Thoughts on Rewriting

You've just finished a chapter of your book and you re-read it - and you don't like what you wrote. Immediately, in either frustration or inspiration, you start rewriting in the hopes of capturing just the right flow and word choice.

Deciding to completely re-write a portion of a writing project can be daunting. You may even consider waiting a day or two before determining where you want to go with it.

In some instances, re-writing can create an improved story, let us know we need to do more research, or help us consider more about a character's development, or the writer's perspective.

Rewriting can also be helpful if you're looking to explore another storyline or approach. Starting from ground zero with a clean slate can put your perspective back into creative mode.

At the same time, rewriting can be time consuming. No doubt that editing can be a time sucker too, but rewriting may enable you to create something completely new. It's possible that your re-write flows right out onto the paper effortlessly; of course, there's a chance that it may not.

Having a positive or neutral mindset when rewriting is helpful. If you keep the older version you may always have that in the back of your mind as you continue writing. Or if you delete that version, you can lose portions of the initial writing that may have turned out to be beneficial.

Rewrites can be healthy and may help you flesh out your ideas and explorations.

When you have completed several re-writes, though, and still aren't liking where you are. you may need to do a little soul searching on what's happening behind the scenes. Do you need a break from the content? Are you subconsciously not wanting to finish or release the project, perhaps?

I believe re-writing has its place in creating the fabulous work of art you're sweating over. With experience, you'll know when a re-write is necessary...and you'll know when the first thing you wrote was actually really good or more applicable.

Whether you re-write or not, try to enjoy the flow of the writing project, even when it doesn't seem to flow as well as you would like.