Chris Baty's tips | Publish now

The first steps down the road to rewriting

by Chris Baty

Step One: Go away for awhile. I know it's hard, as you and your novel have become very close over the past month. Like good friends. Or co-dependent lovers. Turning on that computer and settling into the night's noveling session is a hard ritual to break.

Break it.

Instead, spend time some holiday time with those distractions (friends, family, reading other people's novels, movies, etc.) that you've been so studiously avoiding in the past month.

Step Two: Come back in the new year, refreshed, with some critical distance from the book. Go and print it out on the work printer when no one's looking (tip: if you change the formatting to landscape, and break it into two very wide columns with a 10-pt. font, it looks just like a real book!). And spend a night or two just reading it.

As you read, make a few big-picture notes in the margins. "Watch tense change" is a good one. Or "add more physical description in introductory scene." Or "needs credible ending."

Step Three: Now, chances are, in rereading it, you are probably pleasantly surprised. It's not that bad, really, for a month's work. When you've gotten to the end of the thing, though, ask yourself this hard question: Do I want to devote a year of my life to making it better?

The answer may be no. And that's an okay answer. NaNoWriMo is as much an exercise in recharging your imagination as it as a path towards book production. Your creativity has now been primed, and you're guaranteed a better novel on the next go-round.

If the answer is no, then you're done. Go back to work and print out a few copies for friends, and start making jaded, self-deprecating references to your first novel at every social occasion. Try this one:

"Oh, post-colonial wombat folklore? That's so funny you'd mention wombats! I wrote at length on that very subject in my first novel."

Roll your eyes and laugh when you say "first novel," in a I-was-so-young-and-foolish-back-then sort of way. Do this constantly, whether the topic at hand is in your novel or not.

People will love you.

But if the answer is yes, you'd like to spend some time going through rewrite hell with your new novel friend, well, roll up your sleeves. You've got some work to do.

In the next month or so, I'll post some tips and tricks that I've gleaned from three years of NaNoWriMo rewriting. Come back to the site in January. Also, keep an eye on those message boards. Many folks are interested in organizing small-scale NaNoEdiMos (National Novel Editing Months) around the world. Keep in touch with this lot. As we learned in November, novel writing is something best accomplished in a large group.


And if you're ready to get the thing published right now, a print-on-demand company is ready to offer Wrimos a discount.

Chris Baty's tips | Publish now