A vow for the new year: never rewrite without a plan

As I’ve explained here previously, there are two types of writers: planners and pantsers. Planners create detailed outlines and break the work down into planned chapters. Pantsers just keep writing to get their ideas out, and deal with the organization later.

While I unequivocally believe that planning is better, I acknowledge that many writers can’t figure out what they want to say without writing it down. The result may be a mess, with lots of duplication, holes, and mixed-up organization, at least it’s a way to get everything on the page.

But don’t rewrite without a plan

Even planners need to rewrite their manuscripts. And pantsers always need to rewrite, because that’s what turns a collection of content into a book.

But never rewrite without a plan. The purpose of rewriting is to turn whatever you’ve got into something a lot closer to being publishable. That means:

• You need to have a solid main idea. You should be able to nail that down now. Write it down. Then thread it throughout your manuscript on the next draft.
• You should be absolutely crystal clear on your audience and the problem you’re solving. Write that down. Address it throughout the book.
• You can create clear idea of the best organization for the book. With all your content before you, you can develop a complete and compelling table of contents and use it to direct all of your rewriting.
• You can find the missing research. Everywhere in your draft where you thought, “I need to back this up,” is now an invitation to find the missing proof of your ideas.
• You can rationalize concepts across chapters. Did you have two different versions of your main acronym? Did you vacillate between present and past tense? Did you flip back and forth on which elements caused which others? This is your chance to fix all that and create complete consistency that will give the reader confidence in what you’re telling them.

Stop putting all this work off. Plan it, and then do it, in the rewrite.

Unless you like to think of writing as an endless, pointless task, you must create a plan before you rewrite.

Because that’s how messes get turned into books.