Step Away From The Vehicle

Step away from the vehicle – and put your novel in a drawer

This is the final piece of advice I wanted to share with you from Zadie Smith in this series on writing wisdom.

When you finish your novel put it in a drawer for as long as possible. A year or more is ideal, says Smith, but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work lies in the fact that you must become a reader instead of a writer. Smith says that there have been many times where she has sat backstage with a line of novelists at a literary festival, all with red pens in hand, frantically editing their published novels so that they might go onstage and read from them. Unfortunately the perfect state of mind to edit your own novel is apparently two years after it is published! And ten minutes before you go onstage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each pointless metaphor, all the pieces of deadwood are distressingly obvious to you as a writer.

Several years previously, when the proofs arrived, you looked at the same page and couldn’t see a comma out of place. And by the way, that’s true of the professional editors, too; after they have read a manuscript multiple times, they stop being able to see it. You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it’s not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who’s read it in 12 different versions. It’s the head of a smart stranger who picks it off a bookshelf and begins to read. You need to get into the head of that smart stranger and forget you ever wrote that book.

Personally, I left my novel for three months and began a Masters in Theology. Needless to say, the theology fell by the wayside once I picked up the book again, cut out a whole family, added two chapters, released it into the hands of my editors and completed the edits once they had finished their job. You don’t need to change course or take up something new, but at least begin some other writing and let it rest.

Here are some of my previous articles which you mind find helpful for editing your work:

https://fcmalby.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/3-things-to-remember-when-editing-your-book/

https://fcmalby.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/editing-and-ove-ruse-of-words-make-each-word-count/

https://fcmalby.wordpress.com/2012/11/09/one-of-the-most-effective-ways-of-editing-your-work/

 

Some interesting articles on leaving a gap between finishing your book and editing your work:

http://www.wiseinkblog.com/planning/at-first-draft-the-6-minimal-steps-to-revising-your-manuscript-before-submission/

http://www.writersdigest.com/qp7-migration-books/wgf-revision_excerpt

http://www.write4kids.com/feature4.html

http://theliteraryhub.blogspot.co.at/2011/10/top-10-tips-for-revising-your.html

http://www.scriptmag.com/features/rewriting-is-writing (this advice is for screenwriting but it applies equally to novels.)