Rethink rewrites

Rewrites have a negative connotation in the writing world, and when listening to some writers talk about them, you’d suspect they were on par with a root canal! I’m well up to my head in revisions for my SciFi novel right now, but you won’t catch me griping about them. Revisions and rewrites are just a natural part of the writing process. They are only as bad as you make them.

That is why I encourage fellow writers to rethink rewrites: They are your friends! Part of my equanimity toward rewrites comes from the fact that I had to literally rewrite most of my fantasy novel. I had made all my revisions, polished it up, and then BAM! My flashdrive died taking all my hard work with it. After that, rewriting small sections or even chapters is nothing. One of the things that got me through that crisis was this thought: It will be better than it was.

“It will be better than it was” should be every writer’s mantra when facing revisions and rewrites. No first draft is ever perfect. Mine are laden with spelling errors, incomplete thoughts where my fingers jumped ahead along with my brain, redundancies, repeated sentence structures, and other general errors. I type fast, and when doing that, there are going to be errors. That is OK! That is what the writing process is all about: getting words on page. And conversely the editing process is about polishing your story, catching errors, expanding on themes that you started to explore but didn’t fully give them their due, and so much more.

However, writers need to be honest with themselves when approaching revisions and rewrites. They have to accept their baby is imperfect, that sometimes they have to kill their darlings. This can be tough for some writers, particularly those new to craft. So instead of imagining yourself as a murderer, picture yourself as a momma bird; sometimes, you just have to push your babies out of the nest in order to ensure their survival and ability to thrive in a cruel world. You don’t want your book wallowing in its own filth: You want it to soar.

Perhaps, the best way to achieve that goal is to bring in an editor and beta readers. They can root out issues with a manuscript, which in turn can spark rewrites. For instance, I will be performing a partial rewrite on my first chapter. When three beta readers (one of which is a professional editor) say it’s slow, it is slow and needs addressed. Heck, when I went through my printout, I knew they were right. There are other areas that I will be addressing, too, many of which I knew were problem even before I sent out the manuscript to my beta readers; however, I knew they would offer suggestions that would get my brain fluids going and provide me with a new viewpoint: the viewpoint of a reader.

Beta readers and editors have a tendency of opening our eyes to aspects of a work that don’t work while also providing valuable insight into possible fixes or alternative directions. Without a doubt, they are valuable tools in the revision process; however, some writers take things too far and do everything beta readers say to an extreme.

To those writers, I provided these sagely words: Take all advice with a pinch of salt. Not all advice or critique will be something you want to implement into your final draft. With that said, take all critique, the good and the bad, courteously. Then, when it comes to final revisions, consider whether certain advice works with the story you are trying to tell.

The main key to rethinking revisions remains the need to switch your mindset. Editing and rewrites can be fun! They allow you to tweak or play with sections of your novel — to try something new. I will be playing with one of my later fight scenes in my SciFi novel. While rereading it via printout, it struck me as being flat, especially compared to another fight/flight scene earlier in the novel. I hope to try out several different changes in the scene to hopefully make it more exciting and suspenseful. It truly will be fun, not painful — and that is all about mindset. I know when I’m done it — not just the scene, but the novel — will be better.

So rather than focusing on the present and all the effort, which can be daunting, involved in revisions, focus on the outcome: a piece that tells a good story, is actually enjoyable for the reader, showcases your talent, and possibly gets you noticed by a publisher.

So godspeed on your edits.