Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell

Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell is a book about the craft of writing novels and editing your manuscript. The book description from the publisher describes it best: “From lauded writer and teacher Matt Bell, Refuse to Be Done is encouraging and intensely practical, focusing always on specific rewriting tasks, techniques, and activities for every stage of the process. You won’t find bromides here about the “the writing Muse.” Instead, Bell breaks down the writing process in three sections. In the first, Bell shares a bounty of tactics, all meant to push you through the initial conception and get words on the page. The second focuses on reworking the narrative through outlining, modeling, and rewriting. The third and final section offers a layered approach to polishing through a checklist of operations, breaking the daunting project of final revisions into many small, achievable tasks. Whether you are a first time novelist or a veteran writer, you will find an abundance of strategies here to help motivate you and shake up your revision process, allowing you to approach your work, day after day and month after month, with fresh eyes and sharp new tools.”

Some say writing a novel is equal parts inspiration and perspiration, but Matt Bell has a very compelling argument that great novel writing is mostly perspiration through rewriting, revising, and editing, editing, editing. Having written seven novels already myself (plus my first attempt at a novel that went straight into the garbage) and working on my eighth novel now, I have to say I found Bell’s suggestions for writing and editing very intriguing, even downright inspiring. There is definitely an inspirational tone in this book that is above and beyond most writing craft books that I have read, mainly because writing novels is hard. It can be a long, grueling slog at times, so to receive that reminder that what you are doing when writing a novel is hard—and to congratulate yourself after certain milestones—is inspiring. His three stages of novel writing is very practical and I enjoyed thinking how his tips could work in my own process. For my last three novels, I did the work of outlining before I even started the writing process. Bells suggests to outline after the first draft is complete; let the inspiration lead the way, then organize later. Interesting! I’m considering doing this with my current work in progress.