Different Routes to The End

by Sandra Parshall  

Ernest Hemingway once told an interviewer that he rewrote the last page of A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. The interviewer asked what it was that stumped him for so long. Hemingway replied, “Getting the words right.” He did not, of course, add: Duh.

That’s all revision involves: getting the words right. So simple.

But every writer goes about it in a slightly different way, and I find those variations endlessly fascinating. Recently, when I did a library program with several writer friends I’ve known for years, I was thunderstruck by Ellen Crosby’s revelation that she literally starts over with each new draft. As in blank screen. As in not reworking what was in the previous draft. No cutting and pasting, made so easy by the use of a computer. Each draft is a fresh version of the story. “It’s like writing three books a year,” she said.

Now that’s a really different approach.

But why? Why would any author engage in such exquisite self-torture? Because it works for her. I can’t argue with the results. Her Virginia Wine Country Mysteries (The Sauvignon Secret is next, in August) certainly don’t read as if they were produced under torturous conditions. The very thought of working that way makes me feel faint, but that’s Ellen’s approach to revision, and who am I to question it?

Some writers revise as they go, and when they leave a chapter it is finished. To do this, you have to be sure of the story’s direction, positive you have the characters just right. For a lot of mystery writers that wouldn’t work, because our plots have a tendency to grow tentacles that reach into previously unsuspected places, and if we tie ourselves too rigidly to a preconceived outline we’ll miss the good stuff that makes a story special. So we may do a certain amount of planning and outlining, then turn our imaginations loose on the characters and story and go back to clean it up – revise it – after we have a complete draft.

Some mystery writers are truly brave souls and leave essential research for the second draft. That can wreak havoc when they discover a fatal, so to speak, flaw in their choice of murder weapon or location and have to come up with something totally different.And if they change their minds about who the killer is, they have to comb the manuscript for references and clues that must be altered.

Personally, I enjoy revision. It’s the first draft that I hate. The single most terrifying time in writing a book is the moment when I sit at the computer and tell myself that I must begin. I have to write something, anything. One sentence. GET STARTED. I type out a sentence and sit there in despair, certain this is the only sentence I will be able to produce. But I keep going. I refuse to worry about typos, about unfinished thoughts, about paragraphs that don’t make sense. I will fix all that later, and I will enjoy doing it. Out of this mess I will carve a novel. But first I have to create the mess.

P.D. James once made a statement that I find more than a little spooky because it puts into words a feeling I’ve always had about my own writing: “It's as if the characters exist already, their story, everything about them is in some limbo of my imagination and I'm getting in touch with them and getting the story down in black and white, rather than inventing any of it. So it does feel as if it's a process of revelation rather than creation and one which is not really within my own volition.”

But one thing is within my own volition: revising until I get the words right. Making sure I tell the story and portray the characters in a way that does justice to them. No book will ever be perfect, and sooner or later I have to simply stop and turn the manuscript in so it can go to the printer. But I can’t think of anything more satisfying than reworking a sentence or paragraph until I suddenly realize: Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I want to say. 

Are you a writer? What’s your revision method?
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My next book is Under the Dog Star, out in September, and I was revising right up to the second I sent the file to my editor.

Chipping Away the Stone

Elizabeth Zelvin

Everybody knows that Michelangelo, widely accepted as the greatest sculptor ever, explained how he created his magnificent marble statues, including the David and the Pietà, by chipping away the stone until only the form imprisoned within remained. Writers, at least those who know that every first draft needs some revision, go through a similar process. Instead of quarrying the raw material, they create it by putting words together in a form determined by the mysterious process we call creativity. In fact, what writers initially do with words is much like what sculptors in clay do: building up one small bit at a time until a rough form is achieved.

After that, how sculptors revise a clay figure is a combination of of building, removing, and smoothing. We could say that writers do that too. But recently, after many years of writing, I think I’ve reached a new level of ability to critique my own work, and it feels more like chipping away the stone to reveal the story pared down to its essence, containing not one wasted word. At least, that’s the goal. Not being Michelangelo, I never achieve perfection. But the process feels much the same.

When I first joined Sisters in Crime’s Guppies chapter with the first draft of Death Will Get You Sober burning a hole in my computer, among the first pieces of advice I heard were these:
Don’t query agents or editors with a first draft.
Join a critique group.
Kill your darlings.
If I had followed all these dicta immediately, I might have sold my first mystery a lot sooner than I did. Or maybe it was meant to take the time it took to learn by my mistakes.

I was so excited about my manuscript that I couldn’t wait to send it out, so I experienced many rejections—and got many good suggestions—before it got published in a form far different from that original first draft. I did join a critique group, but it was the wrong one for me. I knew it when the elderly lady in the group told me my subject matter was “sordid.” (On the other hand, another member was the wonderful Krista Davis, who is a friend and critique partner to this day.) And I understood what “kill your darlings” meant. But for a long time, I couldn’t do it. Every clever phrase and carefully chosen word was so precious to me. How could I take any of them out, even in the interest of a tighter story? And not only my attachment to them, but also the fear that my creative well might run dry at any moment, prevented me from revising as ruthlessly as the material needed.

I know exactly when the shift took place. In 2006, I had the honor of being selected for a three-week residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL, working with master artist SJ Rozan. SJ both chose the participants and ran the workshop brilliantly, and it was a powerful experience. I learned a lot from the other writers. But SJ provided the moment of truth, some time during the second week, when she said, “Liz, you need to give us less, not more. Two clever lines in a paragraph are enough—three or four are too many.”

I went back to my room and took another look at the manuscript I was presenting to the group. (We “workshopped” three of the first four chapters of Death Will Help You Leave Him, the upcoming second book in my series.) For the first time in the 57 years I’ve been writing, what I needed to cut leaped off the page before my eyes. I could suddenly see the difference between the shape of the story and the bits of literary marble I could chip away. This new ability has stayed with me. In recent weeks, I’ve written two short stories. They’re a departure for me in that they’re not whodunits about Bruce, my series protagonist. In both cases, I envisioned the whole story, final twist and all, before beginning to write. So I was quite pleased with my first draft in both cases. But as soon as I printed them out and began to read them over, the marble chips began to fly around. So I grabbed a pen—and greatly improved the stories.

The Chipmunk and the Writer

Sandra Parshall


Sometimes I feel a lot like a chipmunk.

No physical resemblance, of course – I’m nowhere near that cute. But while photographing the chipmunks in our yard (great way to avoid writing), I’ve noticed some behavioral similarities.

We both spend much of our time cut off from the rest of the world, emerging periodically to blink at the sun and remind ourselves that there is an existence beyond our burrows. While the life’s work of a chipmunk is foraging for food to stock its larder and mine is foraging for words and thoughts to fill my books, we take much the same approach.

We both have to be selective. We can’t grab whatever happens to come along. We must examine all possibilities and choose something that will be worth our effort, something that will last. We’re both perfectionists.


Watching a chipmunk figure out what to do with a peanut I’ve offered him brings a jolt of self-recognition that makes me smile and groan at the same time. My “peanut” may be a sentence, a paragraph, a bit of backstory, a description, but the same trial-and-error method applies.

It has to go in here somewhere, but where will it fit best?


Ah ha. Right here.


Or maybe not...


I’ll see if it works better over here.


Nope. Back to the first spot. But does it really feel right there?


Oh, heck. It’s time to move on!


For the chipmunk, there’s always another peanut. For me, there’s always another rewrite.
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