“The only kind of writing, is rewriting.” – Ernest Hemingway

Revisions. The quote above says it all. The beauty of revision is it is exactly that, a re-vision, looking at something again with new eyes. How comforting is it to know that you can redo something as many times as you need? If only we could do the same in life. Personally, I’ve never written anything just right in the first go.

When I first started writing my fantasy novel I belted out over a thousand pages, it was over 200,000 words, and none of it is in my completed work. I had to take another look at it, a hard look. The story wasn’t alive. It had no breath. I’d been typing away and throwing ideas down without giving my characters life. It was devastating to have done so much work and have to leave it behind. The real story wasn’t with the character I wanted it to be with, it was with his mother.

Three years later and I have a completed novel. When I made the decision to focus the story on my previous character’s mother and her story, the world opened up to me. It was amazing. Since finishing it, I have been on the query path, still on it. This is not yet a success story in the traditional sense. I am not an award-winning novelist. I don’t have my own Master’s Class on YouTube. I’m just a guy who wrote his book twice over ten grueling years. I regret nothing.  

I feel fortunate to have taken that honest look at what I was doing, at what I was missing in the story’s original form. Now I have my main character, Izra Moonborn, and though the first book is done, she still occupies my time as no other woman ever has. Since finishing, Mother Made of Iron, I have written a novelette, a sort of origin story for Izra titled, The Wandering Oak. It is out on submission now with a contest and my fingers are perpetually crossed. If I had never taken the honest accounting of where I was in my storytelling, I don’t know where I would be right now. It’s hard admitting you have to rethink things you were previously so sure of. You really have to love a story, love the characters in it to put yourself through that.

Izra’s story was originally a short scene in my first conception of her character, no more than a few pages. Then she went from being in a scene to being in several, then it was a prologue and that prologue turned into a 600-page novel, and one for which I am proud.

There is another side to revision though, and it sneaks up on you sometimes. I have revised stories so much that I rewrote the story right out of them. A balance has to be struck. This is why I think it’s good to have a workshop to go to, or at the very least, another writer friend who understands what you are trying to accomplish and how difficult it can be. Other writers and time away are great for the work. Having spent a few months away from my book after I finished writing it gave me the opportunity to see it with some fresh eyes. There were moments when I found myself saying, “Wow, I wrote that?” It’s nice to find a line or two where I was pleasantly surprised. Then of course, there were the other times when I said, “Wow. I wrote that?” (DELETE)

Second, third or fourth drafts, I think we all go through them to some degree. Time away gives us a chance to see the good and find the bad. Both will be there. Stephen King says in his book, On Writing, that the second draft is where you take out, “all the things that are not the story.”  

In the end, all writing is world building, and all writing is word building. All of us who write are really just kids on a beach trying to make books out of sand. Use the words, build the world, and when you’re done building it, fill it with living things.