Rewriting a Novel: Five Ways to Make It Less Painful

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hate rewriting.

I know, I know. I shouldenjoy rebuilding characters and their motives. I shouldtake pleasure in ironing out all those little plot inconsistencies and cutting away the excess weight of irrelevancies. Ishould, but I don’t.

Context: I finished a new first draft back in December. Yay! More books! Only not quite. I refer to characters by different names throughout. Everything seems to be spelt incorrectly. I go off on wild, irrelevant tangents, a...