So you think you don't need to rewrite?

Too many writers are convinced that their books are ready to go to press long before they are.  And yes, I am guilty of that.  It's why I rely heavily on editors, and if the day comes that I self-publish new fiction as so many people are doing, I will still employ a dynamite editor to push me when I get complacent, and to spot where I've gone wrong, whether it's grammar or story or style.

Rewriting is hard.  But it's the most important part.

To put this into perspective, Ernest Hemingway wrote at least 47 different endings to A Farewell to Arms . 

“I think people who are interested in writing and trying to write themselves will find it interesting to look at a great work and have some insight to how it was done,” said Sean Hemingway, a grandson of Ernest Hemingway who is also a curator of Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The new edition concludes that the 39 endings referred to by Hemingway are more like 47.

E.B. White rewrote the beginning to Charlotte's Web about the same number of times.

And if you wonder, "Is it really worth that much rewriting?" I give you the first line of Charlotte's Web:


"Where's Papa going with that axe?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. 

The answer is... to kill a newborn pig. A runt. The violence juxtaposed against the warm, family kitchen is definitely worth all the trouble.


Rewriting.  It's where the magic often happens.


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