I’ve done all sorts of writing things in the last several months: I’ve outlined, I’ve written, I’ve renamed a character and then renamed her again, I’ve scrapped whole sections immediately after writing them because they just didn’t feel right. What I haven’t done is read what I’ve written several weeks after writing it, which is exactly what I did on Monday for my critique group.
This experience proved to be nothing short of eye-opening. I saw some things I wasn’t proud of (grammar and spelling, I’m staring right at you), some that surprised me (one scene that gave me trouble when I wrote it read better than the one that came easily), and some that gave me pause (I’m not trying to write a YA novel, why did this section read like it belongs in one?). Sometimes it was downright embarrassing: you know it’s bad when you wrote the scene and you yourself can’t tell who’s talking. And it read just fine when I checked the pages before sending them out!
By the time I finished the two chapters I fully understood what Stephen King was talking about when he recommended leaving the book alone long enough for you to forget what exactly is in it. Doing that reveals all kinds of first-draft issues that hide in plain sight when you go over and over the same text in a short period of time. It also allows for more consistent revisions when you get to that step, whenever that might be. I know one thing: I won’t be revising until at least a month after the book is finished.
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