How Your "Bad Version" Is The Gateway To Rewriting Your Book

“Good writing is essentially rewriting.”

~ Roald Dahl

What Is Rewriting, Anyway?

Rewrite is a dirty word - filled with shame, frustration, pain and suffering. Whenever a writer talks about it, they are often wracked with dread and despair.

‍Great, another rewrite.

Writers carry around the burden of another draft of work like Sisyphus rolling that great boulder up the hill. After completing my first novel, SKYBOY, I likened the task to climbing Everest… only to be confronted with yet another range of mountains once I reached the first peak. Those mountains represented every subsequent rewrite of the novel I did before landing my agent, Janice Shay at Pinafore Press.

And guess what? She told me to rewrite the manuscript again.

For a long time, I felt that rewriting meant that something was inherently wrong with the core of the work. Pangs of anxiety would wash over me - what if I never get that character’s voice right? What if that scene never comes together? And with this dread often came an inability to push forward. Countless projects remain “finished” in my digital drawers and yet they could certainly use another rewrite. I simply became too exhausted or disillusioned to dive into another draft.

Part of this project is about shedding the stigma and self doubt that rewriting instills in me and hoping it helps other writers out there.

The fact that I’m even using this as a framing device is, in my mind, a sign that I’ve pushed through some of those emotions around my own work; I recognize that these very words will inevitably need to be rethought and reorganized before I publish them here. <Sigh>

Rewriting is the secret sauce and its recipe is such a closely guarded secret that it’s often overlooked and almost never talked about. If the final product of your writing is like a house - be it a book, screenplay, podcast, advertising campaign, etc, - then rewriting is every nail, joist, sheet of drywall expertly installed. They’re essential components that get covered over by the final build. It all looks like it came together in one fell swoop but it didn’t, it took time and sweat, tears and (sometimes) blood.

Realizing that the process of rewriting is nothing to be ashamed of, that it’s essential, that it’s putting down every “bad version” of an idea - story, characters, plot twists, scenes and dialogue, and then honing them, whittling away the rough edges, or even tossing them out completely - doesn’t mean you fucked up. It means you’re on your way to getting to the best possible version you can produce.

What is the Bad Version?

I coined the phrase “The Bad Version” in my classes at Fordham University, where I’m an adjunct professor. I teach both introductory and intermediate film and TV screenwriting where the end goal is to turn in a first draft of a script. And I see students nervously poring over every word and scene and sequence like it’s going to be the last chance they’ll get to attempt to get it right.

What I tell them is that it’s okay to turn in a draft that’s not final, because it’s not a class for rewriting. That comes later. Relish in completing your “Bad Version” draft - that’s an accomplishment all its own.