Writing is Rewriting

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter." ~James Michener

Finally, I have started the rewriting process on the novel Casey and I are working on. It has taken me a while to process the criticism. A while to pick a course and run with it. A while to know which direction was the right direction and set forth in that direction.


Rewriting is not my forte. In high school and college, I almost always turned in my rough draft as my final draft and got an A. Occasionally, I reworked a piece, but more often then not, I simply finished the work and turned it in.


In the defense of my teachers, whom you are currently thinking did me a disservice, I simply learned to write to their style. Every teacher has a particular style or bent. They have parts of speech that are important to them and certain creative phrasing not to mention buzz words they want to see. Once a student figures out the important elements for any given teacher, they can write successfully for that teacher whether it be a short story, research paper, essay, or poem.

I was a writing chameleon of sorts. I could adapt my writing style to the professor. The problem with writing a novel is the writing is to be mine--unique, crisp, poignant, truth-filled, timely, and fresh. My ideas have to be original but marketable.

While there are a bazillion, and I do mean lots, of books on writing, the actual process is much more sweat than brains and much more subjective than objective.

All this to say that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about rewriting, but have only just begun the actual process. We are basically starting all over. Casey has rewritten her first chapter...she did it quite a while ago, but I held up the process. Dragging my feet. Asking questions. Dithering about this decision or that.

The process, while taxing, provided plenty of talking points. We discussed point of view. Should we keep it in 1st person from 4 points of view or change it to 3rd person or 1st person from one point of view. We know we need more conflict, but do we just add more conflict for one character or for all four main characters...which led us back to the POV discussion. Round and round we went with ideas--some useable, some strong possibilities, some outright outlandish. What to use? What to discard? Why write? Maybe I can't write?

Finally...today...I sat down at my computer and wrote the 1st 500 words of my rewriting. Which to me is starting over as I can't use any of the words from the original as the whole idea has changed. So is it really rewriting if you scrap it all...or is just writing more?

Continuing the thought process from the tub.