In the last few(ish) years, I’ve taken two very different writing workshops that absolutely changed how I saw my writing. Strangely enough, both were on the Oregon Coast. (Maybe great teachers are just drawn to that end of the country?) But on the surface, the two workshops shared little else in common.

• One workshop was slanted toward literary writing, the other toward genre.
• One was taught by writers with relatively few, though impressive, credentials, the other by writers with credits coming out the proverbial wazoo. And, yes, their credits are also impressive.
• One was relaxed and encouraged free time and seeing the local sites, the other was high-stress and encouraged staying put and writing more than I ever thought I could.
• One was filled with cheerleading and encouragement, the other was tough love with a fair dash of you-can-do-it thrown in.
• One emphasized in-depth group-critique, the other … did not.
• One was about writing as art, the other about writing as a career.

But they also shared some pretty important facets.

• Both made me feel exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time.
• Both made me question much of the advice I’d previously heard.
• Both required me to trust myself.
• Both reminded me that I need more confidence in my writing.
• Both required new writing each day.
• Both required reading of each other’s work.
• Both discouraged (to the point of effectively forbidding) rewriting.

It’s that last point that often raises hackles when I talk about it.

And, to be honest, I got a little hackled at both workshops, even the second one, despite having already come to believe that rewriting was over-rated a few years earlier at the first one.

So, let me break down what I learned – twice.

1) It’s way too easy to polish the magic out of one’s prose, to make it sound just like everyone else’s. To kill off a unique voice before it even has time to sing.

2) It’s way too easy to spend years rewriting or worrying about rewriting (as I have) a book that may very well be quite good already. We, as writers, are terrible judges of our own work. Plus, that’s time that could’ve been spent writing something new.

3) The road to improvement (as in big, tectonic changes, the kinds that shake up our mental landscapes and leave them forever changed) lies in writing, not rewriting.

4) Thinking there is no option but rewriting can prevent us from just starting over and running at a story from a brand new angle and finding what works.

5) Rewriting too often just tries to force new stuff around old stuff and ends up creating a big ol’ Bride of Frankenstein whose head threatens to fall off just because of unhooked accessories.

6) The feeling of progress that comes with rewriting again and again can be misleading. The rewritten parts often feel like they are better just because they’re new.

Now, this doesn’t mean you just fill 300 pages of crap and stick it in the mail. Working on a piece as you go is not necessarily the same as rewriting. Some people put things in as they figure things out, some take them out. These folks can work forward, backward and sideways as they go. I can’t. (Yet.) I have to write the story before I even know what the hell happened, what the themes are, what the character motivations are, etc. So I need to rewrite. But not in the way I used to think of it.

I’ve learned (and will likely have to relearn) not to rewrite for polish. I don’t want to smooth off all the rough edges of a piece, robbing it of all those accidental facets that my subconscious puts in. Currently, I am having fun going in the other direction — I’m not a polisher of rough edges. I’m a carver of rough edges. But, still, I need to constantly remind myself not to change things just because they’re different (and therefore new and fresh and exciting), not beat my grammar and punctuation into such submission that I deny them their ability to add nuance, pacing and a sort of playing with the reader. I need to remember to only change those things I KNOW make the story better. Like when I had a character that was male the first half of the book and changed her to female the second half? Yeah, there’s some rewriting needed. But when I wrote myself into a corner and came up with a kickass way out that might not be exactly fitting to my genre? Leave it. When my character swears because it suits her and I start worrying about whether or not that will offend people? Leave it alone. When I want to change from first person to third because … and I realize I have no real reason other than it would be different and fun, leave it alone.

Now, if an editor tells me to make changes, I’m on it! But because I know I can’t generally judge my work (a point graphically proven in the second workshop) I’m better off trusting my gut and then waiting to see what an editor says rather than trying to read minds.

I’ve also learned the value of a trusted first reader. If my first reader (or second or third, depending on where I am in the process) points out problems (and I agree), I change them. But as I’m changing, I don’t go through and second guess everything else I wrote. (OK, I do, but I’m trying really hard not to.)

It’s not about rewriting or not rewriting, but rather about trusting ourselves as writers. Letting our subconsciouses do the heavy lifting they want to do. It’s about felicitous accidents and Freudian typos and misremembered clichés and sudden bursts of inspiration — all which come into question too often in the rewriting phase because that’s when we kick the creative side of the brain into timeout and let the critical part come in with the shrill voice of authority better left to mall cops and low-level bureaucrats.

Of course, knowing the basic rules of grammar and writing is paramount if one wants to break them. And all that cool stuff that happens with the subconscious happens because of a whole lot of knowledge that has become second nature. I think.

Now, my views do not necessarily represent the views of anyone else (on anything. Ever. Really.). In fact, this may not even be what any of the workshop leaders wanted me to get out of the workshops. It may not be what other attendees got out of it. It may all be the colorful meandering of my own imagination. I may not have been in Oregon at all – no, wait, I’m sure on that last bit. There was this ocean and sand and clouds …

Look, I'm turning my back on the ocean! I'm a wild woman.

Character emotion is a tricky thing. Not enough and readers won’t invest; too much and you lose realism. I gave a tendency toward the former – emotionally distant characters that create emotionally distant readers (especially in long works). It’s something I’ve been looking at – been looking at for a few years now, actually.

My first angle was to look at whether or not I feel anything when I write. There was a period when I didn’t. It took time and practice, but I started to feel more. I began to connect to my characters and my stories. I laughed, I cried, and, yeah, they became a part of me.

But strangely, the more I felt about my characters and stories, the less emotion I actually put on the page, as if the distance kept me safe. I was creating a distance between me, the writer, and the reader. That created a distance between the reader and the story. In short, I was having a hard time making readers care.

Sometimes I could even see it for myself. So I would go back through and add more of what makes me feel. I would add sensory details, atmosphere, setting with carefully constructed details to evoke my own emotions in hopes of doing the same to the reader.

But it didn’t always gel with readers. They could see the emotion I was trying to evoke in them, but it wasn’t real. It was more of a series of cardboard signs like the kind held up at the airport. One character would hold up “Happy” in hopes it would come along. Another had “Angst” scrawled on a piece of cardboard. Each just a sign to connect the reader with the emotion. But the distance was too big to be bridged by a cardboard sign.

I started working on collapsing that distance more. I took some workshops. One workshop leader said the emotion was there. She could see it. She found it effective. But she wasn’t casually reading. She was reading every word, thinking, analyzing. She was reading to find out what I needed to be working on. She wasn’t reading for story but for teaching.

I don’t think most readers read every word of a story. Especially in emotionally heated moments where the action is moving quickly. They’re rushing ahead to see what’s happening. If I’m sort of hiding the emotion in the scenery it might not be noticed. Subtlety probably isn’t my best tack

And yet, I couldn’t figure out how to come at it head-on. What, do I just write, “She was sad. Really really, really sad, the kind of sad that can only be expressed in banal repetition.” That seemed vulgar to me. And it cheated readers like my workshop leader.

But somewhere over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a tendency I have in my own life that might be the key to this problem. I’ve been told that I seem to have it all together. I kind of hear that a lot. Whatever ‘it’ is, I’ve got it rounded up and singing cowboy odes to the lonesome prairie. But this is, of course, ridiculous. I know that I leak insecurity and near-panic all over the place. But I hide it in the details. I say the together things but I throw in details I hope someone sees. But when people are concerned and ask you straight out, they’re listening to your words, not analyzing and dissecting for contradiction. They just want an answer.

I think it’s that way in fiction. In a highly emotional scene, the reader is asking questions. With those questions asked, the reader is listening for the answer and believing the words in the quote marks or coming from the character’s mind, not trying to weigh those words against sensory detail or scenery description. Yes, there is room for contradiction and nuance and complexity, but not for hiding. Big difference.

I don’t need to hide emotion from readers; they can take it. More than that, they want it. Now to figure out how to give it to them – one revelation at a time. Just like life.

I want to be one of those people who can look back and smile at rejection letters.

Rob Sabo commented on my last post: “Perspective: The first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times. I think I read somewhere that Jo Rowling is the first billionaire author.”

This got me to thinking. I love stories of failure before success. Especially ones where hindsight makes that success seem inevitable. I like to fantasize about the day when I will speak proudly of my rejections as an audience gasps and titters in shock that anyone could have overlooked my obvious brilliance. I will be the example writers give to each other for reassurance when they are feeling down about their own rejections. One writer will say, “I might as well just quit. Another rejection. That’s nine! I should just take the hint and quit.”

And the supportive writer friend will smile wryly and say, “Oh no. Did you know that Cindie Geddes was rejected 500 times before she sold her first novel? And even then, you know The Bad Parts (at which point the friend will roll her eyes and snort, because everyone knows that book) was rejected nineteen times and she just gave up! It only got published because her friend Wolf made her send it out again on a bet.”

The dejected writer will shake her head and laugh, and she will feel better. And she will send out her story – again and again and again, determined to not give up until she at least sends out as many times as Cindie Geddes did.

Yeah, these are the kinds of fantasies have. I am a very exciting woman.

But since it’s going to be at least a few months until I reach the kind of success that will make this fantasy a reality, I figured I could list a few real-world examples* we can offer one another during those inevitable dark times.

• James Joyce’s Dubliners: rejected 22 times. The publisher only printed 1250 copies. 379 sold the first year. Joyce had bought 120 of them. And, yeah, he did OK.
• To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Theodor Geisel writing as Dr. Seuss: rejected by 29 publishers.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig: rejected 121 times.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach: 140 times
• William Saroyan built a pile of rejections 30 inches high (equaling around 7000 rejections) before he sold his first story.
• M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker collected 21 rejections.
• Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries: rejected 17 times.
• Carrie (by Stephen King) was rejected 30 times.
• Watership Down by Richard Adams: 26 rejections.
• Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis: 15 no-thank-yous.
• Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen: 140 NOs.
• Frank Herbert’s Dune: nearly 20 rejections.
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle: 26 maybe-next-times.
• Alex Haley once told me (yes, in person, and I didn’t even faint, though I did stutter when I asked him about rejection) he had been rejected 800 times before selling anything. 800. Even I haven’t hit that many. But C.S. Lewis has. He was also a member of the 800 club.
• James Patterson saw 26 rejections for his first novel.
• William Golding’s Lord of the Flies: 20 not-right-for-us(es).
• Kathryn Stockett stopped counting rejections after she received 45 on her best seller The Help.
• Gone with the Wind brought Margaret Mitchell the sting of 38 rejections.
• Ray Bradbury has been rejected more than 1000 times and STILL gets rejected.
• Judy Blume submitted for 2 years straight with nothing but rejections.
• Stephenie Meyer gathered 7 or 8 rejections for Twilight, including one that came in after she’d gotten a three-book deal from Little, Brown.
• The Dairy of Anne Frank was passed over by 16 publishers.

And if you’re like me and feel better knowing that current rejection does not negate future success, check out this site of quotes from actual rejections of some of the best writing ever. http://schulerbooks.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/recent-article-30-famous-authors-whose-works-were-rejected-repeatedly-and-sometimes-rudely-by-publishers/

*Disclaimer: I didn’t fact check any of these. Some I saw in magazines, some I read on the Web, some I heard … somewhere.