Over the past three years or so my writing process has changed.

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Written by emilievilla   
Thursday, 21 February 2019 04:30

I’ve always been prolific, if prolific can be defined as producing a great many pages of uncertain value.  I can say this about writing a lot… you get a lot written.  Yeah, I know.  Duh.  It’s true, though.  If writing is your thing, doing a lot of it has to help.

Malcolm Gladwell tells us in his book, “The Tipping Point“, that 10,000 hours of doing anything gives you a level of mastery.  I think, perhaps, it should be suggested that 10,000 hours of doing something badly, over and over, would indeed make you a master of doing something badly.  On the other hand, if you are working to improve, and spend every day of your journey looking for the next best practice… perhaps you can, eventually, find mastery of your craft.  Also I am work as a writer in custom coursework writing service help students with their works. I really like writing , I am write different topics. But, sometimes I’ve always hated the process of rewriting.  Why?

Because for most of the time I’ve been writing, I was writing to find out what I had to say.  I was telling myself stories, discovering interesting tidbits about people, places, and processes.  What I didn’t like was going back and tightening up the output.  Why not?  Because I’d already been there, and didn’t feel the characters, locations and situations had anything new to tell me.  I wasn’t entertained by the process.

Then, along comes the California Writer Club, and the society of writers.  I’ve mentioned elsewhere that 90 percent of the people I know now (or at least “hang out” with these days) are writers.  This is a good thing, I think.  Being constantly reminded of craft, of story, of development is heady.  One of the essential benefits I’ve derived from this intriguing culture, is the ability to learn from people who are doing what I’m doing, or better yet, have already been through the gauntlet, and can point out better practices and directions.  Too, it is good to be given the honor of being a guide for people who aren’t as far along the path as I am.  Everybody wins.

One of the most important lessons I’ve gotten from this society is that the process of rewriting doesn’t have to be a boring task.  As long as I don’t buy into my own press and believe that my first draft is chiseled  in stone, I can expand, strike out, change, and learn from the process of rewriting.  And that, friends, gives me hope.

Anyone (well, almost anyone) can write dreck.  It’s fairly easy to put words on a page and call it writing.  Learning to hone one’s skills, to polish output, to improve pace, flow, description, character development, and even the order of paragraphs, is a wonderful experience.  I almost said “skill”, but I’m still working on the rewrite process.  Still an uphill climb, I can now see the benefits of rewriting.  Better still, I’ve begun to enjoy both the practice itself, as much as the improved output.

I may be preaching to the choir here.  Perhaps I’m the only one around who found the rewrite a thing to be avoided.

Where do you stand on rewriting?  Is it something you do with a smile?  Is it a struggle?  Or do you just write one-pass wonders?

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