Writing: Digging For the Gold

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, one of the tasks that you have as editor of your own work, is to dig for the gold. A first draft is just what it says it is, your first ideas, impressions, character formations, which are, inevitably, always rough. If you want your writing, especially fiction or poetry, to resonate with readers, then you need to dig for the gold.

Real Writing is Re-Writing

If you have ever taken part in something like the monthly madness of NanoWrimo, then you'll know that in order to get the thing done, you have to give yourself permission to write rubbish. Getting the words down on the page is only the first part of a long piece of writing - anyone who's written a Ph.D. thesis will know that the rewriting is when the work really starts.

In first draft fiction, your characters are more like stick men, than living human beings, the task of the second and future drafts is fleshing out characters to make them appear as living, breathing beings. In real life people make mistakes, they sometimes do things for all the wrong reasons, that makes them normal. It's not always easy to accept that your hero or heroine is far from perfect. You often have to dig deep to get to the good stuff in both fiction and non-fiction. Re-writing and editing your own book is hard, painful work, you have to, as Mark Twain is reputed to have said, "Be ready to kill your darlings."

Cut the Good Stuff

If you find anything that you believe is fine writing, it is probably nowhere near as good as you think, what is fine writing anyway?. You have to be willing to cut some stuff that you originally believed was a mark of your genius as a writer - those things, I've found, are very often the opposite of what you think. Editing is the hard part of writing anything, it's when you put your words under the microscope; very often many of the words that were written the first time around, get cut, and cut again. Suddenly, your 100,000-word thesis or 80,000-word novel is reduced to half its original length, don't worry, you will find that once you've cut the extraneous detail, your writing will read much better, it will also give you the impetus to write new, better words before you start the process again.

When is it Done?

When is anything ever done? There does come a point where you have to say that something is as good as you can make it and send it off to beta readers or your editor. Editing is a gruelling task, but it's where the real writing, the writing that makes your work worth reading, is done. Are you digging for gold right now?