Writing and Lifting Weights

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Writing is like strength training in this respect: if you’re doing it right, your personal best two years ago is considerably worse than your personal best today.

Writing is unlike strength training in this respect: even if you’re doing it right, you can’t reduce your skill to a single number.  Perhaps your sentences are stronger now than they were two years ago, perhaps your emotional through-line’s more clear.  Perhaps you’ve developed your vocabulary, or your sentence structure, or pacing.  A single glance is rarely enough to tell how you’ve changed.

Because of this, returning to an old project always makes my knees weak.  Maybe I’ve become worse in the intervening years!  For the last month or so, I’ve been re-working my thriller novel Sente, which I wrote back in 2005 or so and polished to the best of my abilities in 2007.  When I started to edit in May, I was terrified that I might find my work had fallen off since college.  After all, I remembered this book as a gem.

Three pages in, I found the first sentence I knew I could improve, and relaxed.

Then, a paragraph later, I found another two sentences to improve, and realized that this round of edits would take longer than I intended.

Two chapters in, I wanted to go back in time and kindly throttle my younger self.  “What are you doing with these weird verb tenses?  Why, oh why, did you use that word 67 times in your manuscript?  Were you even paying attention?”

I was, I know.  I paid very close attention.  I’m just paying better attention now.

6 Responses to “Writing and Lifting Weights”

  1. Shawn Cannon

    Have you enlisted the aid of any beta readers to get some objective opinions on what needs an edit?

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  2. max

    I have an amazing, and loyal, bunch of friends and loved ones who read my raw work and help me improve. Most of the time, with one notable exception, their comments focus on story questions – why is this information released here, rather than later? what is this character’s motivation? – rather than sentence structure. It’s hard to find a beta reader who will comment constructively on your sentence-by-sentence prose, but such advice is invaluable.

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  3. dtgooden

    I’ve put off working on my first book for a while now, mostly because I feel each new piece I write is (on average) better than the last. I worry about regressing–slipping back into old sentence structures and phrasing–while doing a major edit on a long work. Not permanently, of course, but just in that edit. You ever find that to be the case?

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  4. max

    Hi Dan- In my experience, returning to an old book can be a great opportunity to identify and diagnose problems in my writing. I’m *much* better at noticing repeated words than I was five years ago, for example – now, re-reading old stuff, I notice when I’m using a word like “silence” 70 times in a 550-page novel, where previously I wouldn’t have noticed words used twice as frequently. Catching things like this encourages me to be much more vigilant in my new work. Does that make sense? I don’t know if I’m actually answering your question…

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  5. Miguel Garcia

    So… at what point does your “writer self” start looking like Young Arnold?
    Back on topic, do you ever find yourself building in all but one area or building only in one area? How do you keep yourself a well rounded writer? Because to return to Young Arnold, I’m sure it’s a problem to do all upper body and forget to do any legs so you end up more falling than walking everywhere.

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  6. max

    For my “writer self” to look like Young Arnold, he would have to eat a much better diet.

    Seriously though – that’s a very good question. Listening to trusted readers’ reactions is one of the few ways to be sure in a case like this. If they’re feeling bored, even if your prose is awesome, then you have some work to do on stakes-raising and plot. If they’re compelled, but confused, then it’s time to focus on information release & worldbuilding. If they’re excited, and informed, but want to punch you in the face every time you use the word “suddenly,” or start a sentence with “At last,” then you have a problem with repetition.

    You’re always going to be better at some aspect of your art. Fortunately, all improvement is improvement: the stuff you’ve been concentrating on doesn’t go away when you shift focus to something else.

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