If You’re a Writer, You Need to Hear This

I once had an editor tell me a book hardly needed anything—all light revisions—and then when I went to implement something in the first chapter, that single pulled thread led me to throwing out about 60,000 words of a 90,000 word novel and rewriting all the rest.

Novels are HARD. Needing a lot or a little revision doesn’t really say much about you as a writer. What matters is what you finish with. Everything that happens behind the scenes is just your process and everybody’s process is different and they are often messy, appear deranged to an outsider, and are necessary to get where you want to be with a book.

What’s important is to not judge your process, but accept that it is a process and run with it. The end.

Getting it done is huge. I often say that writing is in the revision, because that’s when you can see the raw form of your work and set about carving and shaving and chiseling and polishing and making it art. And yes, it’s art. Don’t let anybody tell you different.

You’ve got this. All of you.

Print it out, hang it on the wall, remember it.

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