Again?

At last! You have finished your manuscript, maybe even celebrated with a glass or two of a fine wine. Not so fast. Your work is far from done. It’s time for the dread rewrites.

As good as your manuscript is it is far from perfect. But you know that. You remember the mistakes you made here and there as the ideas came pouring out faster than you could write. It is now time to go back and fix those mistakes along with others you never realized you made.

Step one is to pick up your manuscript and start reading. With the backspace key and/or a red pencil, go over your baby and start correcting. You will be startled by the number of mistakes you find. But do not get discouraged. It just needs some work to polish it up.

If you persevere you will finish your first rewrite, the simple one with the most obvious corrections. Because of this rewrite you now know you have to go back and make some serious alterations. This part needs to be transposed with that part. Some sentence structures are just plain awkward and need rewording. A few sections may need to be deleted completely. As Stephen King says, “Carve up your baby.” Be blood-thirsty.

You will begin to recognize that you have a style all your own and, gulp, it needs improving. You use the same words over and over again. You have started some sentences with dangling participles. Forget about punctuation. We won’t even start discussing punctuation yet.

So you rewrite again. Now it’s getting boring. You know parts so well you can almost recite them. OK, put the work down, and take a break. Once you reach the stage where sentences no longer make logical sense anymore, once you become word-blinded, you need to stop.

Leave it be. Depending on your personality it may only take a few hours for recovery. For others it may take a day, a few days or even longer. If you feel drawn back to your manuscript, go pick it up and start reading. You will know if you are refreshed enough to begin again. If you are still word-blinded put it back down.

Don’t worry about losing your place or forgetting ideas as they come along. Your mind will not let the project go. You will be thinking about it while you’re thinking about it. Whole new ideas will come to mind and you’ll get excited all over again.

That’s when it’s time for the next rewrite. That’s right. I said the next rewrite and the next. There might even be subsequent rewrites in store. Boring! You bet. Boring but necessary. The beauty is you are making yourself a better writer all the while. You are honing your skills. You are working your way towards being the author you want to be. Congratulations.

Here is a link to one of the best, if not the best, descriptions of what it takes to be a writer that I have ever read. It is a piece from a writer named Chuck Wendig. Thank you, Chuck. You can skip what I write and read Chuck. You will not be sorry but be forewarned that it contains some purple prose.

The post Rewrite your manuscript and then rewrite it again appeared first on Thomas McGann.

Your completed manuscript

Completing your manuscript is the next step in becoming a published author.

You have determined that you are a writer and you have found a subject about which you are passionate. You sat down, took up pen and began to write. Your manuscript has begun.

All you need do now is to write. Most of the difficulties are behind you. Or are they?

Two problems immediately come to mind. First, you do not know how lengthy your manuscript will be or how long it will take to finish which can be intimidating, and second, but certainly not of any lesser importance, are distractions.

The first problem is really not really a problem at all. You love what you are doing. It is just that, sometimes, when a character takes off on an expected journey all its own, you cannot see where your story is going or how it will get back to its main plot point.

Do not let this strange territory scare you. Revel in it. Somewhere down deep, your psyche has already worked out how this thread will weave its way through the story, back to where you need it to be. Your story will be richer and all the better for it.

The second problem of distractions is the more serious of the two. Just like the TV, and that Chunky Monkey ice cream in the freezer, stood in the way of you beginning your manuscript, there is now a fresh troop of elfish distractions hiding in wait to delay you. Some are obvious but some more discrete.

A distraction is anything that gets between you and your writing. We need reminders to remind us not to get distracted.

Most of us face this dilemma. I suppose there are some disciplined individuals who do not have this problem but I am not one. The problem of distractions is so common as to be a frequent topic of discussion in forums. Here is link to a discussion on this very point by a woman with kids and a full time job and how she deals with distractions.

Few of us are blessed with enough free time to just sit and write. It is imperative that you carve out time for yourself to write. You will note that some authors of renown (Steinbeck and Salinger to name just two) retreated to quiet cabins so as to not be disturbed. A professor I know, married with a young son, gets up at 5AM every day to write before he heads out to teach. Another author wrote one of his books in four months during his lunch hour. You must do what you have to do to write.

And, if you do, your manuscript will eventually be completed. Watch out for the temptation to start patting yourself on the back as your manuscript nears completion (another distraction.) It is not done until it is done.

Then again, it is never really done until it is published. You will find yourself tinkering with the “finished” product ad infinitum, tweaking it here and there. I speak from experience. I found myself adding new ideas and altering sentence structures even as I was correcting my manuscript using my copy editors recommendations.

But do not worry. Your manuscript is not going anywhere. Soon you will be sick of seeing it as you rewrite and rewrite and rewrite.

The post Completing your manuscript appeared first on Thomas McGann.