Welcome to the Writing Gym!

This is more true for some people than others, but I suspect that those who write a perfect story straight onto the page do a lot of writing and rewriting in the province of the mind while the rest of us do it on paper.

Harlan Ellison may strike a page in a store window like Zeus smiting an unbeliever with lightning, but I suspect that Harlan's done some thinking about that story or those concepts in the shower or while sitting in traffic or while waiting for the dentist to come back with the x-rays.

In either case, the key to getting writing done at all is:

You can always rewrite what you've written.

You are no longer under the disdainful gaze of your surly sixth grade English teacher as she waits for you to make a single error. You are not chiseling your story into your tombstone. They're words. You can add, remove, and change any of them.

Many writers allow a fear of saying the wrong thing to stop them from writing in the passionate torrent of glee necessary for smooth, imaginative, meaningful writing. If you're nervous and frightened, it shows in your work.

Say to yourself over and over again, "I can rewrite any of this." Don't let a bad sentence threaten your self-image as a writer. Writing crap is not a sin.

Just publishing it is.

The process of rewriting is idiosyncractic for each writer. What works for one fails for another, and I hold with the assertion of Dr. Richard Brantley (one of my favorite professors during my years at the University of Florida) who said, "I don't care how you get it written. Just get it done. Whatever gets you through the night."

All I offer here, then, are the following guidelines on some effective techniques for rewriting that have worked for me:

Finish writing first.
Develop a process that works for you.
When in doubt, cut.
Read your work aloud.

Finish writing first.

I cannot stress this enough. Do not begin rewriting until you are finished with the entire work.

Consider writing and rewriting as separate stages of the same craft, like building a chair and then painting it. You don't paint each part of a chair before you assemble it.

There are few things more deflating and antithetical to the spontenaeity of writing than rewriting as you go along. Follow your passions. Enjoy yourself. Wait for the hard part until later. Your work needs all the energy you can give it, and rewriting in the middle drains it away.

Like most rules, there are exceptions. There are writers who insist that every section be perfect before moving on to the next. Not only are these writers in the minority, they're probably less productive than the others. For beginners especially, finish what you write first.

Develop a process that works for you.

It is important to have a consistent process, a method that you follow every time you rewrite your work, that conforms to your working style. That way, you know you'll touch upon your most common rewriting issues each time you create a work.

My rewriting process has several stages:

Write a rough draft in longhand. This enables me to consider each word as I write it. I believe that the speed of typing encourages sloppiness in thought and writing.
Enter the rough draft into the computer and rewrite for obvious issues while doing so. Here, I find the glaring problems (misspellings, internal logic issues, characters with similar names, etc.) that cripple my work.
Read for focus. Here, I read through the work as a whole and identify missing segments of the story or issues with the structure. Do I wander from the path? Are their scenes or exposition that are unnecessary?
Read closely for diction and style. I also read the story aloud during this draft. Does the story sound smooth and natural? Are there glaring diction problems? Is the style consistent with the characters and subject matter?

Of course, my rewriting method is suited to my writing style, which is not necessarily linear. I don't write a story from beginning to end except under rare circumstances. I piece it together like a sculptor chiseling away at a block of stone to make a statue. I write a little here, I write a little there, and then I piece the whole together. That's why my rewriting method involves a close look at structure.

Your own method may focus on your own strengths and weaknesses. Problems with grammar? Make sure you have a reading just for that. Not sure about your skills with characterization? Create a rewrite stage just for examining character motivation and realism.

When in doubt, cut.

One of the required reading books for writers using this site is Ken Rand's The Ten Percent Solution. The central premise of this book is that 10% of anything you write can be cut.

That's a conservative estimate.

The rest of Ken's book is dedicated to methods you can use to trim your writing, including some common mealy-mouthed wasted words such as these:

Anything ending in -ly
that
of
very
about
by

There are many more. Read the book for details. Ken suggests creating a list of words you commonly overuse and this is one of the best pieces of writing advice you're ever going to get. Some of my personal problem words include really, carefully, probably, actually, only, and finally. Now I use my search-and-replace facility in my word processor for a linguistic pogrom every time I finish a story.

Ask yourself as you examine every word, "Would I shoot my sweet, elderly grandmother in the face with a sawed-off shotgun to keep this word in this document?" If the answer is no, remove it.

Read your work aloud.

Yes, I know. You're going to feel ridiculous reading your story aloud, especially if you write like I do at work between projects or in the local library.

It's worth it.

Your stories have sound even if they are never spoken aloud. Your readers are speaking them in their minds, and if the words of your story intertwine like seaweed around a sewage drainage pipe, rest assured they won't be easy to read. By reading your work aloud, you catch grammatical inconsistencies you'd never discover by just reading it.

The flow of your work will improve immensely when you read it aloud and eliminate places that are hard to pronounce.