So, I’m assuming you’re a fiction writer. And let’s imagine that you’ve finished the first draft of something—a story, a novel. What do you do next?
Here’s an idea: print the whole damn thing out. Print it our and put the printed manuscript in a prominent place and just look at it for a while. Look at it.
The looking feels good, right? It does when I do it, at least. I remember printing off my first novel, That Demon Life, for the first time and I remember what it felt like. I’d printed off chapters, of course, and sections, but one day I typed THE END on the last page (on what I thought might be the last page) and I stuck some paper in my printer and hit print. Took a while (I have a slow but sure printer). When it was printed I put a big rubber band around it to hold it together and I placed it in a nice wooden barstool I’d salvaged from the dumpster and stuck the stool next to my TV and I sat back and looked at it for a few days.
That was a very good few days. I looked at that pile of paper and I knew that I had accomplished something difficult.
But after a few days I knew I had to move on. Like all writers, I had to revise this work of genius. My work of genius.
Here’s an idea: print the whole damn thing out. Print it our and put the printed manuscript in a prominent place and just look at it for a while. Look at it.
The looking feels good, right? It does when I do it, at least. I remember printing off my first novel, That Demon Life, for the first time and I remember what it felt like. I’d printed off chapters, of course, and sections, but one day I typed THE END on the last page (on what I thought might be the last page) and I stuck some paper in my printer and hit print. Took a while (I have a slow but sure printer). When it was printed I put a big rubber band around it to hold it together and I placed it in a nice wooden barstool I’d salvaged from the dumpster and stuck the stool next to my TV and I sat back and looked at it for a few days.
That was a very good few days. I looked at that pile of paper and I knew that I had accomplished something difficult.
But after a few days I knew I had to move on. Like all writers, I had to revise this work of genius. My work of genius.
RSS Feed
