Don’t fall in love with your writing

By Dennis Mellersh

In writing a book, as with any form of writing, one of the dangers that many writers face is becoming enamored with their words and not providing themselves with the perspective to judge their writing objectively.

In the flush of finishing that first draft your book, for example, the creative juices are flowing fast, and the creative emotions are running high. At this point, as writers, everything we have put down seems to look and sound great.

And, it is important when writing creatively to go with the flow of our thoughts, not interrupting the writing to make continual adjustments. The downside, is that when we are “in the zone” with the first draft our book and writing furiously, we can: become repetitive, use too many unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, fall into the trap of telling and not showing through action, become redundant, have too much exposition, or become inconsistent.

At this point we need to back off from the work take a hard look at our writing, and see if we can determine ways to improve it.

At the first draft stage of a book, one of the techniques we can use to improve the manuscript is to see how we can make it more compelling by removing writing passages that add little, or even detract, from the central theme of the book.

In other words make the story more concise and compressed. The necessity for this exercise is not something that needs to be followed only by beginner writers; established, famous authors recognize the importance of keeping their writing focused on the core essentials needed to tell their story.

Stephen King, for example, offers this advice:
“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt …but it must be done.”

Doing this cutting of what may be some of our favourite parts of our manuscript is difficult, and requires creating perspective.

One way to achieve this perspective is to put the manuscript aside for some time, go on to another project and then revisit the manuscript with a fresh eye after a few days or more.

And when you go back to the manuscript you want to edit, make sure you keep a copy of your first and subsequent versions of the manuscript in case you get carried away and throw out some of the good stuff along with the non-essentials.