The Dreaded Rewrite

Writing a first draft can be fun. You are following new characters or familiar characters on a new adventure. Along the way, as with any journey, there are surprises awaiting you around each turn. This is the fun of a first draft.

But, oh the dreaded rewrite. I will pause here and say I do know writers who hate the first draft, but love doing the rewrite. Some of them say this is because now they know where they are going and can pay attention to the details of the scenery.

There are some who just hate the process all the way through and you wonder why they bother doing something they dislike so much. Still others are in love with writing novels from start to finish, though these are rare birds indeed.

And then there are the rest of us for whom rewriting a novel is a confusing muddle that leaves us dazed and confused. There is so much of it. A column can rest a day and then be redone in an hour or two. An article of two thousand words is but the work of a few hours after its resting period. Short stories begin to get more complicated, but still there is only work totaling hours or a day or two to complete the rewrite process. A book though! Now there you are looking at days or weeks of effort. Some even take years to rewrite a book. In my case when I am in the process of rewriting a book my dining room is off limits for months and looks like a paper factor exploded.

Some of the problem is that most of us just don't know where to begin. Maybe I should even say most of us don't know where to start when faced with a pile of 400 pages of manuscript. Incidentally, that is approximately 100,000 words, a typical length for a novel.

I know I've sung the praises of Holly Lisle and her various books and courses in the past, but I'm doing so again. First I want to emphasize again that you don't have to buy anything from her. She has an amazing amount of free material available to help the writer overcome almost any problem.

However, when you buy one of Holly's books, such as How to Revise Your Novel in One Pass, you get step-by-step instruction as well as a more personal connection to Holly and her other students. Some of those students have several books published and are a valuable connection in their own right.

Holly has launched a new course on How to Revise Your Novel and just in the first lesson I've gained insight to a problem that has been giving me trouble for years. She also offers a mini course in how to rewrite your novel in one week. It has pretty much all you need to do and know in order to do such an insane thing. There are even times you really need this information. I've had editors wanting a rewrite and turnaround on a manuscript in even less than a week. It can be done. And, if you want to stay in the business, you'd better learn to do it, but you need all the help you can get in order to survive the experience.

If you go to my site http://Secretsofalazytrainer.blogspot.com there will be a hyper link to How To Revise Your Novel. Or you can convert the following to an address that will get you there. http colon front slash front slash howtoreviseyournovel dot com front slash question mark rid equal 1236

Good luck with your book in all its many phases.