You’ve finished the first draft of your manuscript. Congratulations! Now the next hard work begins. Rewriting.

Don’t You Mean Edit?
Nope. I mean rewrite. The entire manuscript from cover to cover.

There’s a big difference between editing and rewriting. In editing, you’re pruning and polishing. You’re generally comfortable with the writing, its flow and its content.

Rewriting, to pick up on an earlier blog’s creating a statue metaphor, is looking at the rough block of marble you’ve quarried, and carving out the unnecessary marble that is hiding the statue within.

Now You Know Where You’re Headed
Once the first draft is done, you know what your story’s ending is. You didn’t really know when you started – you had an idea, which may or may not have actually happened. As a result, likely your earlier chapters aren’t going to have the necessary foreshadowing, characters, etc. that catch and lure the reader into the story.

Rewriting is a tough process. You start to dump paragraphs, pages, even chapters which don’t fit with or enhance the story as you’ve finished writing it. The cognitive process of rewriting is different then editing, by the way – it forces you to reevaluate, retool, reword sentences, paragraphs, even whole sections, to become stronger (or be eliminated) in a much more creative way than editing (which is the polishing phase).

As an example, in Crossover, I had envisioned having humans in the story. Wrote a whole chapter plus involving that. But during rewrite #2, after trying to force fit the chapter into the story because I liked it so much, I finally accepted that humans had no place in the tale, and eliminated the 25 pages.

The “Ouch” Factor
I find rewriting challenging, yet exciting, because I can see the story pushing free of the clutter. You know that feeling you get when a sentence or a paragraph feels just right? This requires rewriting (and rewriting) to achieve that.

I admit it’s tough to chop out copy – ouch! In Dark Fire, I had what I thought was a great scene with Danai and Joson attacked by a hawk, then encountering a clandestine meeting between feyree and fire daemon. My editor yawned his head off; it didn’t move the story forward.

Through multiple rewrites (Dark Fire went through 7), the scene evaporated, replaced by a powerful paragraph which introduced the hawk character Windbolt, and the traitorous encounter moved to night time, and almost got Danai and Joson killed by the Dolmen.

Look at it this way. If you love to write, then love your writing enough to make it the best you can. That means rewriting, usually several times.

It’s simply a part of the process.

A favorite resource of mine is ReaderViews, and I have the good fortune to have established a great rapport with the editor. I suggested she do a piece on the importance of copyrighting, and providied her with a lot of useful information. Not only did she take my suggestion and use my information – she quoted me in the article. You can read more at http://www.bloggingauthors.com.

During a recent presentation I did on writing, several students (of all ages) asked why should they edit, except for typos and grammar. The answer is deceptively simple – because your first draft is just that. A core dump of your ideas.

First Draft
You may bridle at the suggestion your first draft is not perfect, but it’s not. It’s like having quarried a lump of marble; rewriting and editing now chips and polishes until the final glorious statue is revealed.

Consider this – particularly in fiction – when you first start writing, you don’t know what’s going to develop in the story. So by its very nature, your story will have to be edited so that all the pieces fit and blend together.

Be Brutal
Part of being a good editor is being brutal to your work. As an example, the original draft of Dark Fire was 676 pages long. The published book is 254.

My favorite editing reference is one Rudyard Kipling once shared. He was working on his novel “Kim”. His father, who was his editor, chopped out a whole section that was dear to Rudyard’s heart. When asked why, his father explained that it did not move the story forward.

It’s a good measuring stick to use. I’m not saying eliminate description, etc. but judge your work by the rule, ‘does it move the story forward?’ If the answer is no, it’s likely fluff and can be chiseled away.

Multiple Edits
Edited once? Great. Start again. And again. Plan to edit several times, because each time you’re going to find things to change, typos, you name it.

And then ask a trusted colleague to read and edit. They will find things you missed. Dark Fire went through 7 rewrites and 9 edits before it was released.

Editing is one of the most valuable tools in your writer’s arsenal. Use it.