Here’s What I Suck At

Well, there’s a lot of things I suck at like housework and cooking but this post is not the post for that. This post is going to talk about the things in a writer’s life that I suck at.

Things I Thought I Was Good At

I’ve been “writing professionally” since 2007. Cool, huh. Thought I’d learned a lot. Always reading craft books, always trying to get better. Well, sold my first book, which, it turns out is my 2nd book I ever wrote. But if you actually go back and read that first draft, there are exactly 2 scenes that survived the myriad of drafts that took from 2007 until 2010 when I sold it.

Thing One: Delete

Beginning writers are notorious for being unwilling to delete anything. Chuck Wendig has some amazing posts on things writers do and one of the posts he talks about just because the scene is awesome, doesn’t mean it gets to stay in the book. Love this advice. So I thought I’d gotten pretty good at deleting stuff, even stuff I loved.

Thing Two: Starting Over

Part of my writing process involves chucking pretty much the entire novel and starting over. Which is, well, it’s not a good way to write. However comma, it appears to be my way to write. Which is not efficient and it also gives editors of the world ulcers.

Thing Three: Writing Fast

Holly Root wrote a post once upon a time that talked about all these beginning novelist who query books one two and three in a series and how they want to be writing five books a year and blah blah blah. Well the thing I learned from my own writing life is that I write fast. As an example from my latest book (which is still very much at the sucks stage):

First draft: Feb 27

2nd draft: March 20

3rd draft: April 15

4th draft: April 30th

5th draft: May9

6th draft: May 30

Those last three drafts (all between 65-78K words) were not complete rewrites but pretty close to complete overhauls. Cool right? Yeah, not so much but more on that in a second.

I thought I’d gotten pretty good at these things over the last few years. I thought I’d figured out my process.

And now we turn to

Things I Suck At

Thing One: Delete



Apparently snoodling with your delete key, while a critical skill also causes you to delete entire words, punctuation, paragraphs and scenes. It also causes one to end up with a frankenmanuscript instead of anything even remotely publishable.

Thing Two: Starting Over

Yes, my willingness to throw the entire manuscript out and start over is symptomatic of being a gal who can’t plot to save her life. I’ve learned to storyboard. Hell, I’ve even learned to write synopses (granted they’re more like 10 page short stories but you get the idea). But I still can’t help throwing the entire novel out and starting over with one or two key scenes remaining. The result here is that I end up with a whole lot of scenes stuck together that may or may not make an actual novel.

Thing Three: Writing Fast

Sure it’s awesome that I can crank out a draft manuscript in 45 days. Except when you see above, you realize that I’m not good and fast, I’m just fast. I can’t see typos. I can’t see that the character arcs suck. I absolutely suck at proofreading my own stuff. Dropped words, misspellings, its vs it’s. I am appallingly bad at proofreading and I have no idea how to force my brain to slow down. My battalion commander actually commented on what a terrible first draft I write. Oh I can see it in everyone else’s stuff. Just not my own.

So what’s this really all about?

I suck at revising and editing my own work. In the army and in life, if you’re bad at something, you can work at it until it becomes a strength. But I’ve read craft books out the wazoos. The only thing I know how to do is keep going. I don’t know how to sit down and figure out the revisions process. I’ve taken classes, I’ve read books. The only thing that helps me revise is someone sitting in my manuscript with a red pen and saying this is what you’re doing here, do this instead.

And this is why I need an editor. I’m not sure if this says I’m a shitty writer or if this says I’m a lazy writer who isn’t willing to do the hard work, or if it says I’m a diva who doesn’t want to fix her own problems. But I do know that I want to get better at it. I want to be able to read my own manuscript with a critical eye and say, ooh, this sucks, you need to move this here and it would be stronger. I want to be able to see the missing words and letters and wrong words.

I don’t know how to train myself to do these things.

And the other thing I’m terrible at? Asking for help. I feel like I’m taking taking taking and never giving back. I don’t like feeling like that. So I don’t ask for help. Which is bad. Because I need it.

So fellow writers, editors, agents: I’ve confessed my writing sin, my bad writer habits. I don’t know how to fix myself. I’m all ears: How do you train writers to get better at editing? How do you enable writers to see their own words critically?