Writing Your First Book, Pt. 3

You. Need to, revise. - Christopher Waulken.

How you revise your work is pretty much going to dictate how you should write it.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. You need to revise your work, and you should know that before you even start writing. I know a lot of talented people who never revise their work, and that's the reason they'll never become great writers. You know who you are.

You.

Need.

To.

Revise.

Are there any more ways I can say that to get you to understand?

1) You need to revise.
2) Necessitas a editar.
3) .esiver ot deen ouY


Revising is a crucial skill of any writer. And it's not just to pick out errors like like this one, but also to prune out awkward, flowery strange sentiments that just take up space and go on and on forever and are just structureless blobs of excessive verbosity. Like this paragraph.

The art of revision is corrupted by how we teach writing, at least in America. In student works we have a mandatory word count and so revising often means we're looking for areas to insert superfluous content rather than remove it. This is where many people pick up appalling writing habits. You could probably populate a bestiary with the individual offenses, but I won't here. This is, after all, a series on how to write your first book, not how to write well.

Revising is rarely about putting stuff in. It is nearly always about taking stuff out.

Revision doesn't happen in isolation, either. It is a constant process. You finish a sentence, you reread it. You finish a paragraph, you reread it. And so on for every page and every chapter. After you finish the book, you reread, not once, but multiple times. You read it again and again until you begin to loathe your own work slightly. That only means you need to step back for a week or so, and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Everyone has their own style of doing it. For example, I inserted this paragraph after the third revision, after reading this to myself and realizing that I had not given any concrete examples on how to effectively revise. A common method is to read what you are writing out loud to see if it feels natural as you say it, which is what I'm doing right now. This is useful for refining your style. However, this edit is an example of fixing a structural issue -- I noticed that I hadn't covered some important topics, and so I went back and inserted them in. Such an omission can only be noticed by someone willing to reflect on what they've just written. You have to ask yourself: have I communicated the ideas I intended to communicate? Is there anything that isn't necessary to this article?

It's not just your eyes, it's other people's eyes, their fresh, fresh eyes. (1) (4)

A complete writing team includes at least: 1 Writer, 1 Test Reader, 1 Editor.

If you are self-publishing, there is an awfully good chance you can't afford a professional editor. Good editors are expensive, and while some are "worth every penny", there are amateurs available who either don't have the critical skills available or use their leverage over you to be nasty. There are still other "writing grognards" who have a crystallized view of what constitutes "good writing" and pretty much take the hammer to Writing Heresy. (5) And yet, the editor is every bit as valuable to making a piece work as the writer themselves; they are the ones who will make your writing good (6) there are things that you just can't see but they can. It comes down this: you need an editor, but you can't rely on the editor to make your writing good.

And nor should they. Turning opaque prose into something readable is just exhausting. You'll find your editors dropping out of the sky if you send them off your first raw, unrevised draft. Even if you use an editor, you need to make sure your work is pretty well refined by the time they see it. If you need your editor to rewrite everything for you, just do everyone a favor and hire yourself a ghostwriter. (2)

The test reader is a friend, family member, or significant other that loves you enough to put with your work. The test reader's primary job is to be honest where others might be a little diplomatic. In other words, they tell you when you suck. If you're going to put your work out commercially, developing a thick skin and professional attitude is a must, and if you can't be your own worst critic you definitely should get your actual worst critic as a test reader.

Everyone writes shit that blows. Where the skill comes in is deleting said shit before anyone has a chance to read it. (3) (7)



(1) This joke shamelessly stolen from Hanon Ondricek.

(2) BTW, I'm going to start an indie editing and ghostwriting service in the future, so if you're looking for one email me.

(3) This article was revised four times. This is a very low number.

(4) This joke worked better when the previous paragraph didn't exist, but since it exists now the joke doesn't quite work. However, I've decided to keep it to illustrate exactly what I mean by revision.

(5) I've inappropriately inserted my own pet peeve when it isn't relevant to the paragraph, and at this point I haven't expounded on the virtues of a good editor so it seems like I'm discouraging people from getting an editor.

(6) Awkward sentence please revise.

(7) Now the number is five times and fuck it, it's done.