This series of posts will turn into a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing.
But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised.
This third Sacred Cow article was published here in 2010 and I redid it once in 2011, but now it is slightly redone for the world of 2013/2014. However, this third incarnation hasn’t changed that much.
On many of these posts it is amazing to me as I redo them how far my beliefs have changed in a few short years. And how far publishing has changed as well.
That’s the problem so many new fiction writers have these days. Who to listen to, who to agree with? These myths are in all of us. Some myths are very, very deep and based in old publishing and what your teachers in school believed decades ago.
The key is to just step back and think it through, decide what path, what method, is right for you. Very easy for me to say, very hard for all of us to do.
The Myth, simply put:
You Must Rewrite to Make Something Good
That’s one of the great myths of publishing. And one of the worst and most destructive to fiction writers.
First off, I want to repeat clearly what I said in the previous two chapters in different ways:
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’s 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. This often comes from fear or from workshop advice.
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 half a day for a full novel, sometimes only an hour or so.
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 the manuscript is 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 “three draft” writers 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 if I just keep typing, 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.)
More Basic Information About Writers
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 done, on to the major topic.
So, what’s the great myth about rewriting?
First, our colleges and our training and New York editors and agents all think that rewriting can make something better.
Most of the time that 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.
Secondly, it makes writers think there is only one “right” way of writing.
And that if you don’t fit into that way and rewrite everything, you are doing something wrong. That kind of thinking kills more good writers’s careers than I can imagine, and I can imagine a great deal. And I have watched first hand it kill more writer’s dreams than I want to remember.
All writers are different, so sometimes a writer works with a ton of rewrites. Sometimes a writer just does one draft.
A Wonderful Conversation with a Master
One fine evening I was having a conversation with Algis Budrys about rewriting and why so many new writers believed the myth. He shrugged and said, “They don’t know any better and no one has the courage to tell them.” So I asked him if he ever thought rewriting could fix a flawed story. His answer was clear and I remember it word-for-word to this day: “No matter how many times you stir up a steaming pile of crap, it’s still just a steaming pile of crap.”
If you ever worry about not “fixing” a story because you didn’t rewrite it, just put that quote on your wall.
So, as an example, let’s take some new writer hoping to write a book that will sell at some point. This new 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. (It makes the new writer feel like a “real writer” if they rewrite because all “real writers” rewrite.)
All beginning fiction writers believe this myth, and you hear it in comments about their novel 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. It might be great, but it also might be crap. (Let me refer you back to Algis Budrys’ comment.) More than likely the first 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 or indie publish it yourself.
That’s right, I said, “Mail it or publish it.”
Awkkk!!! Has Dean lost it?
I can just hear the voices in your heads screaming now…
“But, it’s no good! It needs a rewrite! It might be a steaming pile of crap. I can’t mail something that’s flawed to an editor!!!”
Or you indie published writers are thinking…
“I can’t publish a book that’s flawed or readers will hate me!!!!”
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.
And if it isn’t, WE WON’T REMEMBER. Why? Because we didn’t read it. Duh.
And readers of indie published books have a wonderful thing called “sampling.” And taste. If the book sucks, oh, trust me, no reader but your family will buy it. And at that point you don’t have a “career” to kill anyway. (Future chapter on that myth.)
Just because the book is bad doesn’t mean someone will come to your house and arrest you if you mail it or publish it. Editors do not talk about manuscripts that don’t work and readers never buy or read them.
Honestly, no one can shoot you for publishing it.
So get past the fear and just mail it. Or publish it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. (What happens if it is wonderful and will make you a million?)
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. A future myth chapter.)
If You Don’t Rewrite, How Can You Learn?
You have to write new material to learn. No one ever learned how to be a creative writer by rewriting. Only by writing.
So, after the story or book is in the mail or published, start writing the next story or book, go to workshops and writer’s conferences to learn storytelling skills, learn business, and meet people.
Study how other writers do things.
But keep writing that second story or book.
And then repeat.
Trust me, the second one will be a lot better than the first one, especially if you just trust yourself and write it and don’t fall into the myth of rewriting.
When the second one is done, go celebrate again, then fix the typos and such and mail it to an editor who might buy it or publish it yourself, 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. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.
Putting new and original words on a page is writing. Nothing more, and nothing less.
— Research is not writing.
— Rewriting is not writing.
— Talking to other writers is not writing.
And what you will discover that is amazing is that the more you write, the better your skills become. 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).
Well, if you want to be a professional fiction writer, it’s time to bring the word “practice” into your speaking. On your next novel, make it a practice session for cliffhangers. Mail the novel and then work on practicing something different on the next story or novel. And so on.
Follow Heinlein’s Business Rules
I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.
I want to always be a writer, so I have, since 1982, followed Robert Heinlein’s business rules. And those rules have worked for many, many of us for decades and decades.
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 addition: And then only if you agree.
And, of course, if you indie publish, substitute “publish” in #4 for “mail” and let reader’s buy it. And then for #5 just keep it for sale.
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 and many are now in college text books being studied by professors who tell their students they must rewrite. But Harlan wrote all first draft, written fast, sometimes in a window while people watched him type 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.
If you want more on Heinlein’s Rules, I did an almost two hour lecture (15 videos) on how and why Heinlein’s Rules work and how they worked for me over the decades. It’s under the lecture series tab if interested.
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 or had a book read to us. 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 like a fish biting on a yummy worm. Your critical voice 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 storytelling skill level, the critical side is far, far behind the creative side of your brain. And always will be.
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 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. (Workshop myth coming in a future chapter.)
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. Why? Because I had no intention of ever rewriting it. I followed Heinlein’s Rules.
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 (electric) on a partially dismantled desk on top of a large box, 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 gone our own ways. I also got lots of wonderful trips and money and a great workshop from that three hour draft. And now, twenty-nine years later the story is still in print and I’m still proud of it.
All because I had the courage to write and mail first draft. Because I followed Heinlein’s Rules.
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 Example: Every year for years, editor Denise Little and I would prove that same point again to early career writers. We forced them to write a short story overnight to an anthology idea and deadline, and those quickly-written stories were always better than the ones the same writers wrote over weeks before the workshop. And many of those stories, first drafts, have been in published anthologies out of New York.
The problem was that even though Denise and I harped on that lesson for years, most of those writers would then just go home and write back to rewriting, making their stories worse. That’s how powerful this myth is.
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 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 or teacher’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 writing and 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 must write standing up because writing comes from the groin or some such nonsense. (He loved screwing with new writers minds.) But you do 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.”
In other words, even though the reality of professional fiction writing is often few drafts, readers still believe we must rewrite because they went to the same English classes we did. Duh.
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 100 plus novel sales and hundreds of short story sales, it seems to be working just fine.
For me, anyway.
Every writer is different.
If you are rewriting and not selling, try to stop rewriting for a year and just mail or publish 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 for seven years. Won’t hurt your readers.
But getting rid of this myth for yourself sure might help your writing.
And make writing a ton more fun.
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Copyright © 2013 Dean Wesley Smith
Cover art copyright Dennis Crow/Dreamstime
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This chapter is now part of my inventory in my Magic Bakery. I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.
I make my living with my writing. Sometimes I write these for fun, to entertain myself, sometimes I write them to help others.
Either way, if you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated over this last year. I don’t always get a chance to respond, but the donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!
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I just can’t believe that you rewrote your post on the myth of rewriting.
Nah, didn’t rewrite it. Updated it. And this is nonfiction. (grin)
Just being cheeky. I do like your updates. I think they clarify your meaning, which for me usually centered around your definitions.
I know I’ve definitely broken stories by rushing through the first draft to get to the revision. I think one of the worst pieces of advice in writing-dom is “Give yourself permission to write crap,” with the assumption it can be fixed on the revision. If you write it reasonably right in the first place, it may just need an edit. But giving yourself permission to write crap means that’s what you’ll probably have.
Yes! This.
Why do writers say this? I actually believed this when I wrote my first novel. I had it pounded into my head that the only way I’d get my book done was by blitzing through it and writing total crap. I had no idea what I was doing. My mind was confused and I ended up writing something that truly was utter poo. It was so awful that I ended up trying to rewrite the thing five times, totalling somewhere near 300,000 wasted words.
If it wasn’t for Dean’s and Kris’ blogs I’d be stuck in crap writing land. I’m so grateful to them.
I’ve seen writers so caught up in perfectionism in the first draft that I’ve told them “Give yourself permission to write crap” advice before. Just to get them going again.
The interesting thing? Once they give themselves permission to dive in, in other words go totally into the creative side without the perfectionist inner editor interfering, most times it does not end up being crap. The stories are quite good, because of the immersion in the creative side.
Perfectionism can be just as hampering as fear in writing. Bring the two together, fear that it’s not perfect? Forget about writing from the creative side.
To me, “Give yourself permission to write crap” is like the saying “Dare to be bad.”
Go write. Have fun with it. See what will happen. Every writer is different in how they go about the process. The only way to know what works for the individual is to try it.
Dare to be bad is spot on the money on this post. It takes vast courage (even though there is no real danger) to write something, trust the creative voice, and get it out there. It is far, far, far safer in your own mind to rewrite something until it actually is crap.
Creative voice seldom puts out crap. It’s the critical voice that thinks it’s crap because it goes against the myths.
So Dare to Be Bad.
Most writers buried in this myth have no chance at doing that. Every story to them is an event and must be “perfect” by some unknown standard.
Perfectionism can be just as hampering as fear in writing. Bring the two together, fear that it’s not perfect? Forget about writing from the creative side.
This is me. This is the thing I struggle with most.
I’ve been writing a long while. You’d think I’d be past this perfectionism/fear thing. Alas, I’m still looking for the trick that will give me better access to the creative side.
In the mean time, I just charge on through and do my best.
Courage to not rewrite, but just write the best draft you can and never look at it again except to fix what your first reader finds if you agree. There is no trick. There is only doing it.
But the real question is what are you afraid of? I have been convinced since 1982 that every story I write sucks. But I have also learned since 1982 that no one can come and kill me for a bad story and they have paid me more money than I want to think about since 1982 for my “bad” stories. And young parents have come up to me and thanked me because my stories got their kids reading. And on and on and on.
I’m also a perfectionist. But there is no perfect story, just as there is no perfect round of golf. All that matters is that the story is done and out there and you are moving forward.
Good eve, Linda!
Let me tell you why I, personally, give that advice.
See, there are some times when writing a story when you come acrossn a landmine. It might be a plotpoint, description, or something else you might feel you won’t be able to do justice. Some of us, when we get to such a stage, lock up. We feel we won’t be able to do it justice. That’d it’ll be too hard. That you’ll fail on the first hurdle. Hell, people can sometimes think this way about entire novels or writing a series.
‘Give yourself permission to write crap’ is not meant to make writers go ‘oh, okay then’ and write the rest of the story by rolling their face on the keyboard. It’s simply a ticket to any writer who feels that, should they *dare* fail at an attempt to write something, that the Literary Police will come and chop their hands off for treason against the Empire of Storydom.
DWS introduced me to a similar phrase. It’s ‘Dare To Be Bad’, and all it does is give writers the permission to cast aside their fear and give it a shot. It doesn’t mean that people can suddenly write novels in textspeak. It doesn’t mean that someone’s writing style suddenly flicks from well-crafted to ‘bullet points only hold be back, anyway’. It’s simply an excuse to the Internal Editor when it has a flair-up.
‘It’s okay if it doesn’t turn out as I wanted. I have permission to write crap’.
There seem to be two different types of writers here, imho. Dean says, “just write the best draft you can.” I think that’s the difference. If “Give yourself permission to write crap” means writing less than the best you can, ignoring the effort of putting into words what your creative mind is coming up with and just getting something down, telling yourself you’ll “fix it later.” Then you should stop “giving yourself permission to write crap.” This is what I was doing for years. I’m sure Harlan Ellison did not put stories in the window that said things like [Describe the room] or [something big happens here]. He made the effort to think of a description of the room and to come up with the big thing that happens when the story needed it.
I did that for years so I had to rewrite because my stories were incomplete and full of holes. It was always painful. Dean’s lectures on Heinlein’s Rules finally broke me of that and I have felt freer and more productive in my writing than ever before. I highly recommend those videos.
I don’t really see how you can push yourself to be complete AND write fast and still be a perfectionist. And like Dean says, you have to begin to trust yourself. But if “giving yourself permission to write crap” means letting go of perfectionism that slows you down, by all means, use it.
What I do now when I write is to pretend I’m only getting one shot, as if I’m writing in a store front like Ellison. It’s great.
Thanks, Linsey. Glad the Heinlein’s Rules lecture helped. Appreciate that.
Trusting your creative voice is so, so hard. Impossible for some, sadly.
And I like the idea of pretending you are doing it in a store front like Harlan used to do. Nifty.
Mercy &Love! What?!! This is the most box shattering read I have come across the entire year (or my entire life!) Woah! And the bit about ‘letting yourself write crap’ that is the most horrid! (Oh dear, I just used 6 exclamation marks) Before I heard that , my first drafts were good. After I heard that, they became drivel. Thank you so much for this. I have been delivered. Glory!
Well, not a clue if you think the article was stupid or really liked it. (grin) But either way, I appreciate the comment.
I wish I knew Heinlein’s words when I first started writing. As it was, I didn’t really start forcing myself to finish things until about three years in (and I only did so then because friends were nagging me). It’s been a decade since then. Finishing things still feels unnatural.
I can write solid beginnings that pique others’ interest—because that is what I’ve practiced. But endings? It’s gotten better, but I still have a “How do I do this?” sensation whenever I get to that point.
Rewriting is a different skill entirely from writing. (I know you said that, Dean, but I’m just phrasing it differently. ^_^)
My opinion: Redrafting to fix a story befits a writer with strong writing skills. Rewriting to fix a story befits a writer with strong editing skills.
I had a broken short story, wherein I could tell most of the pieces were there but things weren’t in the right order and some transitions were missing…but not which places in the story were causing those problems. I had to hand it to someone else (who actually gave pretty much all bad advice) before I could see the broken spots and I identify broken spots in others’ work for my job.
In my experience, it’s always easier to see things in others’ work than your own, but… I knew what I was looking for. I even recognized that displaced text and missing transitions were at fault. But I couldn’t see the specific spots in the story that needed moving or expanding until I got someone else’s input.
Was that “rewriting” per Dean’s definitions? I believe so. (I usually call it “revising”, myself.) But I don’t believe such rewriting is necessary to make a story good. And if my rewriting had failed to fix the story, I was perfectly willing to toss it all and redraft…even though I hate redrafting.
For me, a redraft usually end up with the selfsame problems that triggered the redraft in the first place…unless I sit down and attempt to rewrite/revise, first. So it’s probably a case in point about how all writers are different. ^_^ I know a lot of writers, and I seem more comfortable in critical-brain mode than most of them are.
A post on not doing rewrites that has a mistake in the title?
That snarky comment aside, I agree that rewriting can get a writer into an endless cycle of self-doubt that never leads to a decent rate of publication. I’ve been freeing myself from this myth gradually for some years now and I’ve noticed two things–I’ve been getting published more and I’m having lots more fun. I think the main reason writers hate rewriting so much that it destroys what they got into writing for in the first place, that playful love of creation.
I agree, Sean, and I loved my typo in the title (now fixed). Top Ten Sacred Covers… LOL Someone might have to write that.
I get that the ‘pros’ don’t rewrite. But what about Hemingway, and “The first draft of anything is sh*t”? Was he wrong? Or just a different type of writer?
I need to think about this. I’ve been writing fast, trying to tear through Draft1.0, in order to be able to start Draft1.1 I like writing fast, but I think I’ve been writing sloppy, with the expectation of a rewrite. To be able to write fast (c. 1k words/hr) but write well enough for spellcheck -> alpha / beta reader is a strange concept for me.
Hemingway was a notorias mess-with-new-writer minds because he got bored at all the same questions all the time. He told generations of young writers to stand up while writing because it would release the creative juices stored in their gonads and thus allow them to write better stories. And new writers believed him and wrote standing up. Not kidding. Women as well.
The true story was that he was a deadline writer (from his years of magazine work) and always waited until the last minute to start. And wrote one draft. For example, for his award-winning novel “The Old Man and the Sea” he was late writing it, had his editor camped in his house waiting, so he wrote it in less than two weeks, one draft with typos fixed on the manuscript. On a manual typewriter.
He also never drank while writing. Another myth. He drank between projects, however.
Women have gonads, too. Gonads are testes or ovaries.
Also, this Sacred Cow was the one holding me back the most. It’s been a year now that I’ve been following Heinlein’s Rules and I can’t get over how much more productive I’ve been–and how much more FUN I’ve had.
And after your public “ghost” novel-writing, I realized I didn’t need to outline, either. Woo hoo! Full speed ahead!
Thank you, Dean.
Didn’t know that. Interesting. And thanks, Marimba. Keep having fun.
Yeah, but sitting is more likely to be problematic for men’s gonads than women’s. Especially in tight pants.
So was Hemingway–not trying to denigrate the man’s legacy here–a lazy writer? If he was waiting until close to the deadline to write his books, then what was he doing in the years in between works? Getting drunk and adventuring, sure, but how does someone make a living like that and–without enough practice, presumably–write “classic” works of literature?
It just boggles my mind, because in my life–especially in athletics–I’ve seen firsthand how important constant practice is. I don’t understand how someone can write a book every two to five years and be good at what they do, just like no one would expect a football player to come in sharp after being out of the game for several years.
Is there an answer to this mystery here? Because honestly the Stephen King/typical spec-fiction writer mode of writing–just about every day with occasional breaks–makes a lot more sense to me, and seems a little less shady and suspect than the classic “literary” approach.
Adam, study Hemingway. He was a reporter. He wrote millions and millions of words. Just as with Dickens, most of it is not read. And he wrote little fiction, even though that is what he is known for.
I am a sprint writer like Hemingway. I can go years, and have, without writing a word of fiction. And then I write fast and hard for a time. No writer is the same. But I too, as a former professional athlete, don’t understand any attitude that you can do something without practice. The key with most writers, you don’t see the practice. I found it kind of sad that most of Elmore Leonard’s wonderful work of thirty years was ignored in his obits this week. He was a regular western pulp writer cranking out a lot of writing for a lot of years before he got “famous” suddenly. I love his westerns and have books of his short fiction.
I mostly do nonfiction (travel and history) and I found out long ago that rewriting isn’t necessary once you have enough experience to make sense and be organized the first time you write something. What is necessary is going through the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb and making sure all your facts are correct. That makes nonfiction slower than fiction. You also can’t make up stuff in the shower like you can with fiction.
I read a post by one travel blogger who claimed she went through “at least” fourteen drafts before sending a post to her editor. My B.S. detector went off big time.
Dean, when you’re acting as a putter-inner, floating back over a thin first draft and adding stuff. You don’t count that as rewriting?
I found the point you made in passing really helpful. Tonight I was reading back over an opening before continuing, when I realized I’d left out sensory details in the setting and some of transition stuff between lines of dialogue. It felt like my creative brain was engaged as I skimmed over and added that stuff, but I have to confess that I did find myself nit picking over some word choice issues. So then I was thinking I should have just gone to the end of the manuscript and put new words on the page. Yet, it turned out that I got about 1500 new words out of the putting-in.
Point being, it didn’t feel like rewriting. Second point, I’d never heard of putter-inners. I just thought I was wierd because I don’t follow the King method of deducting 10%. And maybe it does come from a poetry background or maybe it comes from writing fast and then saying, oh yeah, I forgot to add XYZ earlier. I hope that as I improve, I will learn to add XYZ as I go; thus saving some time.
Hans, if you add it in while writing, or make notes to yourself about going back and putting it in, the corrections come from the creative voice and trust those, if you are writing from the creative voice.
Writing in critical voice, all bets are off. (grin)
It’s called layering and I’m a chronic write thinner. My head holds too much info to get it all down in a go without losing the key threads.
See this post for a good description of layering, even if again, you have to realize all those who use this technique do it differently than others who use the same overall technique: http://pcwrede.com/blog/layering/
I’m about to finish my twentieth book (only five are full-length novels). I would suggest just a wee bit of caution with layering a lot of things into the same section. King did an excellent article on this over a year ago, saying you should leave at least SOME room for the reader’s imagination. He gives the example of Salem’s Lot when he describes the vampire’s manor (i.e. sensory images). You can go overboard if you’re not careful, but you alone know just how much is “over the board”.
http://www.wordplayer.com/pros/pr13.King.Stephen.html
I have to be careful in the opposite direction. I use a beta incessantly for one reason and one reason only: I have way too many people that love what I write and haven’t the foggiest idea what it means or what’s happening because I ALWAYS seem to err on the side of caution. My beta tells me where the communication breaks down so I can layer in a little more basic orientation for the story. I don’t just write thin: I usually start with an unreadable “sketch” of some dialogue/key actions and characters tagged script-style. Needless to say, I’m way bored with a passage before I layer in too much. I don’t layer in when the writing just flows and I remember to slow down while I write.
I freak out when I find I need to layer in, because it makes the writing on the page “THICK”, and I like thin, or… lots of white space/dialogue. But it is hard to get all five senses in POV/Setting and every thing you want and yet stay focused on an easy to understand story without going the “thick” route. I don’t know how Patterson does it. I know Stephen King hates Patterson’s writing and has taken shots at him for years, but I think Patterson does thrill scenes much better than King does. Midway through King’s “Desperation”, I was bored to tears.
I feel that workshopping, critique groups, etc., CAN be useful for a new(ish) writer, if you use them correctly. Don’t believe everything they tell you, don’t believe everything you think, and never show the same people two drafts of the same story.
I just finished getting a story reviewed on a critiquing website that shall remain nameless. Of the six reviews, one kept demanding to know where the “adventure” in this adventure story was (it was cerebral sf, not adventure), one almost defenestrated me for using adverbs and words ending in ‘-ly’ because editors apparently don’t buy stories with adverbs, and one was aghast that my first line was a piece of dialogue instead of a slam-bang opening hook. And one was a paean to my writing abilities. Go figure.
However, there are parts of the story they all left alone, and parts of the story where everyone made very similar critical comments. I figure the former are just fine and the latter might do with some working-over. Then I’ll check for typos and send it out.
This system works for me. I keep finding that I’m a taker-outer, and ofttimes need to bash or rearrange a story into shape once I wake up the next morning, so I’m not quite to the point of sitting in a bookstore like Harlan or like you, Dean. But I’ll get there, and I wanted to lay this “two-draft” system out as a functional alternative. Then again, between the two of us, who’s sold more stories?
Roscoe, no writer is the same as any other writer, but you might try trusting your own writing first for a year or so before putting everything through a workshop grinder. One of the myths coming up is about workshops. Stay tuned. (grin)
As a person who spent YEARS (and that is not an exaggeration 2008-2013) rewriting the SAME DAMN BOOK, I can vouch for Dean’s advice working for newbie writers. I found his site in the middle of my rewriting stupidity and resisted what he was saying for a long time. Finally, I made a promise last Christmas that my New Year’s resolution was to just trust Dean and make a go at it. I really didn’t think it would work, but I promised myself I would try.
On Jan 1 2013 I literally deleted the whole 120,000 word mess from my laptop and redrafted. I took a story that was about 5 different rewrites all stitched together in Dr Frankenstein’s lab and just trashed it.
The redraft (135k words when I was done) took me about six months (I got sick in May and then broke my ankle on top of it didn’t do squat for all of May or the first week of June, so actually 5 months considering I finished just before the 4th of July holiday here in the USA).
I work a lot and have 2 kids with the standard soccer/baseball/karate running around to do with them. Still got it down though. I struggled – not because writing is hard, but because i constantly wanted to edit – to rewrite. I resisted the urge even on the days I typed nothing because I was so scared it would be crap.
What a change when I finally got over it! It took eight weeks to write the first 30,000 words. But it got me over the hump. I saw it working finally and finished the last 100k in four months (minus the five weeks of being sick so really 3 months!).
The only problem? I am mad at myself that it took so long now that I see what I can do. Since writing the last word, I have spent about 3 hours doing spell check and a few hours fixing crap my first reader found. The biggest single fix took about a half hour – I had inadvertently messed up the timing of a few events so that characters were acting on events that hadn’t happened yet… ah the joys of fiction writing.
Minor stuff. Easy stuff. A total of maybe six hours to fix everything. Now I have a cover being made and all taught myself how to format everything.
Most importantly, after a little vacation (my wife forgot what i looked like – had to spend some time with her!) I’m back at it. 2 short stories in 2 weeks and another novel to be started this week.
It’;s awesome!
A thought about rewrites that occurred to me along the way someone might find helpful…
My plan is to publish and make money from writing. A living? I hope so, and will try my best, but I’ll do it even if it’s coffee money. The point is, I have to look at this like a business. If i write a short story, say, and my first reader says ‘this is garbage’, I believe him. Could I do a rewrite? Maybe. But it’s already crap. Better to move on. Rewriting takes longer than new words (at least for me). Why would I spend my precious time stirring the steaming pile of crap?
Dean says books (or stories) are NOT events. They are product just like the pizzas at the shop at end of my street. They don’t cry over one ruined pie. Dump it and start another. there is a loss of time and material, but trying to ‘fix’ the ruined pizza is probably going to waste more time and result in a less than satisfactory pizza.
So bake another one and move on.
I think I’m going for pizza now…
Joemontana,
I got a hunch you’re going to make it to that making a living with your writing. You have the drive and the ability to keep learning and those are the two key elements.
But I’ll see your five years of wasted time rewriting and raise you 1975 to 1982. Seven stupid years where I did the same thing, bought into the same myths.
So now, thirty-plus years later, I’m trying to point out to others that these myths are there. Thanks for the great feedback on how this is helping some find a better track.
And a more fun track, that’s for sure. Keep up the great push and having fun. You’ll make it.
That’s a great story, joemontana. I hope your story sells like mad
Don’t always believe that person who says your story is garbage. Send it out anyway. I had a friend who had written a story and asked my opinion, and after I told him, he said he had been thinking about submitting it to an anthology but now he didn’t think he would. I told him to do some basic tweaks and send it anyway, because you never know if an editor will like something until you send it to them. He did, and it got in.
I once made four kinds of corn bread for a party I was going to, with recipes I had never used before. One of them I thought was awful. I almost threw it out, but then I remembered that just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean other people won’t, so I brought it anyway. Two people at the party absolutely LOVED it. /shrug
I was so relieved the first time I read this post awhile back. I *hate* rewriting, revising, whatever you want to call it, and I ruined several completed drafts doing just that when first starting out (and no, I didn’t save the original files, which I’ve been kicking myself for ever since). For the most part, I’ve followed this ever since – out of twenty-some-odd stories out, I’ve only revised two. They were recent drafts, I knew exactly what the problems were, and the entire time I was going through fixing things I had this post in my head reminding me how easy it would be to ruin the raw writing with my revisions. Needless to say, I used an extremely light touch, and only where absolutely necessary, working as quickly as possible. I’ve published stories before that I wasn’t totally happy with (my editor liked ‘em, so that was good enough for me…it’s really frustrating that I can’t judge my own work, but very true), but these really did need larger changes than I’d normally make to make the stories work in my own mind.
I’m pretty sure the issues with those two stories were caused by my thinking too much…I wasn’t just letting the story go where it needed to go as I drafted, as I normally do. Had I done that, I wouldn’t have needed the revisions. My latest drafts are going just fine, because I’m back to not over-thinking them.
I’m a horrible liar. Probably not a good quality for a fiction writer…but it’s something I work on “fixing” daily.
And more typo’s! [sic] “And, of course, if you indie publish, substitute “publish” in #4 for “mail” and let reader’s buy it.” Let the reader’s WHAT buy it?
I do find that getting everything out in a blast helps immensely — I think the modern novel writer owes a huge debt to Nanowrimo, personally. However, often I don’t know what the book is about until the very end…at which point I have to go back and fix things throughout — remove some things that became extraneous, punch up others.
Multiple drafts from stem to stern have never appealed to me though.
Nice to get another update in the series. I know from my own writing that the story that comes out the first time is almost perfect. It’s when I let that critical voice take over that I end up not liking the story, or messing something. I know deep in my heart I should just follow Heinlein’s Rules, but I’m a back-slider.
I have a somewhat related question, about sending the work out or self-publishing it: if someone is asking for a critique, and the writing isn’t to professional level (i.e., loads of spelling, grammar and other mistakes), what would you tell that writer?
I see this a lot on message boards, and for the most part the writing is nowhere near professional level. Some is barely literate. I try to help, pointing things out, but I really just want to tell them they aren’t ready. Should I just hand it to them straight, and let it go at that?
When it comes down to basic English and typing problems, tell them to go take classes at their junior college. And then hire a proof reader who can fix spelling issues. Grammar issues are another matter. Often a writer’s voice and style are not grammatically correct and thus, but forcing them into some stupid English rule, you are killing their voice and making them sound the same as everyone else.
So caution. Fix typos. Get a proofreader to help them. Leave the grammar alone and let the story go out.
What you may consider non-professional may be just a proofreader away from a brand new voice in literature.
And thus, why these stupid myths are so dangerous to new writers. And why they kill so many possible voices.
I think that there was a post a long while back called “stages of a writer,” which was very good. This rewriting myth plays into stage 1 where all you are interested in are pretty paragraphs. With rewriting, at stage 1, you end up with a dreadful story with pretty paragraphs. Without rewriting, at stage 1, you end up with a pretty bad story with paragraphs that are pretty bad. You’re nowhere near a publishable writer either way, but without rewriting you are having fun and getting better.
Thomas E., I don’t agree much at all. Why I don’t agree is that as a writer, you are the worst judge of your own work. You have no idea what your creative voice is capable of producing. So everything you said is completely from the critical voice. I agree, you do learn by moving on, but you must put out your finish product even as a beginner to let readers see if it works or not. Don’t judge your own work.
I believe this myth was partially responsible for the twelve years it took to write my first novel. Sure, there were issues right from the start. I began it when I was sixteen and I knew nothing about writing except from what I learnt in school (precious little). Once I finally completed it, I decided to ditch the whole lot and start again because the rewriting was becoming a bitch. Then I completed once more and it was okay, but I ditched it anyway and started a third draft. This one took just over a year to write, but by this time I had gotten tired of writing the same damn thing over and over again, so I got through it and eventually ended up with something I was happy with. It wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly good enough.
Then I got to working on a series of short stories acting as a sort of prequel to the first book and my GOD did it feel good to be writing something else. By that time I had seen the original post talking against rewriting and decided to give it a go. And I ended up with a volume full of short stories that I’m very VERY happy with, and that never felt like a chore.
I’m now in the middle of my second full length novel, and it doesn’t feel as onerous as my first did at this point.
Wow, JRC, I’d have so given up far in the middle of that process you described. Wow, what torture you put yourself through. Wow.
So, it’s called “re-writing” only if the story is finished?
I guess I got that wrong until now.
Now I’m confused… While writing, I stop, read what I’ve written and often change a sentence, a paragraph or a scene before continuing the story. I thought this “method” falls under re-writing but you may have another name for it?
Franks, that’s called cycling by most pros, and about half the professionals I know do it. The reason it’s different is because you do that in creative voice, touching and fixing and getting momentum toward the new words. I cycle like that as well. But even cycling I manage to add in around a thousand words per hour. All creative voice. I trust me creative voice, not my critical voice.
Would you also consider it “cycling” to delete extra words? I tend to get over wordy during my first draft, and often cut that stuff out. (Along with adding in things I realize later that I need, fleshing scenes out, etc.)
My edits don’t take a lot of time, and like you, I do three drafts–original, spell/typo/conventions check, and then a final edit after the beta readers give me feedback. I never change plot or do heavy rewriting–that would just kill the fun.
Fixing typos and deleting an extra word here and there is not rewriting if done in the creative flow of the story. The key is stay in the creative flow.
Ah, ok, thank you.
I’m much slower.
Sometimes, though, I get into the flow (as those rappers call it) and write 200 or 300 words without stopping. And when I re-read them, they aren’t bad.
I think these moments will happen more often the more experienced a writer is. I look forward to that.
“If my first reader hates the story, I toss the draft away and redraft completely.”
So does this mean you’d throw out a 70k word novel if the first reader doesn’t like it, or do you mean short stories (10k words)?
Yup, with my first reader, if it flat doesn’t work, if it’s not more than a fairly easy fix, and she says it sucks, I toss it. What difference is there between a story 10,000 words or 70,000 words? A story is a story.
I get what you’re saying. I was just thinking how horrific it would be to lose a 70k word story as opposed to a 10k word story. It takes me about a week to write 10k words. For a 70k word story, about two months.
There was a guy on Writer’s Cafe (Joe Nobody) who said his laptop was stolen in a wal-mart parking lot. 100k word story… gone. Thief busted his window to get to it. Anyway, he said he thought it was backed up by microsoft word (online). Got on tech support and tried for hours but no dice.
Thus, I’m always backing up my stuff on seperate hard drives and even mailing it to myself in encrypted truecrypt containers. I’m so paranoid of hard drive crashes. I just don’t trust them at all. Maybe when I have twenty novels, losing one of them won’t be quite hard of a hit. A fender bender instead of a full on crash on the freeway.
How do you back up your stuff? I know you said you had a pc devoted 100% to writing. Do you backup anything online?
I back up to multiple thumb drives and then get it out of the house and onto other computers in other buildings.
Backing up online just has far, far, far too many risks involved for my tastes. (Not going into that rathole of a discussion. (grin))
So multiple thumb drives and other computers off site. And I always carry two thumb drives in my pockets at all times. Each has all my writing output on it.
Personally, I have an on-site backup hard drive with Time Machine, I every so often burn data DVDs backing everything up, and I subscribe to two services that auto-back-up changed files—but those last two are online.
Crashplan. Love it.
I bought the myth until I read a biography of Rex Stout. Stout is one of my favorite writers. He almost never rewrote his first drafts. He would wander around for awhile, staring into the distance and organizing things in his head. Then he would go into his study, shut the door, sit down and write until the thing was finished. And that was it.
I don’t know if you have to be a genius, like Stout, to accomplish this. But I’m aiming to be a one-draft or a one-and-a-half-draft writer.
Sarah, you will discover as you dig past the myths of great writers that few of them wrote more than one draft and then fixed typos. Not all, but most.
First, thanks for this post and this website. You are exceptionally generous with your time and wisdom. I have learned so much here.
I am unpublished, a newbie, save for a few scholarly articles. Since August 2012, I suppose I have been on what (for me, at least) is a fiction writing frenzy. And by reading this blog–telling people essentially to “get on with it” (writing, that is)–I was inspired to put my mind to my work. It started with a short story, then finishing an old abandoned novel. Then I wrote another short story. And since April, I have written two other novels and am about to finish a third. Sketching out ideas for the next one. All told, I have written around 280k new words of fiction over the past year. I have told nary a soul about this (except the spouse, who is supportive–and now the readers of this blog) due to your warnings about people’s reactions to “writing too fast.”
None of this is published–yet. But I do have a long-term plan for a series of novels and related short stories.
With the exception of the first short story (appx 4500 words), I have not gone back (yet) to edit all this stuff, except to do some simple proofing for typos, and even all that work remains undone.
But now I am confused about two things. First, I have lists of stuff (minor points, action–not big plot points or events) I want to add to the books. Like you seem to do, I have kept the lists as I have proceeded in my writing. I don’t always cycle back to put the stuff in, but sometimes I do. At first I thought this might be considered re-writing per your definition, but then I realized when I looked at my lists, the thought of going back into the work made me happy, even excited. I think my reaction tells me I’m still in creative voice when I’m working with/thinking about these lists. Or is this re-writing in critical voice?
Secondly, I have seen advice which exhorts writers to hire “professional” editors. Not copy editors or someone to proof but those that take the work and “tell you what works and what doesn’t” with your book or short story. To me, this sounds like paying money for a second (in addition to the one that already lives in my head!) critical voice. Then again, I am not a long-term professional fiction writer. Maybe I need the professional assistance? I just don’t know.
And, again, thank you.
Littlehound,
You are on the right track in my opinion. Writing. And having fun and being excited. So stay on that track and get that work out to either editors or get it out indie published.
Do you need some “editor” you could hire??? OH GOD NO!!!!! That’s a huge scam these days. If these so-called editors knew anything about being creative, they would write books themselves. So avoid at all costs. However, you will need a copyeditor. We all do to find basic mistakes we just don’t see and our first readers don’t see.
So have a first reader and a copyeditor. You can often find good copyeditors locally at newspapers and such who will work freelance for a few hundred per novel.
Trust your voice and keep learning. Learn craft, learn business, learn from everywhere and only listen to what seems right to you.
And most importantly, keep having fun.
Thanks! I AM having fun and am excited. And I will get my work out there, most likely indie publishing it, starting with that short story.
Just a short reply to Littlehound.
I do this as well. Finish a first draft, spellcheck, then go in and maybe add chapters that I wanted to while I was writing it. Still in creative voice. It usually does one of two things: fleshes out character or plot. One or the other. Story is everything. Sometimes I will write a story and make notes at the bottom (reminders) to flesh out their history a bit. No issues there. Padding out is fine as long as it is for the right reasons. Padding out just for the sake of word count (and no other reason) is a mistake in my book (no pun, heh).
I have been working real hard at following Heinlen’s rules – especially the finishing part. Today as I was thinking about my story before I sat down I started doing my ‘I should change this character to someone younger and restructure this as a YA story…’, but I stopped myself because I heard you in my head talking about critical voice vs. creative voice and so I just left the story as is (God that was hard to do because I really hated the story at that point). And then I wrote the next sentence and the next and by the end I actually liked the character I was going to change and I knew where my story was headed.
I really never knew how often I pulled out of the creative voice when I wrote until now as I force myself to stay in it and not rewrite — and you are right, it’s so much better and more fun once you let the critical voice go.
Thanks for all of these posts and the constant reminders.
I agree with your commenter who said some writers are better editors, and I’m one. I’ve sold 11 romance novels, one of which went out 18 times (to pretty big houses) and was rejected until I realized it needed a scene (I’m a putter-inner too). Added the scene, sent it to the same good house that had rejected it twice and sold it. I also agree that submitting a possibly-crappy book to a publisher is okay because there’s no harm done. But self-publish? No. Because if a buyer hates your crappy book, she’ll never buy another from you. Anne R. Allen, who writes a good blog too, says, “Kindle no book before its time,” because, thanks to Amazon, there is now a lot of crap out there.
Phyllis, we’re going to have to disagree because who is to say a book is good or not? You? Me? Some reviewer? Nope.
Readers decide and it’s a myth that one book can hurt a career. Oh, trust me, after a hundred plus traditional novels, some of which got completely trashed by New York (one had my chapters mixed with another writer’s chapters and published and I didn’t die or fall into a death spiral or anything.) One bad book by your opinion or mine does not make or break any career. Or even dozens.
Readers just won’t buy them. You must think readers are all suckers. Trust me, they are not. They can spot a bad book and not buy it.
Hell, critics think all of us bestsellers write trash by our very nature. (grin) In fact, if critics like one of my thrillers, I’m convinced I’ve screwed up. Grisham said that one night on Charlie Rose and he was spot on.
So your advice just stifles what might be a bestseller. Sorry, in my opinion, you and that Anne R. Allen person are flat wrong and giving out bad myth advice.
Trust the readers, folks.
It may simply be my lazy nature or the fact that I jumped straight to indie publishing without ever being in contact with traditional publishing, but rewriting has never been an issue for me. Write –> get someone to check it for spelling/grammar –> publish.
Rewriting just doesn’t happen. I’m too lazy, and with the writing time I have, I’d rather write new stuff. It wasn’t until recently that I really had a run-in with the traditional mindset of both readers and writers, and I was baffled. Scared, in a way, thinking about how I might have ended up in such an uncomfortable headspace.
So, thanks for blogging, and updating this series, and everything. I probably would’ve ended up listening to someone I shouldn’t have if I hadn’t found this blog.
Thank you!
I hear constantly that you need to:
- Write a draft
- Rewrite the draft entirely
I almost never rewrite and never entire books. Maybe there’s a few scenes that need to be changed because I discovered that I created a plot hole, but it’s rare.
I edit a lot, but it’s rarely more than rewording sentences and in dire situations removing sentences.
I just don’t write stuff that’s bad. If I think it’s bad, I discard it, because no amount of rewriting will save something that was horrible to begin with.
So happy to hear someone challenge this myth! Things just don’t work the same for everybody…
I am not alone! That’s what I do, with the addition of revising to “add more” because I tend write “extra lean” 95% of the time.
Great article!
I remember reading something about Asimov’s method of writing, and it really explains much about how he was able to write so much. He basically had a three step process — write, edit, done. He’d edit his work once and that was it. It made little sense to waste time on something that he considered finished when there were plenty of things that weren’t finished or started.
Yup, Asimov was one of the many who did that. And I agree. Why waste time on something that’s already done. But no matter how many major writers any of us can drag out that wrote like this (Hemingway, Dickens, Ellison, Heinlein, Asimov, and on and on and on), new writers will still think they need to rewrite everything because their English teacher told them to do it. Head-shaking.
Konrath has an interesting post today where he claims to have written and published short e-books in an hour while drunk, and made money doing so.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.ca/2013/08/guest-post-by-tim-myers.html
Of course they’ll probably sell a million copies now his pseudonym is outed
.
It’s a guest post. That’s not J.A. Konrath, but Tim Myers.
The part of the post I mentioned (basically the last half) is quite clearly written by Konrath.
At the end Joe chimes in and mentions his 4 ebooks in about 4 hours whilst drunk thing. He then asks other people to try it. Instantly made me think of Dean and his advice on not re-writing as well, which I’ve been following since January this year. I’ve now published a couple of stories that haven’t been re-written or edited in the way people expect and no one’s noticed. I mentioned it to a few trusted people and they think my best stories are the two untouched by the critical side. It’s taken them a little while to get used to me not being edited but they seem to be okay with it now.
I also did what Joe suggested and published an ebook last ngiht that took me 2.5 hours from idea conception to publication. It was fun and felt amazing and only needs to sell 84 copies to make me more money than I’ve ever made per hour owrking for anyone else. Not exactly hard to get 84 sales these days either.
Way to go, Jess!
Dean, do you ever junk a story midway and start redrafting it, or do you always wait till it’s done to get an opinion on whether it works or not?
Btw, I LOVE this post. I’m restarting my writing life after years of not doing much mostly because I didn’t want to rewrite anything (and had this weird idea that things were just fine the first time!).
Rachel, for the most part, meaning 99 out of 100 stories, I follow Heinlein’s Rules completely. Rule #2 is finish what you write. If my first reader hates the story, and thinks it will embarrass me, I toss it and run at the idea again. Seldom happens these days. Hasn’t in years, actually. Kris and I have a rule on our first reading. You can not like a story, but no story goes out of the house if it will embarrass us. That’s our marker.
Neither of us has fallen below that level in years and years. (grin)
However, I often go down wrong roads, back up, toss 500 to a couple thousand words, and run at something again.
Thanks, that’s helpful. I’m 20k into a novel right now and feeling like I should scrap it, but I suspect what I actually need to do is keep floundering ahead until my characters figure out what the heck is going on.
“Will it embarrass me?” is a great marker. When I started indie publishing about a year ago, I had my first ever completed manuscripts still on my hard drive–novels I wrote as a young teen. (I already had years of writing partial stuff under my belt at that point, but these were the first two books I ever finished.) And I’d always just figured I wouldn’t publish them because that’s the rule, right? Your first manuscript goes in a drawer where nobody ever sees it because it must be terrible
. But I sat down with them, read them again, and asked whether I would be embarrassed to have anyone read these, and the answer was no. The writing still isn’t as mature as what I would write now, but they’re good stories and the writing works. I still like them. So I indie published them, and now my first-ever work makes me coffee money every single month, to add to the significantly-more-than-coffee-money my other books are bringing in.
Seriously fun.
I was always rather confused by this constant harping about the need to rewrite, since my first drafts were always pretty clean. Even worse was the advice to cut unnecessary words – turns out I’m a putter inner.
Luckily, I got this myth under control pretty early and simply said, “Oh, of course I’m rewriting it”, when all I did was fix typos and add in the bits I had forgotten. I mostly do three drafts these days to fix typos and other issues, sometimes four drafts if I changed a lot during an earlier pass. The ony exceptions are very old stories that I wrote up to twenty years ago and am now digging up again thanks to this new world of indie publishing. If I still like such an old story, it gets a complete redraft. For example, I just turned a twenty-year-old short story of approx. 3000 words with a neat idea into a 12000 word novelette.
I also decided to take Joe Konrath’s eight-hour e-book challenge that Edward mentioned above, since I had a bit of free time this weekend. So I wrote a 3700 word story, did a single proofing pass (it was surprisingly hard to do only one, so the myth still has a hold on me), made a cover, formatted and uploaded it all in a single day. It’s surprisingly liberating, especially if you suffer from perfectionism.
Wow, great job, Cora. Written and into print in one day. Well done!
I got some feedback on a rejected story recently, from one of the markets that includes notes from their slush-readers with rejections. One reader noted that the story “started slowly but the pace built well”, another reader said that the story “starts strongly but peters out”. Now how the heck would I rewrite that? I guess that tells me I’m on the right track and just to send it out somewhere else.
I read one of your original versions of this post a few months ago and another one that I can’t recall but in my mind I think of it as ‘fast writing’. The two together have changed my thinking and writing.
Last month, I wrote 25,000 words on an unfinished manuscript in just seven days, finishing off something that had been in the works for many years. It was exhilarating! No cycling back to re-read what I’d done the day before… only writing the words as fast as they popped into my head. I had no idea what the ending would be until I wrote it! Much fun!
Despite reading your blog about re-writing, part of me expected that last 25k words would need a lot of cleaning up. I let it sit a month and re-read the whole manuscript last week. I was amazed at how little clean-up it actually needs – those last 25,000 words are especially strong, only wacky typos due to too fast fingers on an iPad and auto-correct.
Now, the “re-write” will be me working backwards and making sure the pieces are in the right place and the right time, not rejigging and second guessing the words.
What I really appreciate about killing off these myths is how excited the writing is now. So, thanks!
Yeah, it really does become fun. Thanks, Carmen. Great work.
A couple of decades ago, as a wide-eyed youth, I attended a talk by Harlan Ellison. He read a short story of his and made a point to say that it was “just as it came out of the typewriter.” He said that after twenty years (at least, at the time) as a professional writer, it should be finished after it’s written, and not need to be edited. (He shooed me away after the talk, once I’d gotten him to sign a book for me. I guess I was hanging out too much for his liking, and trying to soak up the “professional writer vibe” by osmosis.)
I had a good writing buddy but parted ways with him recently over the rewriting issue. We used to trade our manuscripts and get each other’s feedback before publication. He used to get annoyed that I would send him a first draft; the typos I understand, and I should have at least fixed those, prior. But, he used to make a point that he would only send me third drafts, even refused to read any more of my first drafts! He seemed to pride himself on multiple drafts. He would ask me if I was sending him a first draft to read, like it was a bad thing. To him, nothing seemed to hold merit unless the writer has been over it several times. I told him that I disliked editing, hated it, even (at times), and he liked to wave that in my face. I wasn’t sure why at first, but now I know he is still caught up in rewriting (maybe he still needs to do it, and that’s fine, but I’m not him), and perhaps jealous and angry that he (thinks) he still has to do it, but other writers don’t.
The straw that broke our friendship was a short story I sent him recently. It was part two in a series, a first draft, and he just hated it! His comments to me were vicious. He said no one would like the ending (I’m glad he can tell what others will like, in the future, no less!), didn’t like my style in parts (he provided sample rewritten sections!), and that the main character acted unrealistically (when I, and others I know have acted in the same ways!) and he couldn’t relate to him (can’t please everyone, anyway). No real advice to fix it (if it even needed “fixing”), just dumping on it. I told him if I wrote to please him, or others, I’d be a word-whore, and not a writer. Maybe he should just rewrite it to his own likes, as that seems to be the only solution?
I used to get a similar sort of negative reaction, couched as “feedback” from “writers” in university classes who would tell me how they didn’t like my story, and just cut it to bits. That’s the main reason I dropped out of the creative writing programme at that school (I was paying for that sh*t!), as I realized that no one was going to make me a better writer but myself. And, I’d just have to keep on writing to make it happen, and let publishers (at the time), and now readers, decide if my stories had merit.
My ex-buddy ranted on about how I probably did little editing on the first story in the series, as well. I don’t think I did much editing on the first story (beyond typos and some word usage) at all, and it was bought for real money by a publication, and is my largest selling ebook to date! Before selling that first short story, I spent years rewriting my first novel. I now have several novels out, and stories, and am much faster!
So, thank you, Dean, Harlan (despite the shooing), the others who left comments here on the “rewriting myth!” You’ve helped to make my writing fun again! And, I’m much more productive as a result.
Best,
Dave
p.s. I like to carry all my writing on a thumb drive too, when I leave the house! I also leave a burned DVD in the car trunk, and another with a friend.
You are more than welcome, D.S., and the real key is avoid, actually run from people like your old “friend.” That’s not a friend, that’s someone who is trying to pull you down to their level. Sadly, there are a lot of people out there like him and as the years go by, you learn to avoid them.
So glad you are back having fun. That’s the key.
I am finishing up my next indie book. With my last book I used several beta readers and a paid copy editor. So should I just skip beta readers with this book and send it straight to the copy editor when if is finished? One point I thought about not using a copy editor but using beta readers instead therefore saving money. But my copy editor will finish quicker, and therefore I can publish faster. Thoughts?
Martin, what’s the hurry? Beta reader is fine. And copy editors are not necessarily quick. But the key is to not get in a hurry. Often we’ll set book pub dates months out (up to five months out after finished at times) so that we have time to do the correct promotions and Advanced Readers Copies and such.
Thanks for the post Dean. I listened to you and Kris on the Self Publishing Podcast, then came straight here to read the rewriting updates. Glad I did.
I just finished my first novel. I’m in the process of editing it, which has been cleaning up some passive language and looking for scenes lacking description. I’ve been using David Farland’s Kick in the Pants tips (about 22,000 words of his I culled from his emails) as a magnifying glass for my manuscript.
I’ve long thought Heinlein’s Rules were for me, but hadn’t fully committed to them. Thanks for the discussion. I think I will do now what my gut tells me to do, wrap it up and publish it. . . and then get on to writing my next novel. I’m in this for the long haul. If my first novel flops, so be it. I figure I have at least a hundred more in me. I’m going for one per month, looking at some serious butt-in-the-chair time.
Hope to see meet in the real world some day. Until then, I’ll keep writing and visiting your blog. Thanks again.
After his death, Heinlein’s family released the unedited version of Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein may not have edited his own work, but his publisher had an editor who did. The unedited version of Stranger was a mess. The editor had pruned out the verbal garbage and ticks that Heinlein had peppered the text with and in so doing created a masterpiece. No one today is going to have the luxury of a good editor provided by our publisher, so I think most of us at least need a good first reader like you use or a reliable writing group to point out our quirks and errors.
Thank you Dean for sharing this. Now I understand why I struggle with rewriting. I read it a lot that I should rewrite and edit, and usually I can make a story better polishing it a little. But besides that I just stare at the screen having no idea how should I rewrite it. I will do what you suggest: stop trying and start mailing.