Anna Staniszewski

The other day I watched a great video of authors saying inspiring things. My favorite tidbit was contributed by Ridley Pearson: “No book is written. Every book is rewritten.” As I’ve been in the process of fine-tuning a manuscript to pass on to my agent, I couldn’t have agreed more with the sentiment, especially since this particular book has been rewritten so many times that it’s nearly unrecognizable from its earliest versions.

What’s changed? Although the main character and the general themes have remained fairly consistent, pretty much everything else has morphed dramatically over the past few years. I’ve killed off several characters, shifted around endless scenes, and deleted entire chapters that I loved but didn’t contribute enough to the story. Whoever said you had to “kill your darlings” was absolutely right.

So has it all been worth it? Is my book the better for it? I certainly hope so! And yes, I think it is. Though so much has changed, the feeling I get from the story is still the same. And even though it’s taken some serious rethinking to get the plot right, the story I’ve been trying to tell has been essentially the same. Ultimately I think the goal is much bigger than individual lines or scenes; it’s about getting the audience to engage with the ideas that interest you, and  for them to walk away from the story with the same emotions you experience when you read it.

Going back to that video I mentioned at the beginning, here it is for anyone who’s in need of a little bit of inspiration.