Dylan, from Lincoln, Nebraska, writes, “Do you think you are a good writer?”
In fact, Dylan, I do not consider myself a good writer. But I do think I’m a very good rewriter. Oh, now and again I write something that works well the first time. Not often. I find that I have to go over and over my text sixty, eighty, a hundred times. I cut, I add, and often change things in a big way. My best work emerges slowly, very slowly. I have also learned that those parts of my work that I’ve changed the least are quite often the parts that have to be taken out.
In that regard, I’ve always liked this anecdote. Someone once said to Samuel Johnson, the great 18th Century literary figure: “Mr. Johnson, my friend has written a great book, with wonderful passages, but he cannot find a publisher.” Johnson is said to have replied, “Tell your friend to remove those wonderful passages, and he will have a much better book.” In writing, as elsewhere, less is often more.
6 thoughts on ““… but he cannot find a publisher.””
I do enjoy this blog, Avi, and your comments about rewriting should be a mantra for any teacher.
I enjoyed your post about baking bread. My husband bakes bread and does all our cooking and so Linda and I must be the luckiest girls on the planet.
Much love to you both over the holidays,
The best of holiday love and bread to you too, Jan!
Avi
Avi, your hard work always pays off in stories that have the unneeded parts trimmed away and core enhanced. Talent, learned skill, many rewrites…magic? Whatever blend of circumstances makes you good at this is a gift to all of us.
Thank you, Steve. Kind and generous. Avi
Avi, this post has come at the perfect time for me! I have been stuck in a hotel for eight days in nowheresville, Utah, working on a middle grade rewrite and it has been a delightful bit of torture. I feel restless and want the story to emerge faster but I have found that like an archaeologist, it emerges one grain of sand at a time as I apply a feather brush. Then, I get impatient and blow whole sections. But to your point, rewrites make the books “come alive.” I have found that books I don’t enjoy very much have an air of being thrown together very quickly without the writer deeply considering why a particular passage is relevant to the story and character. I have written many a delightful passage that has nothing to do with the story or character. It takes a lot of courage to remove them! It takes a lot of courage to say: “it’s okay, little paragraph. It’s not you, it’s the story” and destroy! I find after they are gone, I rarely miss them. Merry Christmas and God bless!
I’m at the same place with a current project. Here’s something I do. Take out that “delightful passage,” and park it at the end of the text. You are not destroying it, just hiding it, telling yourself you can always bring it back. Of course you don’t but it makes the yanking process a bit easier. .