One of the absolute most important qualities that stratifies authors between great and mediocre or worse is a willingness to confront weaknesses, bite the bullet, and do what’s necessary to improve your work. Particularly after you confront a daunting editorial letter, sometimes you’ll need to go back and rewrite the whole thing mostly from scratch.īut take it from me: starting over isn’t something to fear. You always have work to do when you’re finished.Īnd sometimes you’ll have a ton of work to do. Instead, even if you write slowly and carefully, chances are you’re going to muddle through. Maybe your novel will spring forth in its ideal form and all of these elements will magically weave together in perfect harmony. You’re weaving together plots and subplots. You’re trying to see if the events you have in mind are going to work once they hit the page. It’s like trying to run a race in three or four directions at once. Pushing forward on a new novel is extremely hard. The first draft is phenomenally difficult Here’s what accounts for my change in approach: I’ve learned that rewriting a novel is almost always much easier than you think it’s going to be. I know when I’m finished I’m going to rewrite the whole thing with whatever voice I’ve crystalized by the end. I pressed forward on some scenes I know will be cut just to see how some ideas work on the page. Now? I’ve written a placeholder opening for my new novel that’s just standing in for a better one I’ll think up later. Every time I received an edit, I peeked through my hands at the editorial letter until I saw I was safe from having to go back to the drawing board. I obsessively saved and re-saved anything I wrote and made sure multiple backup copies existed lest a laptop theft or fire destroy my hard work. I agonized over scenes so they were “perfect” the first time. Early in my writing career, there was little I feared more than having to rewrite any part of my novels.
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