Deep Revision and Ruthless Reinvention

I confessed in my post on the last full moon that I had to burn my novel down and start it all over. I had to reinvent. I had to reimagine.

Even after writing and publishing multiple novels (which, you might think, would make me better at the writing of, oh... novels?), I still had to do this kind of rigorous and excruciating work. Because, if you want the truth, that's often what it takes. If you aim to write and submit and hopefully publish your best work, you need to be ruthless with yourself and make difficult choices.

This is surely an over-dramatic way of admitting that I had to do a lot of deep revising in order get my next novel to a place where I was happy with it... and where my publisher was happy too. At the same time, I needed that messy period of disaster and excavation in order to allow the book to find its truest form. I'm grateful for it now. I even look back and think it wasn't so hard after all. (I'm in obvious denial. It was.)

When it comes to revision, I've noticed that students and newer writers often expect a more straightforward process. They'll do some rearranging, clarify some questions, add new scenes here or there, do a little cutting and condensing, expand some characterization... and then done. This is all good and necessary work, yes, but this can often be the kind of revision that plays it safe and takes no risks. If your revised manuscripts tend to keep the bulk of the original framework of your story intact from first to final draft, you may only be addressing the surface-level revisions and ignoring the true and worthy possibilities that are shouting for your attention underneath.

I don't want to advocate being drastic for no reason, but I do want to say that if you're not willing to break what you have, you're only ever going to get your book revision to be good enough. You haven't allowed yourself a real chance to make it great.

Keep reading if you want to hear some thoughts on revising novels deeply and fearlessly. I'll also share an exercise that helped me embrace what my book was meant to become.

Before I get to that... want to write with me? If you're interested in joining me for a generative prompt-writing session in Zoom in October that's open only to Writer Membership subscribers, the sign-up link follows! (It's free!) And oh, I'm throwing in a book giveaway into this post too, just because.