Write Better: Tips and tricks

Resting before editing

This chapter will address a very important question (though perhaps it is better posed after NaNoWriMo). You've got your novel done. Now what? You know you're supposed to edit, might even be excited to since that means your voice is one step closer to being heard. You start reading around about how to go about editing, and you find all this advice about throwing your work in a drawer for two months and not looking at it. No, you can't take even a quick peek to coo at your newborn Precious.

Why on earth would anyone want to do that?

Many a good cut of meat needs time to rest after cooking. Slicing into it too soon (usually 10-15 minutes is a good wait but it depends on what you've got) can result in loss of flavor and juices as the inner liquid needs time to redistribute evenly throughout the meat.

Now, your writing isn't going to change between the moment you put it into a drawer and when you pull it back out. The adverbs aren't going to rearrange and the misplaced commas won't find their way home. What changes is you.

When you aren't obsessively hovering over each and every word your brain does what most brains do; buries the old information under new input. When you go back after a certain length of time you might actually forget some of the things you wrote and the way you wrote them.

But Kellie, you say, my novel is 65,000 words. I can't recite my writing line by line now, so why should I have to wait?

There's an old idiom that's often true in writing "can't see the forest but for the trees." Meaning, you are so close to the little things that you can miss larger details. Sometimes a sculptor needs to take a step back and look at the entire face before carving out the second nostril.

You may think it's silly now, but that's part of how the saying works!  Most writers will tell you that they've caught mistakes they must've missed a hundred times before actually noticing them.

That distance that time puts on helps you see more things as "new" and you may notice things that you hadn't before.

What about editing as you go?

Several writers take this route, writing everything carefully and neatly as they go and rearranging as they see fit throughout the process. That's okay. Their draft may turn out more polished than yours (or it may not; we do not all write equally). If they're paying careful attention and know how to edit, they may have less to edit later. Or they may only wind up with really clean sentences and have a lot of work to do for story structure.

But odds are they're still going to have some form of a draft two, just to make sure they aren't blind to something. Most good writers are perfectionists. They want to put their best foot forward...so they can almost always find one more tiny thing to change.

So, let's say I decide to let my writing rest. What's a good length of time?

Depending on who you ask around the industry, you'll get a different answer. Some writers claim just a couple weeks is okay, others will hang onto a draft for six months to a year. Generally, I've seen times recommended for anywhere between six weeks to three months and most people regard that as reasonable and successful.

The other super-helpful advice often passed on to people who ask the question is: however long you think. It's up to the individual.

And that's true. You know yourself best. When I was a younger writer this would drive me crazy because I didn't know and wanted some guidance. So I tried everything until I found something that worked for me. That's what you'll have to do, too.

How can I tell what's good for me?

A good test is to see how often you're thinking about it. If you're just bouncing around with your eyes on the clock, it's probably not time. If you think of it in passing once a day (oh, I wonder if I should edit tomorrow), you're probably in the clear. You want to wear off that shine from the first time, but you don't want to forget about it to the point where you're just being lazy. And you know when you're just procrastinating. We all do it, and we all know when we're doing it.

Look, resting is great and all, but I'm excited about this piece and I don't have millions to live off of while I'm waiting for my writing to set. Do you have any other recommendations?

The wait time is mostly about putting distance between yourself and your Precious. If you're really busy and don't have time to sit around pining after the locked drawer or computer file, you'll be okay. Marathon Game of Thrones. Watch every Sunday NFL game. Bake a cake. Teach your dog a new trick. Give yourself new experiences and you'll forget faster than just sitting around moping about how much you want to edit.

I do have one favorite way to distance myself, though. Read someone else's writing. Read at least your novel's length. If you can, double that. Replace old words with new ones. It's always recommended that writers read, because reading is one of our best teachers (and an excellent way to find out more about ourselves, our writing style, and new tricks to write better). Depending on how fast you read, you can get out editing quickly—and when paired with waiting until you've stopped foaming at the mouth, you'll do just fine. You really do have to find what works for you, and sometimes that takes trial and error.