Writing is Rewriting
What is The End of the writing process? How long does it take to make a book? How many revisions can you expect?
Every writer likes different parts of the creative process. Some like outlining, some like drafting the manuscript, and some like editing. For me, the process doesn’t stop there because I also am the illustrator of my children’s books and graphic novels… so outside of writing and rewriting the text, I also illustrate and reillustrate the book.
The First Draft
You need to figure out if you’re a Pantser or a Plotter. There are, of course, benefits to both of these things.
Pantser - A person who writes by the seat of their pants. Throw caution to the wind and throw out the outline… you’ve got this! Trust your gut and just write!
Plotter - A person who outlines their book and plots everything that’s going to happen ahead of time. You like structure and there’s a method to your madness.
Plotser - A person who outlines their book, a little, then channels a little pantser to wing certain parts of it.
For some reason, there’s so much writing advice on the internet about these things. Probably because getting started is the hardest part for most people (did you know an estimated 81% of Americans want to write a book?), but for others, this is the fun part. Getting your ideas out of your head and onto paper can be pure escapism. For me, this is my favorite part.
Get that first draft out of your brain and into a tangible form for others to read. Congratulations, you have written your book…
Edits vs. Rewriting
First drafts usually suck. Thank goodness for that, because there’s only room to improve.
How does a book improve, you ask? Editing, of course. Then lots and lots of rewriting.
Rewriting can range from fixing typos and grammatically incorrect sentences, to scrapping what you’ve written entirely and reenvisioning it from stage 0 for a second time. Writing a book from scratch for a second time sucks. I’ve done that before. I’ve also written it from scratch a third, fourth, and fifth time.
Once you’ve written a book, you will endlessly rewrite it until it’s time to be published.
Rewriting is a gift
You get edits (from a peer reviewer, agent, or editor) and you take those edits and make your book stronger. We all have probably read a book we thought could’ve been stronger with more edits or more rounds of rewrites. Maybe you didn’t know it at the time, but you knew the depth was lacking, it was too long and rambled in places, or one of the characters wasn’t very fleshed out. These things can be fixed with revisions and rewriting. Good readers (agents, editors, etc) can get into your book, see your vision, and figure out where it is and isn’t hitting the mark. Then you and that person will continue forward editing and rewriting the book until it hits the mark.
My longest book-writing process, to date, is a book I have not sold yet (and thus will not name). It’s just not ready to be sold and I want it to be in a better place before I sell it. I started the book in 2009. Not to date myself, but my early drafts were those written by a young adult. They were juveniles and I had a lot of life to live to figure out this story exactly. Could I have probably finished it and sold it? Maybe. I sold my first book six years later in 2015 and even at the time, I was still rewriting this book. Now in 2024, it’s been 15 years that I’ve been working on this book. I will sell it, I feel confident it’s getting close to ready. However, it’s still in revisions.
This is a screenshot (with some sensitive information removed) of all the folders for that book from 2016 to 2024. This doesn’t account for the files from 2009 to 2015. Almost all of which, I threw away. Keeping only the physical copies of outlines, drafts, and notes I took by hand. Each of these folders have between two to ten files. This is a lot of revisions for a book that has yet to meet an editor!
Sidequest To Agent Alley Or Editor Avenue
Once those early edited and rewritten drafts of the book are done, you will either use that manuscript to get an agent or sell the book to an editor.
This Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint
During NaNoWriMo 2022, I wrote a post about the grit needed to write a book. It is a true test of mental endurance to write a book. Your brilliance is basically only lauded when the book comes out, by way of a book launch or good book buzz and reviews. Otherwise, most of the time you spend creating a book is wrapped up in revisions. You spend most of your time, alone, reconsidering your thoughts, reimagining and reworking parts of the book, tapping into deep emotional places, and googling whether it’s affect or effect.
14 years to write one book isn’t typical, for most writers. 14 years isn’t even typical for me. I hover somewhere between the 3-5 year range for my personal works. However working on the same project, rereading the same lines over and over, while finessing how to phrase a point you’ve thought about endlessly since you started writing, isn’t for the faint of heart. Whenever I mark “read” on my book’s profile on Goodreads, I think about how I haven’t just read this book once or twice. No, I’ve read it hundreds of times. I’ve edited it just as many. Even seeing it printed and in my hands doesn’t stop me from considering how I could’ve rephrased that one line, or fixed that plot moment just a little…
This is not just a test of your sanity, but an exploration of your commitment to your ideas.
I often say you have to love it so much that you love it on days you hate it (but more on that later)…