Tighty-Writey by Susan Barclay

 

 

One of my goals for 2025 is to work on rewrites or revisions of past work, and I’ve been doing that for the last few months. Rewriting is an important part of the submission process. You want your work to be the best that it can be before sending it into the hands of editors, agents, publishers, readers—in short, decision-makers. With the amount of competition in traditional publishing, nothing less than superlative will do, and even then there’s no certainty of acceptance. Writers have always needed a thick skin and that is even more true today, apart from self-publication.

Personally, I enjoy the process of revision. There is something about viewing your story with fresh eyes that allows you to see where a plot line may have gone sideways, a character needs greater development, description is wanting, or there are typographical or grammatical errors. While revision doesn’t always make a piece better, in my experience it usually does. The writing gets tighter with fewer extraneous sections or words.

How many drafts I write or how long it takes me depends on the needs of the piece and my ability to accurately assess those needs. I might pass a story or article through my writers’ group or a writing friend for extra feedback. I might let it steep a while and let my thoughts about it percolate (apologies for the mixed metaphor!). I might set it aside for a while and work on something else before coming back to it again. At a certain point, though, I let it go and send it off. That usually happens when I’m well-satisfied that there is nothing or little more I can do to improve it.

When the revisions are complete and I’ve submitted my work with a little prayer, I breathe a sigh of happiness and move on to something old or something new. I don’t worry while I wait; I trust the process and I trust God to know what is best for both my writing and me.

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c. Susan Barclay, 2025. For more about Susan and her writing, please visit www.susan-barclay.blogspot.com