What Nobody Tells You About Revising
#writingcommunity #booksky
#amwriting #writing Unfetterred Treacle
They tell you writing a novel is hard.
(News flash, it is!)
They don’t tell you revising it is like cleaning out a garage…only the garage is on fire, all the labels have fallen off the boxes, and also some raccoons have moved in and started a punk band.
Revision isn’t just “fixing typos.“
It’s often burning whole sections down, rewriting characters, and realizing your “perfect” first chapter belongs in the trash fire.
And then sometimes fishing it back out, washing it off, and duct-taping it into chapter eight.
You discover what the story was actually about.
You thought you were launching a ship full of badass space pirates.
Somewhere along the way, you ended up with a lifeboat full of orphans.
Surprise!
At some point, you will get absolutely sick of your own story.
You’ll hate your characters.
You’ll hate your prose.
You’ll question every decision that led you to this moment.
You’ll wonder if you’ve ever actually written a coherent sentence in your entire life.
This is normal.
(And no, you can’t set your laptop on fire. It’s expensive.)
You have to hurt your darlings.
Not just kill them, hurt them.
Cut scenes you loved.
Delete jokes you thought were hilarious.
Murder entire subplots you spent months building.
It’s brutal, but your story gets sharper, leaner, better.
Revision is about re-seeing the story, not just polishing it.
You’ll find yourself asking questions like:
…Or should I just delete the whole mess and claim it was an experimental haiku all along?
And the wild part? The magic happens here.
Drafting is exciting (sometimes).
But revision?
Revision is where the real book shows up.
This is the forge.
It’s sweaty, messy, loud, and it’s absolutely essential.
Nobody tells you that revision is harder than the first draft.
They also don’t tell you that your first draft was basically your brain’s drunk karaoke version of the real song.
Revision is where you finally figure out what tune you were trying to sing all along — and sometimes even surprise yourself.
First drafts are daydreams.
Revision is craft.
(Okay, sometimes the first draft needs some craft too — but that’s a rant for another day.)
Revision isn’t a test. It’s the road.
Turns out, the real plot twist was you getting better every time you picked up the pen.
(Or the keyboard. Or the crayon. No judgment here.)
