Unstoppable Creativity

            You’d think I would have learned by now. Because I haven’t, I’ve now broken my cardinal rule. That’s right, I’m working on more than one book at a time.

            It may not seem like such an important rule. Loads of people work on more than one book at once, so why is it such a big problem? Well, it’s a problem because it gives the writer an excuse to not finish a project. The Dark Lord of the Alliance of Worldbuilders is a prime example – he’d written 100,000 words or more in a single month (wow!) and yet, to my knowledge, he had never completed a book (we all give him a hard time about it).

            Now, in my case, I couldn’t help starting a second project. As I mentioned a few blogs back, I’m currently working on rewriting a project. Apparently, after seven years of writing every day, rewriting isn’t enough of a creative outlet for my brain. After a while, an idea surfaced that I couldn’t resist – so now, here I am, splitting my writing time between two projects when I should be focusing on one.

            It just goes to show that creativity is a habit. Once you get into it, you just have to keep going.

            Feel free to take that as encouragement to build a creative habit – or a warning to avoid doing so. Whichever suits you best.

            Either way, know that you can’t stop the creativity. Creators must create.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Rewriting

            Whenever you write a book, it’s always a good idea to have beta readers. After all, you need other people to read the book and tell you what they liked and disliked about it. More than that, they can help you edit. No one can catch every error, after all, so the more eyes, the better.

            Then, of course, you occasionally have a beta reader who makes a suggestion that drives you to do a complete rewrite of your book – such as the rewrite I’m working on right now.

            Rewriting is an interesting process. This is actually the first time I’ve done a full rewrite of a novel – several years ago I did rewrite the first chapter of the first book I wrote (it subsequently became two chapters), but nothing as big as this.

            When you rewrite, you basically have two options: you can start from scratch and hope anything worth keeping stuck in your head well enough to find its way into the new version, or you can constantly reference the old version to make sure you’re keeping everything you want.

            Oddly enough, what I’m doing sort of combines the two. The suggestion leading to this rewrite was based around the idea that I should split the book into two (or even three!) full novels – one for each of the main characters I was working with. The idea intrigued me, but it also drastically altered sections of the plot. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked what I could do with it.

            And so, I began the rewrite, which involved mixing whole new scenes with some of the old ones. As such, when I’m able, I reference what was happening before to ensure I get the important details and my favorite wordings, yet there’s a lot of time spent writing entirely new content. So far, the results are good – although, it seems I may have a tendency to expand each chapter into two when I’m rewriting.

            It is a tedious process – it’s like writing a whole book over again, when you already wrote it once. Yet, even a short ways in, I could already tell that the new one was an improvement over the old. So, with that alone, I can say rewriting is worth the trouble. By the time a book gets published, you want it to be the best it can be. If that involves writing the same book multiple times, so be it. The end result will be worth it.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.