Let’s Talk Process: The Rewrite vs. the Edit

Or Joe vs. the Volcano.  In which the rewrite is Joe.  If he had been tossed into the volcano.

Damn, it’s getting late.

Okay.

Editing and rewriting are two very different things.

No, seriously.  They are.  They are often mistaken for one another.  The Doublemint twins of the writing world.

More like ugly step-sisters.

The distinction, however semantic it may seem, is an important one.  Why?

In the immortal words of author Chuck Wending, “Writing is when we make words.  Editing is when we make them not suck.”

And therein lies the difference.

Think of it this way:  I often come to a point in a given work where I am absolutely sure I have a beta draft ready to go out to readers.  I go through it for what’s supposed to be the last time.  I think I’m editing.  Then I start changing sentences.  And paragraphs.  Moving chapters, major events.  Change the timeline.  Change someone’s eye color and/or career and/or the manner in which the individual dies a horrible death.

That, kids, is not editing.  It’s rewriting.  If you’re clear cutting, using a machete on huge swaths, setting fire to what’s left in your wake, choosing to run Arthur Dent over with the bulldozer instead of agreeing to let him go for a pint, you’re changing some of the fundamental plates of your armor.  Your soft bits are now exposed to the slings and arrows of whomever it is comes by.  Your trajectory is altered and if you don’t account for windspeed, you’re going to end up in the wrong crater.  You are still “making words.”  Which implies that your words still suck.

Don’t pout.  Your writing doesn’t suck as in “suck.”  It sucks as in: not in final form, possessing sharp edges, as yet to be polished.  Rough not “bad.”

When you’re down to small changes, final checks, you’re editing.  Planing the edges, using that soft cloth to return to the previous imagery.  Editing is the most arduous task writers face; the changes are small but the amount of time spent on them is not.  Edits can kill you.  They’re insidious and you have to look hard.  You’re looking for mistakes, tiny, seemingly insignificant things that will hold you up at a time when you just want to be done and OH MY GOD, WHEN AM I GOING TO BE DONE.  You are forced to continue looking at this… this thing your brain barfed in moments when you’re very sure you never, ever, ever, ever, ever want to look at it again (that goes away.  Usually).

When you’re looking for things to fix, you always, always find something.  You reach a point where you decide to throw the whole thing into a fire and spread the ashes from the top of a mountain in Nepal.  No trace.

Which means, of course, that you have to increase your scrutiny one thousand-fold.  Every comma, every period, every word, every.  Fucking.  Letter.  You have to be certainly, absolutely certain, that bastard shines like the Hope Diamond and is just as flawless if slightly less cursed.

Unless curses are your thing.  In which case, enjoy this hex: the always finding something else will start a fear spiral of epic proportions.  You will realize you have to tame the beast again.  And you find something else.  And miss something else.

It’s the editing that will make or break you as a writer.

Editing isn’t when you make it “not suck.”  Editing is when you make it something you can take more pride in than any pride you’ve ever taken in anything before.  Except maybe holding a marriage together or looking at your kids. It will never be prefect.  Your best is fine, more than fine.

Your best is a creative miracle.

Rewriting is the middle of the process.

Editing is the end.

That’s how I do it, baby.  How about you?