Revisions are your friend. Trust me. I published yesterday’s post after going through it a couple of times and correcting the mistakes I found. Today, I went back and found several more mistakes. (I’m sorry if you suffered through them before I made the corrections.)
Anyway, that’s my point – rewriting is a fact of life for a writer. No one writes a perfect first draft. Well, maybe E.B. White and C.S. Lewis did but they are gone, and the rest of us will never measure up to them. So we must edit and rewrite, and edit and rewrite again.
Next week, I’ll give a list of my favorite editing tips, but I have a challenge for all of you “perfect” writers to do today. – Find a piece of your writing that’s more than a week old, one you thought was finished, and – being honest with yourself - edit it for errors. Then rewrite it. Make it better, tighter, and more complete than it already is. If you’re a great writer, you may have to work at this, but you can do it. Check for errors again. Then give it to a friend to critique.
Don’t hate me for this exercise. It’s a lot of work. It will tax your brain. But someday, when you’re a famous novelist, you’ll thank me.
Have a great weekend.
All the best,
Mary
