Ditch that Messy Draft. Embrace the Blank Writing Page.

Should I write a new draft? Or throw my writing away?

Yesterday I decided to dust off an old, Thanksgiving holiday-themed essay. It had already been drafted and re-drafted, so (I convinced myself) it would only take an hour to edit, fix and pitch.

The essay was written in 2011, when I had pitched it to a popular Sunday magazine in which I had been previously published. Back then, the editor returned it with a nice note saying that it just didn’t work for that publication.

Today, thanks to eight years of editorial distance, I understood why my original draft got rejected. Plus, I love to edit, so I convinced myself that a nip here and a tuck there would make that 2011 piece perfect and ready for a re-pitch.

Now, after more than 20 years of writing and publishing, wouldn’t you think I’d know that re-writes are never, ever easy or quick? So this afternoon, after a few botched attempts, I abandoned that old draft to open an empty page to hand-write a brand new version.

Here are four reasons to stop twiddling with that old draft to start over with a fresh piece:

Our narrative voices mature: Since 2011, I’ve published (lucky me) several other essays and a full-length book collection collection of my essays. Our narrative voices change and mature, and experiences change or deepen our perspectives. We need to write as the writer we have become, not the writer we once were.

Updated facts, statistics and research: When it comes to fact checking or supporting statistics, many things may have changed since our last draft. So check and insert the latest data.

Publishing trends change: Publications downsize staffing or change their editorial focus and submission requirements. While we try not to write for a specific market or readership, it’s foolish to pitch or submit something that doesn’t meet the target publication’s submission requirements.

A new draft gives a new chance to go deeper: For today’s piece, I ditched the old typed version and wrote the new piece by hand. Handwriting helps our critical thinking and lets us find a way into what we really want to say. So turn off your computer and pick up that notebook and pen.

If time equals money, then, given how long we spend writing and drafting, we writers are always working at a financial deficit. But time also equals quality. So if you want to write what matters to you now, today, consider starting from scratch with a new page.

P.S. I just got an acceptance letter for this Thanksgiving-themed essay, from a good editor at a paying market.

New Year's Resolutions for Writers: Ernest Hemingway's "Truest Sentence"

Should some writing come with a "made-in-China" label? In our digitized 21st century, how much of our writing is too cheap, too quick and too disposable? Has the sheer volume of digitized, podcast, broadcast and hard-copy content spawned a  24/7 static, a persistent distraction?

I have been a lifelong lover of the jigsaw process of writing, of yoking apparently disparate ideas together for a cohesive whole.  As a teacher and a writer, I have told my students and myself to "let yourself play in the word box to find that first, unfettered draft."

But lately, I have been questioning my own advice. In the time that it takes us to pen that first draft of a 3,000-word essay or story,  have the writing and publishing rules already changed? Has everyone already gone onto the next and louder message?

December has not been a good writing month because the first week was spent in my native Ireland, where I flew across the Atlantic to visit my family and to close out the mourning year for my late father's death.

It has not been a good writing month because my day job was really busy.

It has not been a good writing month because I was jet lagged and tired, addled, anxious and often awake at 3 a.m.

In fact, though I've managed to complete some essays and start a new book project, it hasn't been a very good writing year. For most of 2012, I have been plagued by this sense that some of us are destined to be the gauche maiden aunt at this hyper hip, hyper loud and hyper mercenary party called modern writing.

Or let's put it this way: This December, we tele-witnessed a young man gunning down 20 school children, another man pushing a stranger in front of a speeding train, and another man shooting up firefighters on Christmas.

So what the hell good are we?

And, worse than being ineffectual, aren't we writers--aka "content providers"-- part of the problem?  Our words are part of that blathery static that postures and obscures and, by extension, belittles the gut-crushing realities of life, death and loss?

Two nights ago, on the evening of December 30th, I was thinking about all of this when I suddenly remembered that line from Hemingway:  "Write the truest sentence that you know."

Ernest Hemingway

But after the madness that has been December 2012,  I could find or write no fixed, existential truth.

At least, not about anything out there outside my office window.

But a quick Google search threw up this wonderful writing exercise from a Canadian writer who encourages us to adapt Hemingway's advice to write some truths about ourselves.

To atone for our year of spin and cruelty and sycophancy, I tried to call up that one true thing about me.

I wrote down 20.

Some are those bare-knuckled truths that set us on the offensive or make us brace or duck for the next upper cut.  Some of my self-truths made me hold my breath. A few made me tremble. One made me cry.

The fact that I wrote 20 truths on 16 single-spaced, handwritten pages doesn't make me super prolific or super honest.  It simply and sadly means that,  in the busy-ness and babble of life, in the gussied-up version of me that I present to the world, I had abandoned what was true.

Now, all 20 of my truths are written down. They are an excellent blueprint for 2013.

Thank you, Ernest Hemingway. I don't like your writing. Given your macho, hard-living shtick, I probably wouldn't have liked you.

But in a world turned mad and bad, I love your saving advice.