‘I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.’
~ James Michener
REWRITING makes the difference between good writing and
poor writing. James Michener and other great writers had given us some good
reminders on the importance of rewriting. So whenever I felt dissatisfied with my
writing style or couldn’t finish a story or an article, their advice on
rewriting comes to me like fresh air into my humid desk.
Now every time I open my document, I would edit here and there and try to take note of things I want to change. But if there's no progress at all, then I rewrite and, when necessary, change almost everything in the document. As one author says, it is perfectly okay to write garbage, as long as you edit brilliantly.
It’s a big advantage living when easy-to-use computers
and word processing software are readily available to every writer, and they have simplified immensely my rewriting task. I couldn’t imagine how much
Michener labored with his typewriter and painstakingly writing and rewriting long
notes to complete drafts for his manuscripts before releasing the final version
to his publisher. According to Michener, he went very slowly and needed
constant revision in writing his best-selling historical fiction Hawaii. He had to type about three million
words to only trim down to about half a million in the final version for
another round of draft writing.
