Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop!

Today’s topic is: Discuss: “Write the book you want to rewrite—because most of writing is revising! Don’t agonize over every word in a first draft; that will only slow you down. Just write the story. Get it onto the page. Drafting is the stage where you capture the idea. Revising is where you figure out how to really tell the story well.” -Beth Kander, author of I Made It Out of Clay

Remember to visit my fellow writers to see what they have created. You can find their works here!

Many authors have many quotes that boil down to something similar. A simpler form from Stephen King says “When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.”

I love this concept. The first time I tried to write a book, it was supposed to be a historical fiction based on Jack the Ripper. As a complete novice, I made mistakes. Many of them. I wrote a bit, started researching something, descended the rabbit hole and lost myself. Rinse and repeat. Then I’d FINALLY complete a chapter. And what did I do? I edited it. Losing my flow. Then restart the process for the next chapter.

This book never saw the light of day because I came to resent it and the writing process. So what do I do differently now? A few things. In some (very rare) cases, I plot. Not often, but I have dabbled with it lately. But the main thing I do is write. Stream of consciousness, word vomit onto the page. It ain’t pretty, I can tell you, but it gets things lurking in the darkest, most hidden away corners of my mind and onto the once-blank white page of my word processor of choice.

It’s clumsy, stilted and messy. I accidentally attribute the dialogue to the wrong character, misname a location, or completely leave out a fundamental piece of the story. But that is okay. In fact, it’s more than okay – it’s brilliant. Why? Well because I have a finished first draft. So many people fall at this first crucial hurdle and give up. You see, without a sloppy, messy, incoherent first draft, you can never hope to have a polished, printed, honest to God book in your hands.

This is where the “fun” really begins. I print out a copy of my book – double-sided, and if I remember double spaced too. Then I dig out my pens – black, blue, red and green usually for different things, errors, and thoughts. I also get out my trusty highlighters and sticky tabs. And I go to town on my manuscript. I go hard at it until it looks so colourful a unicorn may well have vomited all over it. And I go back, revising and rewriting and deleting and adding.

Then I upload it to my Kindle and read it while using text-to-speech to hear it. I make notes and edit it some more. I will often print out a good few versions as I enjoy the process of literally crossing stuff out, adding things in, highlighting and filling the margins with scrawled notes. It’s my way and I love it.

I no longer agonise over a perfect first pass, I look forward to the clumsy, disjointed and rambling first pass as it gives me something to after in the revising phase.