Guest Post: Writing is Rewriting

You’ve arrived at stop #19 of the The Writer Mama Two-Year Anniversary Blog Tour Giveaway! I’m honored to be a train stop on this virtual tour. A little background, Christina Katz — aka The Writer Mama — decided to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the book by eTraveling to a different blog every single day of March. So this spot here is part 19 (Darn! I missed my favorite number by one). To read the other parts of the blog tour, find the shortcuts at The Writer Mama Riffs blog.
And there’s more! You have a chance to win a copy of Writer Mama: How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids! Remember to check at the end of this post for the 411 on how to win a signed copy of Writer Mama! I’ll announce the winner tomorrow.
I never wanted to own my business. I never considered becoming a writer until it happened. After all, you hear so many folks saying they want to write. I never thought I had any talent or anything special. My writer mama story started with the arrival of my second child. I enrolled in New York University’s online program in Internet Technologies with plans to go for a career in web design.
Got the certificate, did a few web design projects and hated it. No eye for design. No patience for fixing complicated bugs that worked right in one browser and not the next. No enjoyment.
Before all this, I had subscribed to email newsletters on web design. After discovering my dislike of doing the design work, I continued to stay on top of web design. The field of making web sites still fascinated me. One of the newsletters would give away a full-blown copy of Photoshop (!!!) if it published your article. That sparked my writing career. I wrote a few more articles for the same publication, which led to my first paid gig.
Babies. Talent. Segue to Christina’s entry. Thank you for stopping by. Come again, y’all!
Post #19: Writing is Rewriting
There is no such thing as talent. I’ve learned this from observing my own successes as well as my peers and my students. When Anne Lamott wrote the popular writing book, Bird by Bird, I bet writers around the globe breathed a collective sigh of relief. Surely if Anne Lamott writes “shitty first drafts” then there is hope for all of us, right?
And that is why you might nail a chapter in your book on the first try… or the tenth. Or you might be on the verge of wanting to pull your tongue out before the darn introduction comes together. You might simply be unhappy with the guts of a chapter or two because they don’t quite accomplish what you are trying to say. Or maybe you feel that your book draft is somehow incomplete but you’re not quite sure how.
When a piece of writing works, I always think back to something one of my students said once: it’s like a song. Every single word is just right. There’s a harmony in the words that just works. And that’s a great feeling, generally brought about by many rewrites rather than talent.
In book writing, we are striving for that same feeling of completion, of wholeness, of near perfection that is like a song. But saying this and getting there are two different things entirely. And each of us has to decide to get there and then do it however we can. Let’s take a look at the three rewriting phases that typically follow the book drafting process:
Rewrite your brains out: Until you turn in that first full draft, you can rewrite your book as much as you want, whenever and wherever you want. If the book hasn’t been approved as an entirety, by all means, keep rewriting to make it as good as it can get. But be careful not to become so obsessed with rewriting that you don’t make it through your full first draft. Remember Anne Lamott and just bang that “shitty first draft” out.
Approved with suggested rewrites, additions or cuts: Once your editor has gone over the full draft of your book, she will likely request changes ranging anywhere from simple to major. Suffice it to say that most editors would rather make small changes at this stage rather than major changes, but it’s not unusual for an editor to ask for an additional chapter or two, the restructuring of a certain section, or even a cutting of a chapter or two. Trust your editor. She very likely knows what she’s talking about and has the reader in mind.
The copyediting stage: Perhaps the most loathed and appreciated person you will ever encounter is your copy editor. You may initially dislike her with some gusto in the short run and then appreciate her a lot more in retrospect. Luckily for writers, a thoughtful copy editor knows that a little bit of appreciation for all of your hard work can go a long way even as she nitpicks your grammar to death. And even an ungenerous soul with an eye for excellent usage can bump your book to publication-quality from wherever it was. I say, go ahead and let a copyeditor feel superior (if that’s how you think she feels—she might, then again, she might not). And, since you will likely never have to encounter your copy editor face-to-face, since they are typically hired out as freelancers, you don’t ever have to worry that you will have the opportunity to tell them what you really think of them after you’ve just reviewed an especially “bloody” red-line of your hard-wrought efforts.
The galley stage: You’d think after all of these editorial reviews your book would be on the brink of divinity, right? Sadly, no. The layout folks likely accidentally deleted a few sentences here or there. And if there are tables or graphs, you’d better finger-read every word and make sure all your logic is parallel or whatever it’s supposed to be. There are plenty of typos in your book and this is your last chance, before publication, to find them. Sticky notes come in handy at this stage. You may as well purchase them in bulk, just in case.
Today’s Book Drawing: To enter to win a signed, numbered copy of Writer Mama, answer the following question in this blog’s comments:
Describe your typical rewriting process. Do you usually nail it on the first try or do you have to progress through multiple rewrites?
Thanks for participating! Only US residents, or folks with a US mailing address can participate in the drawing. Please only enter once per day.
Where will the drawing be tomorrow? Visit http://thewritermama.wordpress.com/ to continue reading the rest of the Writer Mama story throughout March 2009!