Don't play it again, Sam!

"Authors who love their books too much" isn't a topic you're going to see on a talk show, but I think we need to visit it.

You love your book. I love my books too. That's good and healthy because you and your story are going to spend in excess of a hundred hours together just writing the thing, and then you have to account for revisions, edits, discussion, and the sheer time you spend thinking about it while you're washing the dishes or driving the car. Some people in romantic relationships don't even spend that much time together.

And then you factor in the time spent querying plus the time spent angsting over the queries you just sent and the time writing the dreaded synopsis: it's a lot. At the end, it would be great if we all ended up with a published book, but sometimes that doesn't happen. You do everything as you ought, and the book goes nowhere. Either you don't clinch an agent or the agent doesn't broker a book deal. You and your book are left together, looking at one another. What's to be done?

Maybe you've learned a bit by this point, and you see where your story could be punched up a bit. Maybe your main character could be more active or your sentences shorter. Maybe all that backstory can go, and maybe the ending screams of deus-ex-machina and could have been better wrought. Maybe you rewrite.

Maybe the rewrite also goes nowhere.

And now you're tempted to rewrite a second time. Or a third time.

Allow me to step in please: don't do it.

It's okay to love your story. It's okay to lavish time on it to the extent that your family gets worried and your friends are sure you've lost your mind. To some extent that's normal and healthy for writers. What's not normal and healthy is to keep rewriting the same novel for twenty years. Or in some cases, the same two or three novels, cycling through the same rewriting/resubmitting process for decades. And in the most heartbreaking cases, writers have taken the work off submission, self-published, and then unpublished it and gone back on submission with the piece touched up and dusted off just a bit.

The hallmark of this kind of wheel-spinning is that the writer most often doesn't even have solid feedback on which to rewrite. S/he is just rewriting and revising every few years and hoping for better results.

I understand the urge. You worked hard and want it to succeed. But I've seen writers in some of my writing groups stuck in the same story for decades, hungering to bring them to the world and unsure why they're not getting anywhere no matter how often they work on the story again. It breaks my heart, so let's look at three reasons to move on.

1) After you've queried the thing twice, everyone has seen it, and now they're going to remember it. The first re-query might have been viewed with a charitable eye if you explained your extensive revisions. A second one won't be.

2) Agents and editors want a writer who can craft more than one story. A career isn't built on one excellent novel (To Kill A Mockingbird being the exception that proves the rule.)

3) You've probably outgrown that first novel, or even your first and second novels. Many times, there's a factor in your early work that renders the work unsellable and is simultaneously a factor you refuse to let go.

Let me expand on #3 for a moment. As a new writer, you knew what you liked to read, and you set out to create something just like it. But without the skills to do so, you cobbled together the story as best you could. Many times, that story is going to have some kind of major flaw that keeps it from fully inhabiting the world it could have. You set out the foundation of the story, but the foundation itself was limited.

Years later, maybe you have the skill to build mansions, but you can't build a mansion on the same foundation as a tool shed. Sometimes you've got to jettison that first story just to escape the boundaries you set for yourself.

Maybe you've developed the ability to write incredibly nuanced characters, but if the main character's motive is nothing more than simple revenge, the story may feel flat.

Maybe you can craft intricate and elegant sentences, but overlaying them one at a time is going to give your work a choppy feeling.

These are the reasons I've heard for continuing to rewrite/requery a novel seven or eight times:

1) I've put so much work into it already.

2) I know so much more than I did the first time around.

3) I'm afraid I'll never come up with anything this good ever again.

Do you hear one of your critique partners in this? Do you hear yourself? If so, be honest: have you outgrown your story like a little kid whose ankles and a good deal of his calves are sticking out beneath the bottom of his jeans? And isn't it really fear holding you back like an anchor, whereas if you cut the chain you could really fly and really see what you're made of?

Are you afraid that if you try again, you'll fail again, and it's just more comfortable to fail with what you already have in your hands than to maybe succeed with something entirely new?

Let me encourage you: set it aside. Lay out a new foundation, new characters, new motives. Bring your new skills to bear. Move forward. Love that old manuscript, but love it fondly the way you still feel kind of giddy about your first crush (even though you never so much as made eye contact).

You're not giving up on your old story by moving ahead. Rather, by moving ahead, you're not giving up on yourself.

Believe you have more than one or two stories in you. Explore and fall in love again with a new set of characters. It's never a failure as long as you've learned

The art of the complete rewrite

A few years ago, a local homeowner took a contractor to court because the contractor had assembled his house off-level, then attempted to hide the flaws by shimming the cabinets and installing doors at a slight angle. The final straw was when the homeowner spilled a beer and it went under the kitchen wall and soaked the living room carpet. The house couldn't be fixed; it would need to be rebuilt.

No one wants to talk about this, but the same thing can happen to your novel. The novel you carefully crafted in every detail may in some way be "off level."

Rewriting: the edit-beyond-an-edit. I've done it three times.

A rewrite is a necessity when you've got what's basically a good novel, but it has a structural flaw so deep that you cannot prop up the thing by any other means. The scope of the change is such that it's going to affect every page, if not every line. For example, changing from third person to first person, or present tense to past tense, or changing the setting from Cincinnati to feudal Japan.

When I got back the rights to The Guardian, I discussed my intended changes with my agent. "I just need to move all the commas around," I said. "I didn't know back then what a comma splice was."  She said, "That sounds like a pain."  And with what Mark Shea calls "hermetically-sealed pride," I replied, "I type really fast. It'll be easy."

In actuality, as I began "moving all the commas around," I discovered that a) I didn't know how to write back when my first novel got published, and b) the commas were the least of the matter. Every single sentence in the book changed. That's not a joke. I realized in rewriting that the message of The Guardian could be summed up as "Emotions are dangerous and hurt people, and the most dangerous and hurtful is love." I realized one of the main characters was a classic codependent, and this was held up as a laudible thing. Worst, I saw that in my authorial intent to help the main character find redemption, I'd given every other character that same goal, when in effect the main character was a murderer and understanding him should be the last goal on everyone's mind.

Rewrite. Time for a huge rewrite.

(I'm sorry my examples are from my own work, but I don't feel comfortable sharing the flaws of others' pre-rewritten books.)

Several years ago, I looked at a book I'd written in when I was 19, and when I finished, I remembered a scene from the "Gorgo" episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a ship has just finished fighting a storm and a monster, and then, after a harrowing moment...it's the next day and they're having smooth sailing. Mike and the 'bots sing to the tune of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,

They pulled into port -- everyone was okay!

They went out for lunch and felt better!

(Just a note: being a MSTie has helped immensely with editing my own work. Either I make fun of it or everyone else will. Guess which option I prefer?)

The story was okay, and I loved the characters, but there was no tension. In my effort to have the main character survive the initial attack, I'd had everything happen too quickly, too easily.

Rewrite. Time for a huge rewrite. Moving scenes, changing motivations, maintaining the danger, having one of the protagonists inadvertently hinder the others -- rewrite.

So how do I recommend you do it?

Don't attempt to this kind of scope with an edit. Begin with a blank document. (Okay, I'm lying: that second one? I rrewrote it by hand.) Print out your entire novel and glance at what you're about to rewrite, then turn away and type it fresh. For any pet sentences you must keep, freewrite to that point and then glance at the sentence and type that, but then look away again.

Here's why: most likely any mistake you made wasn't by accident. You (and I) made those mistakes with full intention because we didn't know at the time not to do it. We probably made a decision to write that novel in that way, and at the time, those decisions appeared correct. Of course I know how to put commas in a sentence. Of course I know what tension is. Of course that's not codependency -- that's sacrificial love. Can you hear me now? Because doubtless I said it back then when I created tension-free comma-spliced codependent novels.

You can't edit that out. Artifacts of your old way of writing are going to stay if you just try to sit the new writing on the old structure. Your novel deserves better than that. Give it a level foundation. Start with a blank document.

As you go through, mark up the old document. Throw out the pages as you finish them, but if there's something you need for later, circle it and save the sheet and place it when the time comes. That scene from the end which makes no sense when the MC is safe but would be heartbreaking when it appears he's going to die? Yank it up front. All that backstory which is so heartbreaking to you and boring to the reader? Use your scissors, cut it up by paragraphs if you have to, and paper-clip it to places later in the manuscript so the reader can enjoy the heartbreak then.

Make every change you have to. Don't leave anything "for later." Know in advance every change you think you'll have to make, and then don't be discouraged when clearing up that problem uncovers a dozen more.

It's worth it. How do I know? Seven Archangels: Annihilation was published in 2008 by the first publisher I submitted to after the rewrite. The Guardian will be re-released at the end of the month as The Wrong Enemy. (One dollar per preorder goes to Heifer International!) And the third one...?  It's on submission now. I'll let you know what happens.

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy, to be released by MuseItUp on September 28th. She is also author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids.

Great Novels Aren't Written--They're Rewritten

Courtesy of 1802

Great novels don't happen by accident. They're a culmination of great ideas, great story, great writing, patience, and the ability to rewrite fantastically.

It's a deliberate process.

As I learn more and more about writing, I've found that I begin editing before I've even typed a single word into the computer.

The first thing a person has to do to rewrite well is to start with the right attitude. Everything (I'm not talking about sacrificing your values here) has to be on the table. Every word, every character has to be something you're willing to consider changing if doing so means making the story stronger and better. It's kind of like that song, Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better.) Only sung to yourself. If you have a talent for great description, you can still seek to find the perfect description. Not only will this tighten your writing, but it'll bump it up a notch.

Having an everything is optional attitude from the beginning is freeing. It allows me to draft with less fuss, because I'm not so worried about making everything perfect the first time. And it helps with the revisions as I work to separate the silver from the dross and make the golden bits sparkle even more.

Which leads me to the second thing good revisers need: the ability to trust their gut. It's important to keep an open mind, because as writers, we can be very blind when it comes to our own WIPs. Good critique partners (betas, etc.) are invaluable, but they aren't always right. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut--making sure it's your gut and not simply a resistance to change.

Then come the edits themselves.

There's the addition edit, wherein you look to see what you need to add to the story to make it complete. For me, it's always description. Visually speaking, I tend to be blind, so I have to go through and find places where good description and setting emerge organically from what I've already written.

Then there's the deletion edit, wherein you look to see what you need to cut from the story to make it complete. This is also the place where you might need to merge two scenes or maybe even some characters. I write very spare for the most part, so my deletion edit is usually more of a boy-that-was-awkward-phrasing or I-need-to-change-the-scene-a-little-farewell-words.

Then there's the weakness edit, wherein you go through and hunt down every single weakness you can find and kill it. Mine tend to by an over abundance of similes and metaphors (it's how I think), over explaining, too many -ing phrases, really long sentences.

Then there's the strength edit, wherein you go through and look at what you do well and do it even better. Have a great hook at the opening of the chapter? Great! Now add two more: one in the middle of the page, and one at the end. This is the edit, I don't think a lot of people talk about. Editing isn't just about fixing mistakes, it's also about making the prose and the story stronger, better.*

Then there's the line edit, going through and polishing away every grammatical error, every typo, making sure it all flows smoothly. Paired with this would be the syllabic edit. Reading it out loud and making sure every single syllable or word is needed. This can also make you aware of trouble spots that might have flowed well mentally, but twist your tongue in knots when spoken aloud.

And there are probably a bajillion other edits I haven't mentioned. But these are the edits I do. Now, as I'm becoming a more experienced word wrangler, I can combine some of these edits. Sometimes. It really depends on the story and how much work it needs to be stronger.

Good rewriters need a lot of patience. They also need the willingness to work hard--even when it's not fun, doesn't seem worth it, and who's going to read this anyway? And the final thing they need is confidence.

Honest confidence does not breed arrogance.

It is the acknowledgement that you did the very best you were capable of. There's no need for false modesty, fishing for compliments, or looking down your nose at someone else's work, because yours is quite obviously superior. Those are all symptoms of having a lack of confidence. Honest confidence is being able to know you gave it your best, and to be happy with that no matter how others might experience your story.

Those are some of the tools in my Toolbox of Rewriting Awesomeness, what tools do you keep in yours?


*I learned about this type of editing from Dave Farland/David Wolverton.

Danyelle writes MG and YA fantasy. In her spare time, she collects dragons, talking frogs, and fairy godmothers. She can be found discussing the art of turning one's characters into various animals, painting with words, and the best ways to avoid getting eaten by dragons on her blog.