Like a lot of other writers, I have to write. There isn’t a choice about whether I want to write or not.
When I talk about that urge, I’ve always been talking about the desire to put words onto paper, to make up stories. It’s always first drafting that I’ve needed.
Until now.
This week I started craving the rewriting. I had a couple of rough days at work, and the first morning it happened, I blamed that — wanting to escape my life into my novel.
But this desire, this need, has continued, now, several days later.
Writing is running full tilt off a cliff and trusting that the wings will form to carry you along. It’s flying high above fields planting ideas in rich fields. It’s a mad tumbling river of words rushing out.
Rewriting is sinking, deep into the world, finding the currents and adjusting them by swimming through them. It’s a very different feeling. I didn’t know I could feel this way about a rewrite. I’m exceedingly happy about it. I don’t know if it will continue.
One of the things that I’ve talked about with other writers is finding that joy in writing. It’s always easy to spot those passages in the novel, they’re pure, and flow so well. There are a lot of passages like that in these novels. I don’t know if this joy that I’m having in the rewriting will manifest someway in the final product. For now, I’m just going to enjoy the ride.
So — what about you? Do you enjoy rewriting? I’m not talking word polishing, that’s a different level of rewriting. Do you enjoy teasing all those threads apart and rebraiding them? Or is it a chore?
Rewriting’s the best part of the process, for me.
I also spend way more time on it than on first drafting, which is both rough and very much only a starting place for me.
I have spent more time rewriting than writing, but I’ve never found it as satisfying as this time. Rewriting has always been part of my process, but I would never call it the best part. *G*
Rewriting is generally a chore… In fact, to me, everything after the first draft has a decreasing fun/work ratio.
In outlines and first drafts I have more plasticity, but with increasing re-writes things get very calcified… and if you do want to make big changes it is very hard to do so because you have to unweave all these threads from before and after the big change and weave them back together. Sometimes that’s fun, but usually it’s just work.
Until this novel, I would have agreed with you. But this time the rewriting has taken on a joy of its own. I hope you find more joy as well.
i love rewriting because it is just as you say, sinking farther and deeper into the work. first drafts can be fun, but they can also be a bitch. (it totally depends upon how loud my inner critic has at the time.)
I’ve never experienced the sinking before. But it’s just lovely. Even when I’m not 100%, I’ve been able to experience it, and that means more and more joy.