Rewriting Is A Good Thing

No two writers are alike, and I dare say, no two writers work alike either. However, in contrast to what some writers say and what others do, rewriting is a good thing.

Of course the depth of writing will vary, but pre-planners will benefit from rewriting and plan-as-you-go writers will benefit from rewriting.

Prolific author Dean Wesley Smith disagrees, and gave his rationale why the need to rewrite is a “myth.”

Among his reasons, he stated

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 (“Killing the Sacred Cow of Publishing: Rewriting”).

Strictly speaking, Mr. Smith is accurate, I suppose, but that’s why professionals refer to the writing process and not just writing. Any kind of writing is much more involved than what the finished product leads readers to believe. What someone can read and absorb in a matter of minutes, may have taken the writer hours to put together.

Why? Because details need to be checked, story structure needs to be hammered in place, characters need to be developed, voice needs to be created, dialogue needs to be constructed, and on and on.

According to Mr. Smith, thinking through these various aspects of fiction simply kills creativity. Rather, Mr. Smith’s own process works like this: first he lets the story pour out of him, then edits for punctuation and does a spell check, then gives the manuscript to a reader and does a touch-up draft based on what the reader has said. Next step, mail that sucker off to the agent or editor who’s waiting for it.

I suspect there are seasoned novelists who may have once upon a time, revised and revised and revised in order to produce a publish-worthy manuscript, but as time has worn on and their skill has improved, they may now need to do half as many revisions.

There’s no doubt that the more we write well, the more we write well. However, Mr. Smith has fallen into a trap:

And what you will discover 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.

Apparently Mr. Smith didn’t take lessons under the great college basketball coach John Wooden who famously said, it isn’t practice that makes perfect; it’s perfect practice that makes perfect.

In other words, if we keep making the same mistakes over and over, there is no progress toward perfect.

Ironically I didn’t believe in rewriting or revising when I was in school. I had wonderful English teachers who reminded us of the importance of reading our work and making necessary changes. But I didn’t see the point. After all, I’d written what I wanted to say or I wouldn’t have put it down! Why go back over it and rethink the whole thing if I knew I’d said it well the first time?

Such hubris.

When I finally got a couple teachers who required us to rewrite after our papers were graded, I got the picture. I had many more things wrong than I’d imagined, some that I could have corrected myself if I’d only taken the time to think a little more.

Mr. Smith’s idea is that the critical evaluation of our creative work “ruins” it.

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.

I have two observations about this thinking. First, Mr. Smith started his article just as I did mine—by saying no two writers are alike. If that point is true, then how can he make this sweeping statement about writers and what’s in the critical side of our brains?

I have no doubt that had Mr. Smith revised this article, he would have seen the inconsistency himself.

My second observation is this: Mr. Smith uses input from a reader and then does his third draft, which seems to me a way of saying he’s fine with someone else’s critical side of the brain—just not his own.

Mr. Smith makes one final argument against rewriting—creativity is always ahead of our knowledge of technique. I think that well might be true for some people. But all the more reason to study our craft and catch our technical knowledge up with our creativity.

On the other hand, some of us imagine our story (creativity) but express it in rather pedestrian ways until we get to the revision stage. I’ve heard this termed “prettying up the story,” a thoroughly creative part of the critical process.

I do think some writers fear revision. I know I used to. I didn’t want to go through the whole, entire manuscript again once I’d finished. So much work. Could I do it?

That’s a little like saying, I washed the dishes yesterday; do I really need to wash them again today? If we want them to be clean, yes. If we want our stories to be as good as they can be, then yes, rewriting is part of reaching that goal.

I think there are two extremes when it comes to rewriting. One is to do too little. Especially with the ease of self-publishing, it’s possible to slam out a story, then put it into the digital world for anyone and everyone to read. Except, the anyone’s read the sample chapter, and they’re not buying.

Isn’t it possible that a couple rewrites could have made the story better so that readers would want to keep reading instead of clicking over to another book?

The second extreme is the never-ending rewrite. Some writers are unwilling to let their story go. Rather than move on to a new premise, they continually and obsessively tweak the one story they’ve been working on for years.

I had such a writer in one of my critique groups. No matter how many of us urged her to walk away from that story and work on the new project, at every turn she was going back over that first story she loved so much.

Another writer I know wrote something like 190,000 words and still wasn’t finished and couldn’t let anyone read her work. She continued to tweak and add and add and tweak. At some point we writers need to put our stories down and work on a new project. We can apply all the cool things we’ve been learning to this brand new story instead of trying to patch up the old.

The truth about fiction is that it’s never going to be perfect. Pretty much every writer can rewrite their story and find something to improve, no matter how experienced you are. Perhaps the only writers who think their story is perfect are beginners.

Of course beginners might benefit more than any other writers from a thorough rewriting process.