Your Creative Writing Masterclass by Jurgen Wolff

Author:Jurgen Wolff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2012-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

21

Rewriting

Roald Dahl said, “Good writing is essentially rewriting.” While there are a few writers who say they do very little rewriting, most of us find it necessary. Some enjoy the process, others compare it to having a root canal operation.

Let’s start with an overview of the process as described by author and professor Jacques Barzun:

Rewriting is called revision in the literary and publishing trade because it springs from re-viewing, that is to say, looking at your copy again—and again and again. When you have learned to look at your own words with critical detachment, you will find that rereading a piece five or six times in a row will each time bring to light fresh spots of trouble. The trouble is sometimes elementary: you wonder how you can have written it as a pronoun referring to a plural subject. The slip is easily corrected. At other times you have written yourself into a corner, the exit from which is not at once apparent. Your words down there seem to preclude the necessary repairs up here—because of repetition, syntax, logic, or some other obstacle. Nothing comes to mind as reconciling sense with sound and with clarity in both places. In such a fix you may have to start farther back and pursue a different line altogether. The sharper your judgment, the more trouble you will find. That is why exacting writers are known to have rewritten a famous paragraph or chapter six or seven times. It then looked right to them, because every demand of their art had been met, every flaw removed, down to the slightest.

A little rhyme from Jonathan Swift suggests that the process is not without stress:

Blot out, correct, insert, refine

Enlarge, diminish, interline;

Be mindful, when invention fails,

To scratch your head, and bite your nails.

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