You MUST rewrite to make something good.
That’s one of the great myths of publishing and is this chapter’s topic. So hang on, this could get interesting.
First off, I want to repeat clearly what I said in the previous chapter:
No writer is the same.
Let me repeat that with a few more words.
No writer works or thinks the same way, and there is no right way to work. Just your way.
That includes speed of writing, style of writing, and most importantly, how you handle rewrites of what you have written.
So, to make sure we are all speaking the same language, let me define a few terms that Kristine Kathryn Rusch and I have used for a long time now, and I will try to use in this discussion.
REDRAFT: That’s when you take the typing you have done and toss it away, then write the story again from your memory of the idea. When you are redrafting, you are working from the creative side of your brain.
REWRITE: That when you go into a manuscript after it is finished in critical voice and start changing things, usually major things like plot points, character actions, style of sentences, and so on. When you rewrite like this, you are working from the critical side of your mind.
TOUCH-UP DRAFT: When you run through a manuscript fixing small things, things you wrote in notes while writing, things your trusted first reader found. Often very small things or typos. This draft takes almost no time, often less than a day for a full novel, sometimes only a few hours.
SPELL-CHECKING DRAFT: Since so many of us work with our grammar-checkers and spell-checkers off, we need a spell-check draft, often done before given to a first reader. This often takes a an hour or so for a full novel.
Now, let me say right up front here that I am a three-draft writer. Most long-term pros are that I have talked to in private. Not all, since we all work differently, but a vast majority of the ones I have talked to use a process very near mine.
My process: First draft I do as quickly as I can, staying solidly as much as possible in my creative side, adding in things I think about as I go along, until I get to the end of the draft. Again, I try to write as fast as the project will allow since I have discovered a long time ago that the faster I type, the less chance I have to get in my own way and screw things up.
Second draft I spellcheck and then give to my trusted first reader.
Third draft I touch up all the things my first reader has found and then I mail the novel or story. If my first reader hates the story, I toss the draft away and redraft completely.
That’s my process. I am a three-draft writer. (Unless I need to redraft, then I am a six-draft writer.)
Some more basic information about writers before I go any farther. There is a way of describing and dividing writers into two major camps. Taker-outers and putter-inners. In other words, a taker-outer is a writer who over-writes the first time through, then goes back and takes things out.
As a putter-inner, I write thin (my poetry background still not leaving me alone) and then as I go along, I cycle back and add in more and then cycle again and add in more, staying in creative voice, just floating around in the manuscript as I go along. Some people of this type make notes as they go along and then go back in a touch-up draft and put stuff in.
Okay, so terms down, on to the major topic.
So, what’s the great myth about rewriting?
Put simply, our colleges and our training and New York editors and agents all think that rewriting can make something better. Most of the time this is just wrong, flat wrong when it comes to fiction. It might be right with poetry, or non-fiction or essays, but with fiction, it can hurt you if you believe this completely and let it govern your process.
But again, all writers are different, so sometimes a writer just works with a ton of rewrites. Or at least that’s their public face.
As Algis Budrys once said to me about rewriting, “No matter how many times you stir up a steaming pile of crap, it’s still just a steaming pile of crap.”
So, let’s take some new writer hoping to write a book that will sell at some point. This writer does the near impossible for most new writers and actually finishes the book. That’s a huge success, but instead of just sending the book off and starting on a second book, this poor new writer has bought into the myth that everything must be rewritten before it can be good.
All beginning fiction writers believe this, and you hear it in comments like “Oh, it’s not very good yet. Oh, it needs to be polished. Oh, it was JUST a first draft and can’t be any good.” I even hear that come out of some newer professional writer’s mouths. I never hear it from long-term pros (over 20 plus years making a living).
Of course, for the beginning writer, the first book just isn’t very good most of the time. Duh, it’s a first novel. Let me refer you back to Algis Budrys’ comment. More than likely the book is flawed beyond rescue, but the writer won’t know that, and the first reader won’t be able to help “fix” anything besides typos and grammar.
So, what is the new writer to do at this point with a finished novel? Simple. Mail it to editors who could buy it. (I’ll deal with the “Need an Agent to Sell a Book” myth in a future chapter.)
That’s right, I said mail it. To a New York EDITOR. (I can just hear the voices screaming now. “But, it’s no good! It needs a rewrite! I can’t mail something that’s flawed to an editor!!!” And thus the myth has a stranglehold on you.)
The great thing about editors is that we can’t remember bad stories. We just reject them and move on. Most of us, over the years and decades, have bought so much, we have a hard time remembering everything and everyone we bought. So you have nothing to lose by mailing it and everything to gain, just in case it happens to be good enough to sell.
Just because the book is bad doesn’t mean someone will come to your house and arrest you. Editors do not talk about manuscripts that don’t work, and no one can shoot you. So get past the fear and just mail it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
One true thing about writing that is a firm rule: There is no perfect book. (No matter what some reviewer wants to think.)
Also, there is a very true saying about writers that I will deal with in another chapter. Writers are the worst judges of their own work. Why is that? Because, simply, we wrote it and we know what was supposed to be on the page. It might not be, but we think it is. We just can’t tell.
So, after the book is in the mail to a number of editors, start writing the next book, go to workshops and writer’s conferences to learn storytelling skills, learn business, and meet people. But keep writing that second book. Trust me, it will be a lot better than the first one, especially if you just trust yourself and write it.
When it is done, go celebrate again, then fix the typos and such and mail it to an editor who might buy it, and then start writing again. A writer is a person who writes.
Rewriting is not writing. Yeah, I know what your English professor tried to tell you. Putting new and original words on a page is writing. Nothing more, and nothing less.
And what is amazing is that the more you write, the better your skills become, and with each story, each novel, you are telling better and better stories. It’s called “practice” but again, no writer likes to think about that evil word.
Robert Heinlein’s business rules have worked for many, many of us for decades and decades, and his rules go simply:
1) You must write.
2) You must finish what you write.
3) You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.
4) You must mail your work to someone who can buy it.
5) You must keep the work in the mail until someone buys it.
Those rules do seem so simple, and yet are so hard to follow at times. They set out a simple practice schedule and a clear process of what to do with your practice sessions when finished. But for this chapter, note rule #3. Harlan Ellison added to rule #3. “You must not rewrite unless to editorial demand.” Harlan: And then only if you agree.
Let me be clear here. Trust a New York editor if they ask you to rewrite. Not an agent, not your workshop, not your spouse, no matter how loving. But if a New York editor, who can pay you money for your book, asks for a rewrite and sends you a rewrite letter, you do EXACTLY as they say, fixing the things you agree with and telling them clearly why you didn’t agree with other things. Do not add in more stuff, do not rewrite to your workshop. Just do what the editor asked and send it back. New York editors are super readers, they know their book lines, they know their markets. It’s their day job, so if you have a project that comes close and they want a rewrite to get it on house target, do it. Nothing more. And only what you agree with, as Harlan Ellison said.
An agent can not write a check for you, has no book line, and wants everything to be an easy sell. Do not rewrite to agent suggestion. (More on that in a future chapter on Agent Myths.)
Speaking of Harlan, many of you know that over the decades he has tried to prove this point (and many others) to people. He would go into a bookstore, have someone give him a title or idea, then on a manual typewriter, he would sit in the bookstore window and write a short story, taping the finished pages on the window for everyone to read. He never rewrote any of those stories. He fixed a typo or two, but that’s it. And many of those stories won major awards in both science fiction and mystery. All first draft, written fast, in a window while people watched every word.
I know, I was going to publish a three-volume set of these award-winning stories written in public back when I was doing Pulphouse Publishing, but alas, he was still writing them, a new one almost every other week at that point, and the book never got out before we shut down. He’s done enough since then to fill two more books at least.
Every writer is different. I would have a tough time doing what Harlan does, but alas, it does prove the point that rewriting does not necessarily make a story better. And when you win as many awards in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and mainstream fiction as Harlan has, you can argue with him. But trust me, if you are rewriting everything to death, that will never happen.
So how come rewriting makes stories worse instead of better?
Back to understanding how the brain works. The creative side, the deep part of our brain, has been taking in story, story structure, sentence structure, character voice, and everything else for a very long time, since each of us read our first book. It’s that place where our author voice comes from, where the really unique ideas come from.
The critical side of the brain is full of all the crap you learned in high school, everything your college teachers said, what your workshop said, and the myths you have bought into. It is also full of the fear that comes out in “I can’t show this to friends.” Or, “What would my mother think?” That is all critical side thinking that makes you take a great story and dumb it down.
In pure skill level, the critical side is far, far behind the creative side of your brain.
So, on a scale of one-to-ten, with ten being the top, the creative skills of a new writer with very few stories under his belt, if left alone, will produce early on a story about six or seven. However, at that point the writer’s critical skills are lagging far behind, so if written critically, a new writer would create a story about four on the scale. So take a well-written story that first draft was a seven on the scale, then let a new writer rewrite it and down the level comes to five or so.
I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a great story ruined by a number of things associated with this myth.
For example, take a great story, run it through a workshop, then try to rewrite it to group think. Yow, does it become dull, just as anything done by committee is dull.
Or worse yet, take a first chapter or two of a novel to a workshop and watch them ruin a good work in progress. Rule here is never let anyone see a work in progress. Ever. Run from workshops like that, and read-aloud workshops. All worthless, even for audience reaction. (More in a future chapter about the myth of writing workshops.)
I helped start and run a beginners workshop when I was first starting out. None of us had a clue, but we were all learning fast. I would write a story a week (all I could manage with three jobs at the time) and mail it, then turn it into my workshop for audience reaction.
That’s right, I mailed it before I gave it to my workshop.
And I sold a few stories that the workshop said failed completely, which taught me a lot, actually. If I had listened to them, I never would have made some of those early sales.
If you would like to see a first draft of one of my early stories, pick up Volume #1 of Writers of the Future. I was in the middle of moving from Portland to the Oregon Coast , actually packing the truck, when my then-wife, Denie, asked me if I had the story done for Writers of the Future that Algis Budrys had told me was starting up. I said no, the mailing deadline was the next day and I didn’t have time.
Thankfully, Denie insisted I go finish it while she packed. I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t even started it yet and had no idea what to write. I put the typewriter on a partially dismantled desk, sat on the edge of the bed, and wrote the story from start to finish having no idea what I was writing or where the story was going. Three hours later I finished the story called “One Last Dance” and mailed it on a dinner break.
That’s right, it was a first draft on a typewriter. No spell-checker, no first reader, nothing. Algis Budrys and Jack Williamson loved it and put it into the first volume, and because of that story, I ended up meeting Kris a couple of years later after Denie and I had broken up. I also got lots of wonderful trips and money and a great workshop from that three hour draft.
All because I had the courage to write and mail first draft. I trusted my creative skills, I trusted my voice, and I was lucky enough to have someone who gave me support at that point in the writing.
Another point: Every year, editor Denise Little and I prove the same point again to early career writers. We force them to write a short story overnight to an anthology idea and deadline, and those quickly written stories are always better than the ones the same writers wrote before the workshop.
Even though I believed this in theory and with my own writing, I was shocked when this happened at the first Denise Little workshop. It has happened every year since. Only one writer, who loves rewriting, was better rewriting than not. Only one out of almost 60 writers now. Again, all writers are different, but for the most part, the human brain works the same for most of us.
The creative side is just a better writer than the critical side, no matter what the critical side tries to tell you. Remember, the critical side has a voice, usually a voice of restraint and worry, but the creative side, as Kris likes to say, is your two-year-old child. It has no voice of reason and no way to fight. But if you let the child just play and get out of its way and stop trying to put your mother’s or father’s voice on everything it does, you will be amazed at what you create.
One more point.
Every writer is different, granted, but I have only met a few writers who really, really love to rewrite. Most find it horrid and a ton of work, but we all, with almost no exception, love to write original stuff.
If you can get past the myth of rewriting, writing becomes a lot more fun. Following Heinlein’s Rules is a ton of fun, actually. And you end up selling a lot of stuff as well.
However, this myth is so deep, I imagine many of you are angry at me at this moment, and trust me, even if you get past this myth in private, out in public you will need to lie.
That’s right, I just told a bunch of fiction writers to lie. Go figure. Maybe you don’t need to go as far as Hemingway and tell people that you write standing up. But you need to hide your process. I know one writer who at writer’s conferences tells people with a straight face he does upwards of ten drafts. I knew better and one day, in private, I asked him why he said that.
He just shrugged. “I like making my audience happy, so I tell them what they want to believe about me. It makes them believe my books and stories are worth more if I tell them I rewrote them ten times.”
So, out in public, you will hear me say simply that I am a three-draft writer. It’s the truth. I write a first draft, I spell-check the manuscript as a second draft, and I fix the typos and small details my first reader finds as a third draft.
And after 90 novel sales and a hundred plus short story sales, it seems to be working just fine. For me, anyway. Every writer is different.
But if you are rewriting and not selling, try to stop rewriting and just mail your work. You might be stunned at what happens.
Just remember, the writing process has nothing to do with the finished work. Never tell anyone you “cranked that off” or that it’s a “first draft.” Let them believe you worked like a ditch digger on the story, rewrote it 50 times, workshopped it a dozen times, and struggled over every word. Won’t hurt.
And getting rid of this myth for yourself sure might help your writing. And make writing a ton more fun.
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Notice below that I have added onto this series of chapters a donate button where you can donate if you feel these chapters of this upcoming book helped you in some way and you want to keep me writing them and putting them up here. And if you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this article along to others who might get some help from it. Every week I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on agents, bestsellers, workshops, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.
Thanks, Dean
Thank you Dean. Thank you so much.
Dean,
I want to thank you for having the self-confidence to dispense good, practical advice that nobody else admits to. And in the nick of time.
Sifting through writing tips, editorial nit-picking and dire warnings that the world is full of nubile nazis, trolling to nail anyone who dares to stray from this week’s fashionable style of expression, has nearly paralyzed me.
I see now that the source of my angst was a teeny segment of the writing (not the reading) world — the wannabee professional editors and recent attendees of night-school Writing For Moderns 101 — who can be completely discounted, as I’m self-published, and intend to remain so.
Thanks for correcting my focus. I won’t lose it again.
Holy Moley! My biggest hang-up has always always been making a plot happen. Ideas, characters, settings: no sweat. What to do with them: no clue. Hard to make an outline when I don’t know which way the story goes myself. I’ve written non-fiction with an outline, and then jumped around to fill the outline out. Again: no sweat. But it never even occurred to me that I could just start writing fiction sans outline, and jump around as necessary until I had a plot. I just banged out the first draft of a new short story, in an unfamiliar genre. Its still unfinished (I must be a putter inner), but the bones are all there. Thanks a bundle Dean, your advice is golden.
Thanks for all the useful information, Dean!
If you follow this rule and self-publish, then how do you know if your work is ready? There’s no editor/agent to send the manuscript to, so it’s hard to get any that sort of feedback.
Do you just trust yourself and self-publish?
Grant, just trust. But have a couple of good first readers to find typos and mistakes. Not to edit the story, but to find simple mistakes. Then put it up and let the readers decide over time.
Hi Dean
Thanks for an excellent post. I have but one question.
If a writer keeps writing and sending out his touched up first drafts to editors, could that writer earn a bad name for himself if he sends out 50 works which aren’t actually that good and hence spoil any chance of publication in the near future?
I’m just wondering how editors/slush readers would react from seeing the same name in the slush pile over and over again.
Thanks
Chris
Chris, actually, it happens so rarely that it shows the editors the writer is working hard and more than likely getting better and the editor starts trying to help the writer and cheering for them. A new writer showing they can work and be consistent is so rare, it gets editors trying to help and telling other editors about the writer, only in a good way. I know, I talked about the few that did that when I was an editor with other editors of the time. It’s why I encouraged people when I was editing Strange New Worlds to send more than one story. Remember, editors don’t read stories that don’t work. But we remember fondly the writers who are working hard and trying to get better. But it is very, very rare.
I was sending a story per week for a long time to Asimov’s, and at my second convention after a year plus of doing this, I had one of the editors at Asimov’s come up to me at a convention, all happy to finally meet me, telling me how much he liked my stories and was just hoping every time that he saw a package from me that it would be the right story so he could be the one to break me out. I was stunned. I figured, like you did, they would be hating me by that point, but this editor had come looking for me to make sure I kept going. When I became an editor, I finally understood. It is so rare, even though my stories were not up to snuff yet, the editors WANTED to buy something from me because I was working so hard at it.
Dean,
You’ve changed my life. Thank you. I can’t tell (I probably don’t need to either.) you how disheatening it is to be told that I’m probably not going to make much more than two grand a year off of my writing and that I need to write for three years to get a novel out.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I wish I had read this three years ago.
Laura, just don’t think you have found your normal method yet. The key is to never do any of the taking out or putting in in a critical voice. All has to be done in creative mode. A person who adds in tends to cycle while on the first draft, constantly going back and then moving forward, all in creative mode. A person who takes stuff out tends to write a single draft with notes, then on the touch-up, they notice that they have repeated huge bits of information, put in entire scenes that are not needed, that sort of thing, and just yank them out. And first readers catch a lot of the repeated information as well.
But the key is to never do anything in critical voice. Trust the creative mind and mail it. That keeps all of us from dumbing down stories by rewriting in critical voice and making them “polished” or “better” when we are actually making them dull and same.
What really scares me is the writers who have come up with grammar and spell-checkers turned on while they write. Wow, talk about a jerk into critical mode every time a computer programmer somewhere tells you that your character is speaking in non-Oxford English. I’m always amazed anyone who has those turned on can write a story that make sense, let alone sells.
Cheers
Dean
Kim, I agree completely. I only rewrite for editors when, and after, they have made an offer on a book or story. Never before. Guess I should have made that a little clearer. And I’m with you and Harlan, only if I agree.
I usually trust editors to know what’s best for a book to make it more marketable, but alas, not all editors are the same skill level either. On an obscure work-for-hire project, I had an editor who was fresh out of college and wanted me to change about a dozen things in this work-for-hire project, all of them against what Hollywood would allow I was certain, and all of them stupid. So I sat on the book for three weeks, then mailed it back to the editor with a glowing letter about how all the changes really helped the book. Of course, I hadn’t made a one of them. Book sailed right through, since the editor had no memory of what she had asked me to do.
But that case was the exception. Most editors I have worked with over the years have been great super readers and made suggestions that helped a book become more marketable to readers. But like you, I’ll never rewrite unless the story is under contract.
Thanks for the comments.
Cheers,
Dean
Thanks, Brad, for everything, and the great comments. And no, I don’t mind if you put a link to this site. Not a problem at all.
Actually, I’m surprised I haven’t gotten more anger on this one, since so many writers hold this myth so close to their heart. I try to challenge those writer to go find out the truth behind long term professional writers, writers with 50 or so books and twenty or more years writing and making a living. The truth is 95% of the time they rewrite like I do, or something very similar. I have met only one very long term writer who actually rewrote in critical voice a number of times. But only one. But again, every writer is different.
What’s sad about this rewriting myth is exactly what happened to you. This kills writers for two reasons. First off, the rewriting makes their stories dull and same, and thus the rejections kill the spirit after a time. Now understand, back before I got serious and started writing a story a week (after reading about this very topic from Bradbury, who doesn’t rewrite much when you get him to tell the truth), I used to rewrite like crazy, and I hated it. I wrote in notebooks, scribbled out pages, typed them up, rewrote them again, typed them again, and so on. From 1974 until 1982 I produced about two stories a year with this method and they sucked. It was only when I gave up the rewriting and allowed my creative voice the freedom to just roam that I started getting better rejections and then sales. It got fun in 1982. I hated writing before that and wasn’t even certain why I bothered.
So again, thanks for the comments and such. Very much appreciated. And caution standing your ground in a debate on this. This is a topic better just left alone because of the emotions involved and how fantastically deep this myth is. And remember, in public, lie about this. You are a multiple draft writer, remember?
Cheers,
Dean
Steve,
Actually, as you talk with more long-term pros, you will discover this is the method they have worked themselves to. Again, not all, and lots of younger pros with four or five books out still buy into the rewriting myth. For example, Kris and I talked about Heinlein’s Rules down at a small writer’s conference in Florida a year or so ago. Of course, Rule #3 on rewriting got the most anger and comments. Then right behind us, Stuart Woods got up said flatly (after Kris pinned him down in a question) that he doesn’t rewrite at all.
But out in public you have to pin us down or get us in private because of the anger involved with this topic, and the belief systems.
Cheers,
Dean
David,
Yup, I have teeth marks in my lips a bunch at writer’s conferences when writers tell me things like that. Best thing to do is nod your head in understanding and just walk away. Four books, that’s great! Man are you getting some good practice in. Oops, used that word practice in a writing conversation. Sorry.
Great job.
Cheers
Dean
Emily,
Yup, every writer is different, and you clearly don’t get lost in rewrites or have a workshop help you rewrite or other silly things that kill people on this myth. And you seem to have found a method that works for you, which is great. Again, no correct way to write, just the way that works for you.
None of us can hold a novel in our heads. Heck, by the time I reach the end of a book, I have no idea at times what I put in back in the beginning and always surprise myself when I do the spell check draft that I wrote something. This is also a problem with me and a very bad memory. If I don’t trust my creative voice to get something in where it belongs, or don’t cycle back the moment my creative voice tells me it needs to be in there, I just won’t remember what or why I wanted to add anything. And thus, I will screw it up for sure because I can’t hold a novel in my mind either. Half the time I can barely figure out what I want to write in the next scene, and the other half I don’t even know that. I just trust my creative voice and type.
But again, every writer is different. Glad you have found a way that works for you that doesn’t cause massive amount of pain and grief and keeps the creative voice working. It will be interesting to see which method you are using though twenty novels from now. Keep firing.
Cheers
Dean
Yeah, poems gave me the first clue about this as well, but I didn’t learn the lesson for eight years after poetry tried to teach it to me. I would usually (back in the mid 1970′s) send off three poems at a time. One that I had rewritten and rewritten and struggled over and that I thought was my best work. Another that I had sort of worked on, and a third that I considered a toss-off, a first draft and usually sort of silly.
I always sold the third one, the first draft. Always. 28 poems sold and it was always the third one. Never sold what I considered one of my “good” ones, which not only proves to me I should never rewrite, but that I am the worst judge of my own work.
I sure wish this lesson would have gotten through to me in the 1970′s instead of the early 80′s. I wasted eight good years there.
Cheers
Dean
Thanks, James. Always up for being yelled at. (grin) Sometimes time does force all kinds of learning lessons for me as well. I got into a mess one fine May where through me not realizing what had happened and also being kind and saying yes to editors who wanted to move up deadlines, that I had five books due in one month. I realized this the first week in April. Talking about combining speed with no rewriting, the first two topics of these chapters, I managed to turn in all five books in May, on time and on target. I think I slept for most of June, however. But all were done quickly, all done with my normal “three draft” method, and the last one written in seven days, sixty pages the last day and e-mailed to the editor so he would have it at 9 in the morning on Monday morning. That was a pure first draft novel. Editor’s response on my answering machine four hours later after reading it was “Perfect.”
Yup, I’ve learned this lesson over and over and over.
Alastair, glad the “bet” is working for you guys. It sure worked for me and Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Worked for years, actually.
Cheers
Dean
Jeff, yup, every writer is different. And your way clearly works well for you, so no issue with it at all from me.
And I find that writing more invisible style is also the hardest for me as well.
My point is that newer writers just shouldn’t jump into thinking they must rewrite (or write slowly to write well) just because that’s what they have heard. Every writer is different and each writer has to find what works, what allows them to get to the selling stories and books inside them in the best way for them.
Believing in a myth that everything must have ten drafts won’t help many writers just as believing that not rewriting at all is the only way won’t help many writers. But writers have this fear of experimenting, of practicing, of finding out what works and what doesn’t work and do every story the same way they have heard they “must” do it. That’s what I try to fight against, by offering another side of all the myths given by college professors and reviewers. There are as many ways of creating selling fiction as their are writers. That’s what makes this really fun, actually.
Thanks for the comments and the other side of this coin. Very much appreciated.
Cheers
Dean
Kelly, sort of interesting how practice works that way, isn’t it? (grin) Another ten novels down the road and the writing now will show weakness, and so on, if you keep learning. I’ve noticed that all the way along. And our skill level seems to jump, even though I understand it doesn’t work that way in reality, if feels that way. Skills and such seem to take jumps upward. Another fun thing about writing, the more we practice, the better we get. Shocking. (grin)
Cheers
Dean
You have exactly pointed the the problem with beginning writers, Brad. Revision is not practice. Creating new words is practice. You are right on the money.
And so few writers early on even begin to understand the term redrafting, meaning tossing out the tool used to tell the story (the manuscript) and just creating a new tool. Early on the words are gold, and need to be polished. Nope, sometimes when the tool you have created to transmit the story in your mind into other people’s minds is flawed, the only way to fix it is to toss the old tool and just redraft.
AJ (Algis Budrys) hit it right on the head when he said that no matter how much you stir and mix a steaming pile of shit, it is still just a pile of shit. You can’t fix or polish a manuscript that doesn’t work, you can only toss it away and fire at the idea again from memory, not trying to recreate the flawed tool you created the first time, but do it again.
Let write a new post on the front page about how I deal with redrafting and why it works at times.
Cheers
Dean
Wow, did I hit a button with you. Remember, every writer is different. Do what works for you. If revising is working and you start selling doing that, keep right at it. No problem as far as I am concerned.
But wow, did you spout the myth perfectly. And made my point perfectly about how much anger this myth causes, which no matter how you write your story, you should never tell anyone. One draft, three drafts, or a dozen drafts. Only the final product makes any difference.
As for being taught this since the beginning, again my point. Clearly you don’t understand how English professors work and how they are trained.
And yup, under this name, I am known for media work like Trek and Men in Black. And proud of it, to be honest. But I haven’t done a media project now in six years (except editing Strange New Worlds for Pocket) and have made a nice living with my fiction all this time. Hmmm, wonder what I have been writing?
Submissions as a resume?? Well, clearly you have never set behind an editor’s desk. But that belief system will keep the system from being too clogged with your work, that’s for sure.
Thanks a bunch for the comments. I do wish you luck, whoever you are. A point: You might want to sign your posts if you stand by them. Normally, I never let an unsigned post through, but your post was so perfect for proving a few points I was making, I decided why not. But in the future, take pride in your stance. It’s valid for you. Heck, I believed it myself for eight long years of no sales.
Cheers
Dean
Thanks for the complements, James. Kris often thanks me for the same thing when she wants to kill someone. (grin) Actually, I took the comment from the post about Heinlein, Clarke and all the other non-rewriters being geniuses as a complement, since I sell and don’t do much rewriting, I must fit with them.
But, of course, as you mentioned, that ignores the fact that all of us, including the writers the angry poster mentioned, all started as beginning writers. For some reason, beginning writers think all of us who are selling must have always been that way. Best thing we can do is just tell them in different ways that we went through the problems and early stages as well, that we were all clueless in the beginning, and here’s a general road to walk forward. I don’t try to make anyone drink any Cool-aide I put together, I just observe other pros, talk with them, follow my own progress, and report in.
But being called a “genius” just because I can sell without rewriting, because I have thirty years of practice behind me, just makes me laugh. I’m just learning and pounding the keys like everyone else. Because I have sat in editor chairs, publisher chairs, and full-time freelance writer chair for twenty years, I tend to have a cross knowledge of the business side at times that others don’t. But that often does nothing but just get me in trouble.
My stuff still gets rejected just as every writer does. I still fail at some manuscripts just as every writer does. I’m just like everyone else, doing it my way, plowing forward, working to keep the checks coming.
Cheers,
Dean
Steve (P), I completely agree with your comments on Hollywood, of course. Been there, worked a number of projects (no where near as many as you) and managed to escape without killing someone. Luckily, I just thought it was all so stupid, I couldn’t stop laughing most of the time.
So my attitude is if they, meaning Hollywood, want one of my books or stories (I love option money), I take the money and make sure the check clears. Past that I don’t much care to even deal down there in LaLa land. Too crazy for me, which is saying something. (grin)
Steve (L), good post in response. Thanks. Very well reasoned and I’m glad you posted it. It won’t help the original poster because when a person is so vested in a myth that they get angry when you challenge it, they are mostly lost. I hope whoever the writer is becomes a major writer someday, because I hope that of everyone. I just don’t hold out much hope, not because he or she won’t do it my way, but because he person has a huge wall up to any sort of new ideas and learning, and in this business, you really have to be able to look around, open your mind, and learn. You don’t have to do it any specific way, but you do have to at least reasonably think about all the ways and then pick what’s best for you as a writer after trying other things to even see if they work.
Thanks again for the reasoned response.
Cheers
Dean