For novels, my method is “Write a chapter. Next day, read what I wrote the previous day and fix any mistakes or typos. Write the next chapter. Repeat until novel is done.” No rewrites. One draft. For better or worse, that’s how I do it. The thought of rewriting a whole novel is unimaginable to me.
That's similar to what I do: I do quite intensive editing during the initial writing (which is a big part of why I always write on a computer), and other than a check for errors I put the material up as-is. No Adults Allowed is the first instance where I've gone through the finished manuscript multiple times afterwards to spruce it up.
The exception is The Mechanical Crown, my big fantasy epic, which I *did* actually rewrite from scratch. The difference there is that I wrote the original version in the early 2000s, in my early 20s, and didn't do the rewrite until over a decade later. The time gap meant it didn't feel like a traditional rewrite. It was also very necessary, as the original draft from the 2000s was really quite bad (while having a decent story at its core, which I partly retained).
I don't know that I could separate the two. It's all writing to me until I sit back and say, okay it's a finished story. I suppose at some point it becomes editing when I've finished, but I start back at the beginning. I don't really mind it.
My other suggestion is to have other non-writers, preferably avid readers you trust, provide feedback. I listen for things like, "I don't understand this part," or, "Would someone really react that way," and that sort of feedback. That helps me think more about the need to strengthen the story instead of thinking about it like it's editing.
That sounds like a very healthy, balanced way of looking at it. :)
You're right about external feedback helping. That shifts it more into a 'problem solving' space for me, which then becomes more fun. And perhaps closer to the feeling I get from fresh writing, which often feels like trying to solve a puzzle box.
As a non-native speaker I can’t really go without editing. It’s all one process to me because I can’t possibly make the prose done from the first attempt. I like writing the first draft because it’s when the story builds up, but rewriting and editing are also joy because this is where I can play with prose, words, rhythm , etc. Many dialogue improvements also surface while editing. I also agree with you that letting a text marinate for a while helps future editing a lot.
Hey Vanya, I'm curious, do you write in your native tongue and then translate, or do you write all in English from the start? Your command of English prose is solid.
Thanks! Mostly English from the start but when I can’t remember a word in English I put a Russian one and then fix it while editing, because my native vocabulary is still better at the moment. Sometimes I do that with whole paragraphs when I struggle to concentrate. Surprisingly, switching languages like that helps relieving the writer’s block. I started with writing in Russian and then translating (for fiction, essays were almost always English), but soon I realised that it was like doing the work twice, and switched to doing it in English only. “Thinking” is different from that, often I think in native language and translate that immediately when it comes to descriptions. Dialogues are mostly English straight away even in thinking because it’s hard to make them sound natural in translation.
That is very cool! Thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading your stories. English fiction from international authors is a joy to read because you're able to include cultural context that is fresh and brings nuance to the story.
There's such an interesting school of thought around this, and how much a culture should be 'translated' contextually for the new audience. Some references absolutely won't make any sense, while others will seem unfamiliar but interesting. Complicating that is that some readers will really relish discovering new things, while others will find it off-putting.
Exactly. I do translations too, mostly Chekhov’s stories now. It’s a fun practice in many ways. Sometimes I try to “interpret” a thing properly, looking for some colloquial alternative (which shouldn’t be too modern!) and it takes me hours to google it, turning into quite a rabbit hole.
Interesting! I generally edit quite a bit as I write, and write as I edit. There really is no purely creative or purely corrective phase in my process. It's all a jumble. I'm constantly throwing down ideas, rearranging them, searching for better words, revising sentence structures, deleting paragraphs, adding new ones. Then I set it aside, go back to it and attack it the same way, but hopefully... less. When I'm out of ways to add or subtract, I'm done. However, the idea of rewriting anything sounds like a nightmare, and I'd probably scrap a project before I'd start one over from scratch.
That's a bit like what I do: there's a lot of micro-editing involved in my initial writing. Which is very different to the approach of 'just getting the words down' and then fixing them up afterwards.
I think I’m most excited when I’m planning and brainstorming. All those what ifs is great fun. Then after I’ve got that out of my system the writing part is the hardest for me. But if I can get through that rough draft, I enjoy the editing. Getting it just right. But between draft and editing, there needs to be time to forget it. Stephen King suggests 12 weeks to come back fresh and I think that’s a good amount of time. I often wonder if I shouldn’t just find a writer for my draft and then it’s all there for me to thrash it to my liking!! But that feels like cheating 😅
Great minds. I looked into AI writing TBH. But it really focusses on copy writing for now, not so much fiction. And it would cost me a fortune. I would rather spend that money on a great editor. If I had that money, that is! Ghost writing is pretty common anyway right? Authors use them all the time, but even claiming AI written work as my own feels funny to me! 🤷🏻♀️
The initial writing stage - that initial white-hot process of banging out the ideas - is definitely that fun part. Editing and refining needs to happen, and it's valuable as hell, but it's definitely more of a slog.
But it's the same with VFX creation or audio/video editing. That first pass of banging it all out and getting the initial creation into shape is blissful. Then it's taking 80% of the time to finish off that last 20% - which is the same as the book edit process.
Considering how much I enjoyed 1st draft "No Adults Allowed," I look forward to the edited-and-improved version. I'm sure if I wanted to re-read the original with red pen in hand I could find some nitpicks, but I'd have to look for 'em pretty hard. As I've said before, you're a really solid author.
Editing is hard because I don’t see the story as it is, but I see the background material and planning as well. Then, making small changes, like moving something from one chapter to another, can break consistency way too easily. Then, the rhythm of your piece gets thrown off.
Editing is brutally hard. I want to write a program like a programmers “ide” to help with this one day but it’s such a big project I might never get it going. Such a thing will exist one day though
How does an ide work? I'm not familiar with the concept.
And yes, that puzzle nature of a story can get very complex in editing. In No Adults Allowed I made a change to a character's fate, which then had a ripple effect through the rest of the book that needed to be sorted. Complex, but it was ultimately the right call.
I like both, for different reasons. The creation of the story has its own thrill, but going back through and fixing any problems--I find that I am one of those folks who does a great job with revisions.
I've interviewed writers who rewrite the entire manuscript 4-5 times, which is a thought that terrifies me. Do you rewrite entire drafts, or manipulate the existing draft?
Entire rewrite? No freaking way. That means the whole dang thing has major problems that should have been caught in the first draft. I've written enough books that, by now, I can tell when it's going sideways, usually in the first third of the book. I've had one book of late that was that difficult, and I just put it aside for a couple of years and went on to other work.
But I am not a pantser. I do a lot of preliminary work including laying out what the major character and story arcs are going to be. That doesn't mean that I won't do extensive rewrites on the the existing draft--inserts, deletions, etc--but rewrite the whole thing? I'm not that enamored of any one story to put myself through that agony.
My rough drafts have frequently been reviewed and revised as I work, because one way I get my brain in gear for the day's work is review the previous day's work, edit, then go on from there. I'll put the book aside for a month or so, and move on to other work. Then I'll go back and do my first revision. After that, it goes to beta readers. While it's at the beta(s), I'll probably go through it a time or two for a second revision. Incorporating beta work is the final revision.
The only time I've done a ground-up rewrite was with a book I'd first written in my early 20s. When I came back to it in 2016 I realised that it was baaaaaaad - but that it still had a decent story at its core. Because so much time had passed, though, it felt more like writing a fresh book, but with a better idea of what was going to work.
I prefer writing over editing. I've been studying and trying out different techniques to find some joy in editing. It's been helpful and I'm finding editing easier lately. It can still feel daunting and uncertain at times
For me it's that feeling of "I've completed the manuscript!" followed immediately by "oh, now I've got to go do a load more work on it". It can be a difficult extra hurdle to jump.
I absolutely prefer editing at this point in my writing career. As a pantser, that initial draft is little more than a brain dump. While I write linearly, it still ends up a pretty big mess, but I kind of secretly like cleaning up messes. It gives me this weird sense of satisfaction when I finish to have something to put together.
Feeling this. I’m editing a novel also at the moment. I keep wondering if there is some better AI editing tool that I’m not aware of... Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell is great editing inspiration too.
Editing on your own can be a real pain, I find it's better to have someone else read and make notes, then go in so you're responding to someone rather than doing the busy work of deciding if you like what you wrote. Of course getting that kind of feedback without paying a professional can be hard at times if your friends all get busy. Though I also find rewriting more enjoyable in general.
Same here! And I always get slightly annoyed when they say it. I mean, I don't ever tell my writer friends "you need to learn to love drafting!" I think it's like chores -- we know it needs done, and we do it because we know it's "good" for us, but that doesn't mean we have to like or even enjoy it!
I'm with you, I kinda loathe the problem. I'm fortunate in that I've not (yet) had to do the whole rewrite thing (had to do/realised I should have done), even the thought makes me itch. I do totally get the different medium - I find having it read to me by Word helps with a lot of missing word issues, those words my brain insists on telling me are definitely there everytime I read it. Plus, it's great fun hearing swear words read out by a robot.
For novels, my method is “Write a chapter. Next day, read what I wrote the previous day and fix any mistakes or typos. Write the next chapter. Repeat until novel is done.” No rewrites. One draft. For better or worse, that’s how I do it. The thought of rewriting a whole novel is unimaginable to me.
That's similar to what I do: I do quite intensive editing during the initial writing (which is a big part of why I always write on a computer), and other than a check for errors I put the material up as-is. No Adults Allowed is the first instance where I've gone through the finished manuscript multiple times afterwards to spruce it up.
The exception is The Mechanical Crown, my big fantasy epic, which I *did* actually rewrite from scratch. The difference there is that I wrote the original version in the early 2000s, in my early 20s, and didn't do the rewrite until over a decade later. The time gap meant it didn't feel like a traditional rewrite. It was also very necessary, as the original draft from the 2000s was really quite bad (while having a decent story at its core, which I partly retained).
I don't know that I could separate the two. It's all writing to me until I sit back and say, okay it's a finished story. I suppose at some point it becomes editing when I've finished, but I start back at the beginning. I don't really mind it.
My other suggestion is to have other non-writers, preferably avid readers you trust, provide feedback. I listen for things like, "I don't understand this part," or, "Would someone really react that way," and that sort of feedback. That helps me think more about the need to strengthen the story instead of thinking about it like it's editing.
That sounds like a very healthy, balanced way of looking at it. :)
You're right about external feedback helping. That shifts it more into a 'problem solving' space for me, which then becomes more fun. And perhaps closer to the feeling I get from fresh writing, which often feels like trying to solve a puzzle box.
What Brian said!
As a non-native speaker I can’t really go without editing. It’s all one process to me because I can’t possibly make the prose done from the first attempt. I like writing the first draft because it’s when the story builds up, but rewriting and editing are also joy because this is where I can play with prose, words, rhythm , etc. Many dialogue improvements also surface while editing. I also agree with you that letting a text marinate for a while helps future editing a lot.
Hey Vanya, I'm curious, do you write in your native tongue and then translate, or do you write all in English from the start? Your command of English prose is solid.
Thanks! Mostly English from the start but when I can’t remember a word in English I put a Russian one and then fix it while editing, because my native vocabulary is still better at the moment. Sometimes I do that with whole paragraphs when I struggle to concentrate. Surprisingly, switching languages like that helps relieving the writer’s block. I started with writing in Russian and then translating (for fiction, essays were almost always English), but soon I realised that it was like doing the work twice, and switched to doing it in English only. “Thinking” is different from that, often I think in native language and translate that immediately when it comes to descriptions. Dialogues are mostly English straight away even in thinking because it’s hard to make them sound natural in translation.
That is very cool! Thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading your stories. English fiction from international authors is a joy to read because you're able to include cultural context that is fresh and brings nuance to the story.
There's such an interesting school of thought around this, and how much a culture should be 'translated' contextually for the new audience. Some references absolutely won't make any sense, while others will seem unfamiliar but interesting. Complicating that is that some readers will really relish discovering new things, while others will find it off-putting.
Literary translation is endlessly fascinating.
Exactly. I do translations too, mostly Chekhov’s stories now. It’s a fun practice in many ways. Sometimes I try to “interpret” a thing properly, looking for some colloquial alternative (which shouldn’t be too modern!) and it takes me hours to google it, turning into quite a rabbit hole.
Thank you very much Brian! Sometimes that “otherworldly” feeling is intentional, sometimes not, but I like it
Can I change my answer?
Interesting! I generally edit quite a bit as I write, and write as I edit. There really is no purely creative or purely corrective phase in my process. It's all a jumble. I'm constantly throwing down ideas, rearranging them, searching for better words, revising sentence structures, deleting paragraphs, adding new ones. Then I set it aside, go back to it and attack it the same way, but hopefully... less. When I'm out of ways to add or subtract, I'm done. However, the idea of rewriting anything sounds like a nightmare, and I'd probably scrap a project before I'd start one over from scratch.
That's a bit like what I do: there's a lot of micro-editing involved in my initial writing. Which is very different to the approach of 'just getting the words down' and then fixing them up afterwards.
I think I’m most excited when I’m planning and brainstorming. All those what ifs is great fun. Then after I’ve got that out of my system the writing part is the hardest for me. But if I can get through that rough draft, I enjoy the editing. Getting it just right. But between draft and editing, there needs to be time to forget it. Stephen King suggests 12 weeks to come back fresh and I think that’s a good amount of time. I often wonder if I shouldn’t just find a writer for my draft and then it’s all there for me to thrash it to my liking!! But that feels like cheating 😅
Ha, I rather like the idea of hiring a ghost writer to do the initial draft, which you then take and craft into your own voice. :)
That's an approach I can see people taking with AI writing at some point, which is a peculiar thought.
Great minds. I looked into AI writing TBH. But it really focusses on copy writing for now, not so much fiction. And it would cost me a fortune. I would rather spend that money on a great editor. If I had that money, that is! Ghost writing is pretty common anyway right? Authors use them all the time, but even claiming AI written work as my own feels funny to me! 🤷🏻♀️
The initial writing stage - that initial white-hot process of banging out the ideas - is definitely that fun part. Editing and refining needs to happen, and it's valuable as hell, but it's definitely more of a slog.
But it's the same with VFX creation or audio/video editing. That first pass of banging it all out and getting the initial creation into shape is blissful. Then it's taking 80% of the time to finish off that last 20% - which is the same as the book edit process.
Yeah, and it's the 20% at the end which most readers/viewers won't consciously even notice. But if it's *not* there, they'll know something is off.
Exactly!
Considering how much I enjoyed 1st draft "No Adults Allowed," I look forward to the edited-and-improved version. I'm sure if I wanted to re-read the original with red pen in hand I could find some nitpicks, but I'd have to look for 'em pretty hard. As I've said before, you're a really solid author.
Editing is hard because I don’t see the story as it is, but I see the background material and planning as well. Then, making small changes, like moving something from one chapter to another, can break consistency way too easily. Then, the rhythm of your piece gets thrown off.
Editing is brutally hard. I want to write a program like a programmers “ide” to help with this one day but it’s such a big project I might never get it going. Such a thing will exist one day though
How does an ide work? I'm not familiar with the concept.
And yes, that puzzle nature of a story can get very complex in editing. In No Adults Allowed I made a change to a character's fate, which then had a ripple effect through the rest of the book that needed to be sorted. Complex, but it was ultimately the right call.
I like both, for different reasons. The creation of the story has its own thrill, but going back through and fixing any problems--I find that I am one of those folks who does a great job with revisions.
I've interviewed writers who rewrite the entire manuscript 4-5 times, which is a thought that terrifies me. Do you rewrite entire drafts, or manipulate the existing draft?
Entire rewrite? No freaking way. That means the whole dang thing has major problems that should have been caught in the first draft. I've written enough books that, by now, I can tell when it's going sideways, usually in the first third of the book. I've had one book of late that was that difficult, and I just put it aside for a couple of years and went on to other work.
But I am not a pantser. I do a lot of preliminary work including laying out what the major character and story arcs are going to be. That doesn't mean that I won't do extensive rewrites on the the existing draft--inserts, deletions, etc--but rewrite the whole thing? I'm not that enamored of any one story to put myself through that agony.
My rough drafts have frequently been reviewed and revised as I work, because one way I get my brain in gear for the day's work is review the previous day's work, edit, then go on from there. I'll put the book aside for a month or so, and move on to other work. Then I'll go back and do my first revision. After that, it goes to beta readers. While it's at the beta(s), I'll probably go through it a time or two for a second revision. Incorporating beta work is the final revision.
The only time I've done a ground-up rewrite was with a book I'd first written in my early 20s. When I came back to it in 2016 I realised that it was baaaaaaad - but that it still had a decent story at its core. Because so much time had passed, though, it felt more like writing a fresh book, but with a better idea of what was going to work.
I prefer writing over editing. I've been studying and trying out different techniques to find some joy in editing. It's been helpful and I'm finding editing easier lately. It can still feel daunting and uncertain at times
For me it's that feeling of "I've completed the manuscript!" followed immediately by "oh, now I've got to go do a load more work on it". It can be a difficult extra hurdle to jump.
I totally get that! Why can't our work be beautiful and wonderful after the first draft??? Haha
I absolutely prefer editing at this point in my writing career. As a pantser, that initial draft is little more than a brain dump. While I write linearly, it still ends up a pretty big mess, but I kind of secretly like cleaning up messes. It gives me this weird sense of satisfaction when I finish to have something to put together.
Sounds like the Marie Kondo approach to writing, Donna. :P
Feeling this. I’m editing a novel also at the moment. I keep wondering if there is some better AI editing tool that I’m not aware of... Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell is great editing inspiration too.
Editing on your own can be a real pain, I find it's better to have someone else read and make notes, then go in so you're responding to someone rather than doing the busy work of deciding if you like what you wrote. Of course getting that kind of feedback without paying a professional can be hard at times if your friends all get busy. Though I also find rewriting more enjoyable in general.
Having external feedback, especially for structural editing, is invaluable. Those bigger changes are the ones I do tend to enjoy, in fact.
I’ve learned to enjoy the editing process lately. But it took me a good decade to realize I needed to at least try to like it haha
I love writing, and hate editing. But all my successful writer friends tell me I need to learn to love editing. Better get to it.
Same here! And I always get slightly annoyed when they say it. I mean, I don't ever tell my writer friends "you need to learn to love drafting!" I think it's like chores -- we know it needs done, and we do it because we know it's "good" for us, but that doesn't mean we have to like or even enjoy it!
I'm with you, I kinda loathe the problem. I'm fortunate in that I've not (yet) had to do the whole rewrite thing (had to do/realised I should have done), even the thought makes me itch. I do totally get the different medium - I find having it read to me by Word helps with a lot of missing word issues, those words my brain insists on telling me are definitely there everytime I read it. Plus, it's great fun hearing swear words read out by a robot.