It is often said that all writing is re-writing. But when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of how to get from draft zero to polished oeuvre, there are hundreds of possible routes, and we don’t talk enough about how navigating these, including finding oneself at dead ends and losing swathes of hard-won text to the ‘delete’ button, is all part and parcel of the writing process. We live in a world that celebrates writers’ success stories, sharing their brilliant cover letters and serendipitous meet-cutes with the perfect literary agent, then publisher, with a glittering deal bringing the writer’s debut into the world – and onto bookshelves – soon after. What we don’t get to see is the hard graft, the failed drafts, the books that ‘didn’t make it’. Most writers will have one or two behind them, and have, through the process of trial, error, and persistence, become both better writers, and, critically, better self-editors along the way.

In his (excellent) LitHub essay on the drafting process, the novelist Joseph Scapellato talks of some of the possibilities the drafting process brings; from creating with each draft a ‘renewed wholeness’, to drafting as an act of ‘discovery’, or as a mechanism to facilitate a change, subtle or radical, in the ‘sense of intention, identity, or momentum of a text’. The idea of each of these as possibilities strikes me as extremely positive, a counter to the idea that (self-)editing is drudgery, or that it is somehow the un-creative part of writing. Creativity doesn’t stop simply because we have stopped inventing; and indeed, re-drafting is in itself a kind of re-invention.

Perhaps it’s time we re-framed the idea of re-writing, self-editing and drafting. I am interested in the idea of re-writing as containing somehow several hypothetical versions of the text. Each editorial choice you make has an effect. I imagine these choices as architectural shifts. A small change to a single window will change entirely how the light falls; shifting a wall over to the left by a metre will affect the load-bearing capacity of the whole. What glorious possibilities there are here. As writers, then, how do we create opportunities when we sit down to approach the redrafting process?

Write your draft zero, and turn off the inner critical voice to finish

Thinking of the first draft not as a first draft but as a ‘draft zero’ may help you to do the thing that stops a huge majority of writers from flourishing beyond an initial attempt at literary creativity; completing a project. Draft zero is your fuck-it draft. Anything goes. It should have a sense of intention, and you might want to make sure you have a plot to avoid complicating the editing process later. But don’t intellectualise it. Insert place-holders where you aren’t sure. Write quickly and without tweaking. Reward yourself every 10,000 words with a gift (I saw a brilliant post on Twitter recently by a novelist who had wrapped gifts for herself that she was allowed to open at particular landmarks in the writing process. Genius!) Just get it all down on paper.

Creating the conditions to write: truth or myth?

There are no perfect conditions for writing, but there is a state of mind for writing, combined with the usual (necessary) discipline. Having an understanding of your natural rhythms is important not just for your writing but for your overall wellness. There will be periods in the day when you feel more inspired, more creative. There will also be times when you feel more efficient, but not necessarily creative. Try to keep a diary to track when your magic hours are, and use them appropriately. You don’t have to write every day, you don’t have to write X number of words, but you should commit to turning up at the page. Everything you write, you owe a debt to. When it comes to editing, you’re paying that debt. You’re saying, OK, I can make this better. Because I value it. Because I believe I have something to say that matters.