To re or not to re

To re- or not to re-write, that is.*

We all know we’re supposed to. We pick up advice from classes or workshops or writers' groups: hash out the first version and then return to do the real work, the work of uncovering what it is we’re really trying to say. Chisel away the unnecessary dross or fill in colour. Whether we’re adders or cutters, we’ve most certainly learned that to take ourselves and our work seriously, we must be rewriters. Only an amateur beams with delight in the one-draft finished product. 

Except… whatever flaws that first draft has, there is an effervescence in the flow of it that often gets lost in the remodelling. A sensible, orderly, methodical approach to troubleshooting can turn a vibrant first idea bloodless. For me, (sorry for banging the same drum three posts in a row) the problem lies with the division of labour between creator and editor. When I first came across this notion of the two halves of the writer, I embraced it with Eureka! reverence. Dorothea Brande outlined it in Becoming A Writer. She had put into words what I’d long felt – that the act of writing fell into two distinct modes – the wild mind of creating and the schoolmarmish restraint of the editor. I loved that. I enjoyed it. And I think now, it is an essential phase in a writer’s development. Only by separating the two do we find which is dominant in our writing self, which needs to be strengthened.

But at some stage we need to lure them together and get them to work in unison – like conjoined twins or three-legged racers, who get nowhere fast if they’re at loggerheads. Working with the creator then the writer is like trying to follow the direction of Doctor Dolittle’s pushmi-pullyu. (A gazelle-unicorn crossbreed with a head at each end that sets off in two different directions every time it tries to move.)

But if we work first at getting the two facing the same way, we may well find that the first draft is not so far off the desired final version. If we're working a novel, it's almost guaranteed revisions will be necessary. But rather than cutting and pasting and fleshing out or paring down, perhaps we’re better off with a fresh stack of paper and sharpened pencils in a room at the opposite end of the house from the computer glow of the existing draft. Because that faulty version with its big, fat, beguiling word count will only try and coax us to tinker with it rather than start from scratch and rewrite an entire chapter again.

New work has edge. It has energy. It surprises us and romps off through the wooded rough land of our ideas, where rewriting would have us stick to the known path. And if that new work harnesses, in equal measure, editor nouse and creator verve, then a first draft may be the one.

How though? What is this first work we must do to get those two heads facing the same way? No easy answer, nor one sole answer-fits-all. For me, I’m pretty sure voice is core. When the language flows with a surprising brightness and clarity, that I can both direct and follow simultaneously, like lucid dreaming, then the chore goes out of the writing, the joy returns and that shows on the page.

*When I wrote this post, I didn't know Susie had covered the same topic the day before. I think our attitudes are not opposed. I'm not suggesting a single take at a novel will suffice, but that tinkering can kill. Perhaps writing from scratch for a piece that is stalling produces somehting stronger than shoring up holes in a lively but too-flawed draft.