The Importance of Keeping Your Distance

In a post-NaNoWriMo world, people react differently. Some want to get working on the next phase, editing away. Others want to never look at their Nano story again. Some people fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

I usually tend to want to put the story away, but this year I see something in my NaNoWriMo story that I kind of like.

Not the prose, mind you, or the overall plot arc. But there's a glimmer of something there that I want to play with, so I will be editing this one.

Now, before I begin editing, I am putting the story away. Not for long - maybe a week? I don't love my novel already, I haven't developed an attachment to it, so I don't feel the need to put it away for longer.

If you love your novel, if you cannot look at your writing with an attempt at objectivity - put it away until January. Let it rest, let it collect some dust. 

Distance will make it easier for you to see the flaws. You won't remember the details as well, so it'l be easier to see where you forgot to mention something or didn't explain something as clearly as you should.

Distance will mean each carefully crafted - or hastily scrawled - sentence isn't so near and dear to your heart. You'll be able to ruthlessly cut out that gorgeous turn of phrase that really ruins the rhythm of that fight scene. You'll be able to see the run-on sentences, the half-formed sentences, the redundant ones, the unclear ones.

Ideally, by the time you come back to the story, it'll feel almost like someone else's. If you start reading, and you keep saying to yourself, "Whoa, I don't remember this at all!" then you've waited long enough. If you start reading and you say, "Huh, this part here isn't so bad, and that part there is just as good as I remember," well, that's cool too. But if you pick it up and say, "I love everything about this beautiful off-spring of my creativity and determination. Each word is golden, each moment pitch-perfect and how on Earth can anyone expect me to alter anything when I laboured so hard to bring it into this world in the first place?"... well, then you need to put that baby back on the shelf and work on something else for a little while.

Yes, it's okay to love your first draft. Of course it is. You worked hard to produce that manuscript. But the next phase, editing, is going to prepare it for other readers, people who will be more critical and less forgiving of its flaws. This means you need to be able to to look critically at your draft, identify its strengths and shore up its weaknesses. Distance will make this process slightly less painful.