Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

Using your misgivings
Revising and editing
Drafting, researching, and editing

In this chapter

·  Utilizing your doubt

·  Reading out loud—or not

·  Choosing your words

·  The size and scope of your work

·  When development lags

Whatever sort of creative writing you do, it’s important to revise and edit your work, especially if you write essays, poems, or short stories you plan on submitting to editors. No matter how much time you took to craft the first draft, you’ll always find a few mistakes to correct or wording to revise when you read through your work again.

I’ve found it’s best to set aside your first draft for a few days after you’ve written it. You need time to get the piece you’ve been slaving over out of your system. Don’t just hit Save on the first draft and start again straight away on the second pass. You’ll come to the work fresh if you leave it alone for a while. What you’ve written might make more sense if you sleep on it or go engage in some activities completely unrelated to writing.

For essays, try to allow at least a day. Fiction and poetry can sometimes take longer. Your mind will carry on, mulling over ideas, while you’re doing other things. For example, many novelists I know recommend putting your novel aside for at least a month before starting the revision process, even if you work on another novel in the interim.

When you pick up your work again, print it out and read over it quite quickly. Circle any typos and mistakes you spot, but concentrate more on the overall flow. If it’s an essay, check for any gaps in logic or any sides of the argument you might have missed. If it’s prose, look to see if any passages drag or move too fast.

This is the stage to sort out any big problems. Some writers even rewrite the whole thing (especially when working on fiction), starting afresh with a blank document on the computer. If you’re better at getting it right first time, you might not need to do that. However, you might still find yourself cutting out whole paragraphs, adding new material, and changing the direction of the piece.

After you’ve done this, you might want to ask a friend and/or fellow writer to read the piece. Tell them not to look for tiny errors like typos or clumsy sentences at this stage. Instead, ask whether they think it’s broadly okay, or if they have any reservations about the overall direction of the article or story.

When you’ve sorted out the big picture, you can start fixing any individual sentences and words. Again, it’s a good idea to print out the document and do this on paper. I find I miss errors onscreen, especially typos that are valid words, such as they’re for their.

Here are some common things writers miss:

·  Typos and misspellings. A good tip is to read backward. You’ll go much more slowly, focusing on every individual word instead of getting caught up in reading.

·  Clumsy sentences and confusing or misleading phrasing—try reading your work aloud.

·  Unnecessary words.

·  Commonly misused or confused words.

If you’re not 100 percent sure about a spelling, double-check it in a dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary is the authority, but you often can get a convincing consensus by running a word search online. When you can’t quite find the right word, using a thesaurus—electronic or print—can help.

Now it’s time to explore the factors that will help your revising and editing go even more effectively: using your misgivings, reading aloud, paying attention to language and length, and developing underdeveloped areas.

Using your misgivings

Self-doubt is something that plagues most creative souls at one time or another. You might be going along, feeling great about your creations, and then something happens that shakes your confidence. Perhaps you get a rejection letter, or someone makes a nasty comment about your work. Perhaps you unfavorably compare your work to someone else’s or your inner critic gets really loud. Or perhaps self-doubt just sneaks up on you out of nowhere, whispers in your ear, and suddenly you’d rather do anything but write. Self-doubt feels awful, but it comes up, so how do you move through it and return to your creativity?

For one thing, be gentle. Don’t beat yourself up over your self-doubt. Yelling at yourself might work in the short term, but with most writers I’ve observed, this turns into a vicious cycle of beating yourself up, avoiding writing, more beating yourself up, followed by procrastinating writing, a final beating of yourself, and finally feeling like dirt.

Instead of going to your drill sergeant voice, try going to a gentle, parental voice instead. Try telling yourself something like, Hey, it’s okay that you’re doubting yourself right now. It happens. What small step could you take to feel a bit better?

It helps to be reminded of how fabulous you are, so to that end, I recommend keeping a kindness folder. In this appreciation folder, collect kind emails, letters, notes, tweets, etc. When you begin to doubt yourself, go to your kindness folder, read a few of the notes you’ve saved, and soak up all the collective love that’s been directed at you.

Feeling appreciation and love from others is wonderful, but don’t forget to give yourself love and appreciation, too. As the late pop singer Whitney Houston used to sing, “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” I’ve witnessed how helpful it can be to writers when they write letters to themselves. It has been described to me as writing to your artist self from your wiser self. The idea is that your kind, wise self will know just what to say to lift you up. Then you print it out and put in the kindness folder.

It’s also important to begin your treatment of self-doubt with baby steps. One of the best remedies for self-doubt is action. Most writers I know prefer to begin with gentle action—action that is full of kindness and permission and playfulness. And the best way to move into action when you’re in self-doubt mode is to start small. Start with a doodle on a piece of junk mail, write a silly haiku, dance around your living room, sing in the shower, or play with crayons. Let go of the need to make a masterpiece and for then, for that moment, start with something that brings you delight—one teeny, tiny thing.

IDEAS AND INSPIRATION

Remind yourself of your accomplishments. It’s easy to forget all you’ve accomplished. Take some time to make a list of how much you’ve already achieved. Looking back over old journal entries can sometimes help remind me how far I’ve come. On a smaller scale, you can keep an “already done” list each day to keep track of all the things you’ve accomplished instead of focusing on what you didn’t do.

Finally, don’t lose your sense of adventure; keep taking risks. It’s amazing to me how despite self-doubts, writers can courageously keep putting themselves out there. And I want to simply encourage you to keep taking those risks, big and small, in your life and in your art. Taking risks helps squash those pesky self-doubts in a powerful way. Your risks might include trying out a new color, learning a new style, reaching out to a fellow writer, submitting your work to a magazine, posting your work online, or even opening a book shop. Not all your risks will have the results you want, but every risk gives you the inner knowing that you are capable of more than you realize. Be ambitious; go for it!