Writing, Re-writing, Re-re-writing, etc.

Yesterday first thing in the morning Mark said, “The book is finished. I can’t work on it anymore, everybody likes it. It goes the way it is.” He was grouchy because it is very humid and, despite living in Louisiana for several years, he has no tolerance for humidity.

Last night he packed up his manuscript and several edit copies and paper and pens, got in his truck, and headed out to one of his secret writing places to keep working on the book. For someone who only started writing a couple years ago, he is a typical writer.

I know writers who say they prefer re-writing to writing the original draft. “This is where the fun comes in,” my friend Susan says. “When you write the first time, you slog through without a compass. But when you re-write you get to really have fun with your story and your characters. You get to shape them.” I admire her perspective but I’m one of those who has the most fun the first time around.

The thing about writing - at least fiction writing - is that you get to create entire worlds and there is something very thrilling in that. Slowly, as your characters take form, and their worlds become more real, it becomes so easy to slip into those places and live there and create all sorts of wonders and mischief and experiences there. Of course this is also how characters can get unruly and take off on their on directions but that’s part of the fun, too.

For me re-writing is tedious and painful. If I like my characters I don’t want to mess with them. If I don’t like them, I don’t want to be around them. Yet I re-write and re-write and re-write. I want these worlds I make to come alive to the reader, too, and am rarely satisfied without endless rewrite. My friend Jane says, “If I picked up one of your stories in China, I’d still know it was yours - you are a very visual writer.”

Mark writes non-fiction - mostly - though his tangents into dreams and fantasies are frequently fictitious and he he does a good job with them. He’s a natural born story-teller - that’s something you can’t just teach someone. I tell him he is at his best when he is writing about his life at sea. When he lets himself slip into those long days and nights on the ocean when his mind had nothing to do but wander as his hands and muscles and body did the practiced work of hauling and setting back lobster traps, he is at his finest. He is the sort of person who notices everything - the flight of birds, the movement of clouds, the patterns of the waves, and his brain compares and analyzes. He has to figure out why that works the way it does. It makes for good reading when he writes it down.

To me there is something so fascinating in the human need to record our perceptions and experiences. Whether it is writers writing or artists painting or photographers shooting picture after picture we long to capture something and preserve it. That’s very beautiful, I think. It means we value our experiences and find meaning there. We want others to share in that. It is inherent in human nature, I think. When children get that first taste of independence, toddling away from Mommy on chubby, sturdy legs, they gather up something - a shell, a rock, a dandelion - and bring it back. Here, I saw this and I want to share it with you.

And as we mature in our craft we want to make the sharing an experience that those we share with will enjoy. So we write and then rewrite and then rewrite again. I have to get to work on my short story The Haven now. This first re-write is going slow. I keep finding reasons to avoid it. Mark says he would rather be working on his new book but he can’t quite get finished with the first one yet. One more edit/rewrite - that’s all, just one more. And then it’s done.

Thanks for reading.