Writers: Stop rewriting all the life out of your work
There you are, in the joyful act of creation, loving your story, your characters, the whole vibe. Then you turn that story over to your Critical Brain, and it rips the thing apart. Ugh. So ugly. And so you get back in there and mess with it until you’ve overmessed, and now the thing is just lifeless and average. You’ve rewritten all the joy and heat out of the piece. Can’t you just keep your stinkin’ hands off it?
How do I know? Because I’ve done it more times than I can say, as have many of my writer friends. And sometimes you see it and realize what you’ve done, and you’re so happy you saved the original draft so you can send that one out instead. Sometimes, unfortunately, you saved the new version over it, so all you have left is this lifeless little blob. Oh, well, maybe someone will still like it. But it will never be as hot and fun as the version you originally wrote–the version that came out of you in such a passion. And so you learn to save all your drafts as separate files. I certainly did.
So it’s with great joy I present to you this new blog post from Dean Wesley Smith about how the pros learn to do it–keep all the hot white heat of their work, while still sending off a clean manuscript. Without rewriting it to death.
Pay special attention to Heinlein’s Rules in that post. If you’re brave enough to follow those–even just as an experiment, from now until the rest of the year–can you imagine what leaps you might make in your writing career?
Be brave. Just as an experiment. What do you have to lose?