evolve and change with time, it may be that calling my previous books fantasy isn’t as problematic as it might have been 30 years ago. Yet as an author that is also Autistic, this little voice in my mind will always say when I tag my work with a genre:
“Are you being totally honest here?”
The Autistic Writer: Executive Dysfunction
Executive dysfunction is common among Autistics. It is often defined as follows: “a behavioral symptom that disrupts a person’s ability to manage their own thoughts, emotions and actions.”
That sounds quite involved, but really it is a collection of symptoms and difficulties that impede one’s ability to make and follow through on plans and thoughts to various degrees. This effects the writing process in various ways.
Using a list of common signs of executive dysfunction from the same link as above, let’s explore how the condition could effect writing.
Being highly distractable.
Self-explanatory. Words don’t write themselves, no matter how easy it sometimes feels to compose something.
–Focusing too much on one thing to the detriment or other things.
Not generally an issue with my writing per se, but like any endeavor, obsession in the end leads to decreased, not increased quality and productivity.
Difficulty planning or undertaking tasks if the end cannot be easily visualized.
A big one for me, and it strongly relates to last week’s post on “black holes.” Not mere a matter or the end of a story being unknown, but the real-world results of creating a volume in the first place.
I suspect this is also why I rarely get it together to write for and submit to magazines and other periodicals. Each has it’s own format and expectations, and it feels overwhelming to even begin.
Difficulty motivating yourself to start a task that seems difficult or uninteresting.
Now if I cannot find a project interesting, I shouldn’t be attempting it in the first place, if I expect readers to enjoy it. But aspects of the publishing process apply here as well. Gathering a books meta data, cover creation, and the ever nauseating marketing plans. I have to push the rock up that hill just to get started on those vital but less flashy elements of book creation.
Impulse control issues.
This could be much worse for me, but it plays a role. A movie or a game may call to me several times instead of taking on the writing session I had planned. An excellent cure for this for me is to do most of my work at the local library; if I go through the effort to get there, I am certain to get the intended work done.
Struggling to move from one task to another.
More so an issue for me when inertia from other activities has set in. If for example I have been hiking earlier in the day, I am less likely to put in the work to write, simply because it’s a total shift in brain activity.
Trouble explaining your thought process clearly because putting it into words for others feels overwhelming.
Again, rather obvious. In may not usual be a though process, but I need to keep it slow and steady when I am writing particular work, or be ready to liberally revise. What words I string together in my head often seem clumsy on paper. Less of an issue for me in non-fiction than fiction, though I couldn’t tell you why.
It’s no secret that I have eventually overcome these various executive dysfunction issues in pursuit of my writing. My catalog proves it. But any given time, particularly with my current novel in progress, I have to trudge may way through the mud-of-inactivity to the point of exhaustion before I finally hit the stride to write regularly again.
And plenty of other things remain undone, that I wanted to do, because of various aspects of the Autistic executive dysfunction that never fully leaves my side as I write.
Never fully. I do however manage to chip away at it, like today.
The Autistic Writer: Results and Black Holes
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The Autistic Writer: (Not So) Hyperfixation
A majority of people on the Autism Spectrum experience what are called hyperfixations. These are concepts, activities, or other stimuli to which the person pays concentrated, prolonged and in depth attention, often at the expense of noticing anything else while “zoned.”
Some hyperfixations are present in an Autistic person for a lifetime, while others come and go over time.
A similar bit not identical concept is known in the Autism world as a “special interest.” In this case, the passion for the subject is equally intense, but to participation/consumption of it is perhaps less noticable, or more “moderate” as the rest of the world defines the term.
Almost anything can be/become an Autistic hyperfixation/special interest, writing included.
For me, however, this isn’t the case.
It’s true; I am an Autistic writer who doesn’t hyperfixate on the act of writing.
Ironic? Perhaps a little. And to have such a hyperfixation may have greatly increased my productivity over the years. (Though this is no guarantee.)
That being said, perhaps it is for the best that writing doesn’t draw the lion’s share of my life all of the time, everywhere.
What’s interesting about this observation is that even before I was diagnosed with ASD, I considered myself a writer. Yet I bristled at the notion that writing should be an all-consuming obsession. This actually runs counter to the advice I discovered, especially online early on about the life of a writer.
“If you can imagine doing anything else with your time, anything at all, go do it. You’re not a writer.”
I realize that this sentiment deals partially with the notion of making a living as a writer, as opposed to just writing at one’s own pace. Nevertheless, it is a limiting philosophy, and one I hope writers of all types refuse to take to heart.
If you ask me, a writer should have at least one proverbial foot in the real, outside world, even if the rest of him is within his own personal Muse-populated mental metropolis. Being lost in such a place sounds at first blush like a great escape. To a certain extent suppose it would be. But if we vanish too far into our own thoughts, obsessed with writing and creating sentences to the point that we experience little else, what are we writing about in the end? To whom are we writing? Why waste the ink, if we can just compose epics within our head?
If you think this post sounds leans more toward the writing end and less toward the Autistic angle, you are correct to a point. But I wanted to address what has become an unfortunate stereotype of the Autistic genius, cranking out masterpiece after masterpiece merely by taking a few minutes to file reports from within our imagination where we lie ensconced.
Not only is this trope, (popular in Hollywood) woefully inaccurate in terms of the writing process, it is offensively simplistic as pertains to the Autistic experience overall; we are people, not prophets. Not myth and not magic. And even if some of us do hyperfixate on our writing, those of us who have even the slightest desire to communicate legitimate thoughts to the world realize it cannot end there.
As this series oft hath shown, my Autism influences my writing. But it doesn’t write it for me, in a vacuum anymore than my hand, while the rest of me sleeps could produce this article.
If you are reading this, hopefully you already were well aware of this. Yet if everybody knew it, I wouldn’t have been motivated to write this week’s entry in the first place.
Ty Unglebower 