Rewriting in the New Year

It is the beginning of January of a bright, spanking new year. Many people have been turning to lists of resolutions, or not, in my case. If I do have a resolution it is to write every day. Since September I have been trying to do some rewrites that I have been asked to do by a publisher but life and work keep getting in the way. I thought I would have them done by now but I still have quite a way to go. In a way doing the rewrites is harder than facing a blank page. The pressure to get it right is enormous.

I have recently come across two excellent blog posts for writers. One is a brilliant list of 25 things a writer should stop doing - I could empathise with almost all of them! And the other is a post on meditation increasing creativity - something I might try.  I need all the help I can get! Making decisions about which words are the right ones can be so difficult at times. We all know the quote from Oscar Wilde who claimed he spent all morning adding a comma and all afternoon deleting it.

I know so many people who are currently rewriting work and we are all struggling the same things - getting the words in the right order - but we all know that writing is all about rewriting and there is no short cut.

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
– T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets


Good luck to all rewriters out there!


And here is something to listen to whilst doing that rewriting. Mumford and Sons have had a brilliant idea of having gigs in book shops. This is called Winter Winds and for those who live in the UK it couldn't be a more applicable title.