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<\/p>\nI love reading books about writing. I love workshops. I love classes and seminars. I love being in a room with other writers, learning a fresh new way to bring my stories to life on the page.<\/p>\n
What I don\u2019t love is how I feel about pretty much everything I\u2019ve ever written after said books, workshops, classes, and seminars. Why? Because here I am in a class, untying the knot of my writing and realizing not just that something is not working in a scene, but finally understanding why <\/i>it\u2019s not working. Then I realize the thing that\u2019s not working in that scene is why this scene, and this one, and oh this one too, isn\u2019t working. It\u2019s systemic!<\/p>\n
One of the most important things we do as writers is continue to learn our craft. As much art as there is on the page, there is just as much, if not more, craft helping to bring that art to a new level. So this isn\u2019t an article about scrapping classes and seminars because we as writers need these forays into the depths of our ability to create.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about what we do when we know there\u2019s a problem with a work we thought was finished, a problem we now know how to fix.<\/p>\n
Eager interviewer: \u201cDo you ever read your books after they\u2019ve been published?\u201d<\/p>\n
Author (face resembling that of someone attempting to be nice to a person who has set a plate of drowned worms in front of them and encouraged them to \u201ceat up\u201d): \u201cWell, you know\u2026no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Internal Author response: \u201cIt is very clear to me that you have never, not once, had something published. Because if you had, you would know that the idea of re-reading something when there is no way I can fix all the thousands of things I would find wrong with it would fall somewhere lower on the list than cleaning beneath my car seats with my tongue. And I have a toddler. And a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
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That one time Superman was asked to re-read.<\/em><\/p>\n We have a job where nothing is ever truly finished, in the sense of \u201cWell, that\u2019s absolutely as good as it\u2019s ever going to get, and at no time in the future will I ever think it could be any better.\u201d But obviously books get turned in and published. Where do you halt the re-writes within the realm of \u201cnever really finished\u201d?<\/p>\n There doesn\u2019t seem to be much middle ground in the answers I\u2019ve gotten to this question from writer friends, and these are writers with successful careers and, in some cases, NYT bestsellers under their belts. Pretty much all of them say \u201cUse what you\u2019ve learned in your class in your next book. Turn the \u2018finished\u2019 one in.\u201d<\/p>\n 90% of me totally and completely agrees with them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s that 10% that keeps screaming and throwing trash cans across the alley under my window at two in the morning. That 10% is the worst soccer fan on the planet.<\/p>\n So I re-write.<\/p>\n But why <\/i>does that 10% win out over the very wise and correct thinking of the 90%? Because I know I\u2019m not alone here.<\/p>\n A writer friend recently said she\u2019s come to believe people who teach workshops don\u2019t teach them to show writers how to be better writers\u2014they teach them to get the writers to come to the next workshop. We laughed and we certainly don\u2019t think that\u2019s the sole motivation of teachers the workshop-world over, but that feeling in writers, that \u201cThere\u2019s still something wrong with this story\u201d feeling that does drive us to take classes forever, whatever that feeling is is very, very real and is much more responsible for many seminar sign-ups than anything else. It\u2019s also what drives all these re-writes.<\/p>\n Turns out this article isn\u2019t about the dilemma we face every time we learn something new about writing. No, this article is really about fear. Fear of turning something in that isn\u2019t perfect, that someone could find fault in, that could get rejected, which we could see coming, because see all those flaws?!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This is\u00a0<\/em>Walt Whitman,\u00a0people. Case closed.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n That may be the biggest reason why nothing is ever \u201cdone.\u201d<\/p>\n So to re-write or not to re-write?<\/p>\n The answer to that question doesn\u2019t lie in what we do or don\u2019t know about our craft. It isn\u2019t found in our finally reaching such a pinnacle of perfection we disappear in a pink cloud of enlightenment.<\/p>\n It lies in the ability to say \u201cThis is good enough\u201d and to be satisfied in that.<\/p>\n And the most important part of that sentence is not \u201cgood enough\u201d\u2014it\u2019s \u201csatisfied.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s so much work to do behind that one word. It doesn\u2019t mean \u201csettle\u201d or \u201cI can\u2019t make this piece any better\u201d; it doesn\u2019t have anything to do with the piece. \u201cSatisfied\u201d means \u201cI am happy with who I am as a writer.\u201d That is a crucial distinction. I may never be satisfied with a certain piece\u2014it may need more work on the theme, the emotional arc, whatever. But I can be dissatisfied with a piece and still be satisfied with myself as the creator of that piece.<\/p>\n Fear is necessary, because it\u2019s what drives us to write better and better stories. But there needs to be a healthy balance between fear and satisfaction and there are times when it\u2019s out of balance. At those times, and we all find ourselves there, we have to look outside the piece, outside ourselves as writers, and root out the source of the fear.<\/p>\n When you do that, you\u2019ve added yet another dimension to your ability to tell stories. The saying over the entrance to the temple of the Oracle at Delphi said \u201cKnow thyself.\u201d Knowing the depth of our fears is the source of the depth in our stories. And creating a story with depth is truly satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theresarogers.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/whitman-03-300x176.jpg\")
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