29 Comments

Seems like you have Stephen King's "On Writing" on your list this year? You'll love his advice for writing and rewriting.

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Yes, I’m excited about that one. Looking forward to it!

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It's been ages since I read "On Writing", but I remember him talking about being merciless when cutting things out and not falling in love with the first draft because if one does, one can't cut objectively.

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Didion said something similar. That’s why she liked to drink when editing; it created a bit of distance from the words.

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The other thing that King suggested, especially for people who were starting out, was to write the first draft, then put it in a drawer for three months without looking at it in order to create space to be able to look at the draft more objectively.

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Kill your darlings, Wayne.

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“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

—Arthur Quiller-Couch

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Right, Derrick? That’s what it feels like sometimes. King had some other colorful phrases as well.

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Other colorful phrases that should not be repeated in polite company.

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He's got a great little description of his muse there!

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There’s a delicate balance between revising and over revising—cutting too deep and not cutting deep enough. George Saunders wrote about this in his recent Office Hours newsletter. It’s worth a read: https://open.substack.com/pub/georgesaunders/p/office-hours-95a?r=6p55p&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

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Great point. And thanks for sharing!

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Thank you for this. I vacillate between exhorting myself to finish a first draft and revising as I go. Yesterday I did the latter and cut a meaningful amount that was slowing down a short story. Today I will write new material. The danger for me is wasting time changes thing back and forth—it’s my way of procrastinating.

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It can definitely be a form of procrastination. Every virtue pushed to the edges ends up as vice.

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I love editing and revising too. Like love love. I can’t wait to write stuff so I can revise it. 🤓

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Same here. Revisions are where the writing gets good, usually.

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I’ve always found that the first draft is the hardest for me to get down, and the editing is where I start enjoying the sculpting. Even if I end up rewriting the first version so much that nothing of the original exists, for some reason it’s easier for me to work when I have SOMETHING on the page. I evaluate and improve writing more naturally than I create it. Interestingly, I think that rings true of my whole personality - I prefer to optimize that which exists vs create from nothing.

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Well isn't this just perfectly timed!

This weekend, I sit tucked away in the guest bedroom of a friend's office, working on revisions and wondering what in the world I'm doing here. I've done this before, many times over with this very same book. Except, what this round is asking of me, I'm not sure I have.

Except, I do. I mean I have to, right?

I appreciate being reminded, in the solitude (and sometimes sanity-stealing nature) of this work... that I'm not a snowflake and neither is this story. Every writer has been here -- and must be -- to write.

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Yes! It’s all part of the process and, though it may not always feel like it, among the most precious moments of the process because it’s where your words take the final shape the reader eventually encounters. You’re like a chef plating your sentences for your diners. It’s a treat, really.

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What a fantastic analogy. I've not heard it put that way before and it really helps. Thank you, Joel!

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You’ve got this!

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Computer word processing programs really hide the rewriting process. The backspace, cut, copy, and paste functions completely wipe out previous versions of the same document - no marked copy of the previous draft remains. If one is proficient such a program, e.g. Word, one begins to edit without even thinking of it. In typing papers for school on the computer, the saved file that was my first draft eventually became my final draft, as I reopened and re-edited, and resaved until my goal was reached. Once, for a writing course, I had to include my first draft as part of the assignment. That first draft was challenging, as I had to remind myself constantly not even to use even the backspace function.

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That’s really true. For me it’s all one thing. I’m writing and editing as I go, then writing and editing some more. There’s nothing distinct about the stages, really. Some of that is definitely the product of modern technology, which makes it so easy to move text around, correct, zhuzh, and tweak.

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I don’t mind revising quite as much as I mind making myself sit down and write. I’ve always felt it’s more challenging to put away the thoughts of everything else and give myself permission to do it. Once I’ve begun, it’s hard to stop. I don’t mind editing my own work, but I’m still too prideful and when others critique it. I find their words like daggers even if they’re gracious! As an English teacher, I find I’m often ruthless in my editing of my students’ papers, and it’s just terrible to realize how two-faced I am!

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That’s a funny dynamic, and one I recognize. One thing that’s been good for me is working in an environment where none of the words are sacred and a team of content creators are constantly writing and editing each other’s work. When people are sitting alongside you changing your work in front of you, it gets easier I think. It also helps to know that there’s no perfect way to express anything; one formulation might work for one set of eyes and fail for another. So when an editor says I could improve a draft by doing x, y, or z, it’s usually good to go along with most of those recommendations; they’re seeing something I’m not.

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When you write a weekly Substack post, there comes a time when you cannot revise anymore. It's an unusual cadence of revision. Sweet relief when Saturday around 7 am arrives and I publish. I think that relief discourages me from a longer, more ambitious, and far more arduous project.

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Great point. A friend who works in journalism when asked if a piece was good would say sometimes, “It has the general quality of doneness.” When you’ve got to file, you’ve got to file.

I also find relief in saying a post is good enough for now. The time constraint is a blessing.

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May we see the first page or two of your first draft of fiction? 😉

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I don't remember where I read this, possibly Stephen King's On Writing, possibly elsewhere, but one of the hardest things to do while writing or editing is let go a particularly perfect sentence or phrase that just doesn't work. So instead of deleting outright, that sentence or phrase gets moved to the darlings page, in case I want to insert it back in later. 9 times out of 10 I never do. Good sentence or not, it always needs to “work” to earn its place. And the one time it does work, it's almost always in a different piece of writing.

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