Revise. Repeat.

My friend Natal­ie Bab­bit once said to me, “When I get stuck going for­ward, I just go back to the begin­ning and revise.”

“How often do you do that?” I asked.

“Again and again. Until I can go for­ward again.”

Good advice, and some­thing I do all the time. Being “stuck” is sim­ply (except it’s not sim­ple) that you have not ful­ly thought out your sto­ry. Going back forces you to engage with your sto­ry and char­ac­ters so that what­ev­er needs to hap­pen emerges from what you have already writ­ten. As you go back and back and back, you engage with your char­ac­ters more. You learn to know them and their motives bet­ter. And you are find­ing ways to share all that with your future readers.

But there is anoth­er aspect to going back. When I do it, I am often appalled at the mis­takes I dis­cov­er. Real mis­takes. Words miss­ing. Incom­plete phras­es. Spelling. Gram­mar. Rep­e­ti­tions in the plot. Facts. Any­thing and every­thing. Some­times I know that aspects of this are due to my dys­graphia. Oth­er times, it’s just slop­py work. Not think­ing things out. 

Nobody, nobody, nobody, just sits down and writes some­thing straight through. Nobody, nobody, nobody. Writ­ing is not writ­ing. Writ­ing is revis­ing. Again and again and again. Is that some­times bor­ing? You betcha. But at its best, it can be a rev­e­la­tion. “Ah! There! I got it! That’s final­ly right.”

It can’t be said enough, writ­ing fic­tion is also a form of self-dis­cov­ery. You dis­cov­er some­thing about your­self. Your char­ac­ters. Your world.

I have heard it expressed many times by writ­ers, “I dis­cov­er what I am think­ing by writing.”

Don’t be afraid of being stuck. Embrace it.