06 Jun 2011 9 Comments
Rewriting: the Love/Hate relationship of writing and how we manage it
I have a draft open on my laptop right now: “Lucky Numbers v12 100p June4”. Tomorrow, the version 12 will be version13. One hundred pages will have been re-read and minute changes made, for the thirteenth time. If I can finish those hundred pages tomorrow it will be submitted, along with the synopsis (currently version 14) to an editor who requested it at the WRW retreat in May.
But my secret is, I didn’t write all of it. I’m putting the final rewrite on a manuscript I’ve been writing with a collaborator for two years. This is the most recent version of the tale, and it’s been a long and complex production.
How do you handle rewrites? Is putting the story down a breeze, and the rewriting a slog? Do you plot as you go, and then have to go back and patch up all the holes you left behind? Or is it all carefully planned, with minor time needed for…
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