My friend’s daughter, recently graduated and with little to do, busied herself with writing a manuscript for a publishing house she’d seen advertised. One hundred thousand words later, Mum phoned me, looking for some direction. Was there a copyright issue? What if someone stole it? How should they proceed?
My questions were a bit different. Had her daughter received any editorial guidance, help or feedback? Apparently not. Would such help be forthcoming? No. The publishing house was sharp in another area: requesting money in return for “free” copies of the book, and other perks—I forget the details.
Nobody wants to tell a friend that their offspring needs to do an urgent rethink. But publishing is a world of hard truths, one of which is that umpteen pages of unedited text are likely to be a difficult read and commercially unsaleable. Let’s face it: we are rarely our own best critics, and I include myself in that.
Most of us have written something, torn it up, or pressed the delete key, and started afresh. We’ve stuck at it until the article, blog or chapter has polished up to a shine. Ernest Hemingway memorably said, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.”
For the Christian author, this involves prayer; it involves patience; it involves listening to critics. Maybe it means raising our boredom thresholds! Readers or reviewers will expect the creases to be ironed out and the facts or the plot to be grasped at first read.
Process
So, what does rewriting look like?
The answer will vary from author to author, but usually draft one involves discovery, research and understanding, getting the thoughts down in one place and in some sort of order. Draft two could be termed the improvement stage. Is the structure right? Are there areas of repetition and ambiguity? How can it all flow better? Draft three can be tougher still, brutal even. Does the manuscript really say what it is meant to say? If not, what additions or edits are required?
The writing process doesn’t necessarily fit into a neat pattern, nor is there any formula for success. But it does help to have a basic expectation to work from. Experienced authors may well get there by a different route, or even without conscious thought—for a fortunate minority, the process is intuitive.
Some authors prefer to think more in terms of pre-writing, gathering ideas, inspiration and feedback, and then road-testing the material, long before putting fingers to keyboard. Once the manuscript is more or less fully formed in their heads, they get down to the writing and re-writing stages.
One legendary missionary to China had the happy knack of turning out a publishable manuscript at first go. But that is rare, so rare in fact that many years after her death she is still the example of someone who mastered that feat. She was decisive and formidable, so maybe it was good that nobody needed to challenge her manuscript. And the publishers never did manage to discover her secret.
Hurdles
Rewriting is hard. Of course it is. It’s lonely and mostly thankless (at least, in the moment), so it’s tempting to keep it to a minimum or even to skip it altogether. Yet for Christian authors, writing (and by implication rewriting) can be a significant part of ministry, an extension of what they do elsewhere. Such writing honours God and his church, which is high motivation indeed.
Yet even when we acknowledge that writing isn’t about us, and we aren’t out to make a name for ourselves, listening to manuscript critics and incorporating their feedback can feel laborious and tedious. Which is why it always helps to adopt a targeted approach from the start, choosing individuals whom we respect, and, at the other end of the scale, those who aren’t in awe of us—something we may well be blind to! Also, we should consider whether or not this “reader” is able to balance honesty with tact. I have seen a few honest readers’ reports that would have benefitted from less barb and more grace. But the reworking and plodding are worth it. After all, would you rather read a criticism in private or see it later in what you have to acknowledge is a fair and balanced published review?
Another hurdle writers face is the fear of wasting time and work. How can all this rewriting be justified? Don’t I have better things to do? Nobody likes lopping out cleverly crafted paragraphs, or as they say in the business, “killing their darlings.” (I’ve “killed” more than a few during the course of this article, and it wasn’t fun!)
Rewriting involves deferred gratification, even despair at times: will the manuscript ever develop into a sharp shape? Can I actually do this? It involves pain, and, frankly, it is a pain. There is probably a reason why even the most appreciative authors are rarely best friends to their editors.
And yet there has to be a caveat, for an experienced author must never go against gut instinct when rearranging or rewriting material. The editor should back down when this author articulates a strong rationale for a decision, unless it is one that would genuinely compromise the published book or reduce its impact. The author has known the manuscript longer, and felt its passion more strongly, than anyone else. This is the person who will take responsibility for the words by laying claim to them, and ultimately the one who has the “author-ity” to decide.
My friend’s daughter looked through new eyes at a manuscript that needed severe hacking, at countless “darlings” that had to be killed off. Most authors won’t face anything like this level of challenge. And the upshot of their rewriting will be a level of clarity that could never have been achieved first or even second time round: more definition, good flow, strong momentum and deeper understanding. The next time they write, the self-editing shears will activate earlier, making the process less tortuous, less defeating and more disciplined. The editor, and the readers, will be grateful.
