What "Rewriting" Means For Me

Over the last 5 months I’ve been doing a massive representation of my books and that’s meant a lot of rewrites. But “rewrites” is a very vague term that might give the wrong impression. I am not taking back any material. I once overheard a woman who was married to a traveling pastor, when I was a teenager. She said she’d always been very impressed by this man and been attracted to him because he was genuine. He never took back anything he said. He never apologized or retracted statements. Even if people disagreed with him, he was proud of what he did.

Similarly, I’m not “rewriting” because I feel I made mistakes or said the wrong thing. I don’t think I gave the wrong impression and I don’t care if I did. I am not ashamed of, nor do I question, anything I’ve ever written. I simply feel the stories weren’t marketed correctly. It was hard to find people who would give me an idea about who would want to read a particular story. So I’ve been trying to get them into some sort of order that makes them marketable. Some were a little weaker than others, but that doesn’t mean I did anything wrong in writing those ones. No story is ever perfect.

But of course I always find things I could do better, from an actual writing perspective—like use of words, style can always mature—and an occasional paragraph or area that feels very dated and uninteresting now. And that always goes towards better marketing. A better told story will sell better. Because perfection, if not attainable, is still always a goal.

And there will be more updates.