How many times do you write then rewrite? Do you keep all your drafts? Meet author Lincoln Cole. His love for writing was kindled at an early age through the works of Isaac Asimov and Stephen King, and he enjoys telling stories to anyone who will listen. He has a few things to share with us about writing and rewriting. Visit his blog, and let him know how cool his book covers are! Thank you, Lincoln, for stopping by ePen!

Lincoln ColeRaven’s Peak

by Lincoln Cole

I’ve been writing my entire life, but I only seriously took up the craft in the last year or so. I decided to really focus on telling a good story and learned how to rewrite. I used to hate going over my own work and editing it or making modifications because it was a lot of work, but now it’s become one of my favorite parts of the entire process.

The thing is, it’s hard to get through that first draft. I’m a pantser rather than a plotter, so I write everything on the fly and the details actually surprise me sometimes because they weren’t what I was expecting. I’m terrible at planning out a book, and often I get my best ideas while in the middle of writing, and they require huge rewrites somewhere else in the story. It becomes sloppy and unfocused and a struggle just to get the words onto the page. 
Rewriting is when you get to do those fixes and modifications to make a story better. You fix the details and hone the story until it’s the same one you originally imagined. For example, in my most recent novel, Raven’s Peak, I completely changed one of my main characters about halfway through the story. He had a different background and different associations and I realized that I would need to rewrite the entire beginning of the novel to fit his new personality and backstory.
Which meant that writing became a chore because I knew that everything at the beginning was wrong, and details I was adding in the second half of the book clashed with the rest. I plodded along, however, and then reached the final chapter. As soon as I was done writing, it was like a huge weight had been lifted, and I was able to start fixing all of those huge scenes with monumental problems.

Each successive pass through the novel made me feel better because I was watching the story come together. The character was fixed, his new background intact, and the entire novel felt solid and real. I’d always enjoyed rewriting to make a story better, but this time I completely fell in love with the process and was able to finish the entire novel with it in the same shape as the story I’d imagined months and months earlier.

Raven’s Peak:

Raven's Peak

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A quiet little mountain town is hiding a big problem. When the townsfolk of Raven’s Peak start acting crazy, Abigail Dressler is called upon to find out what is happening. She uncovers a demonic threat unlike any she’s ever faced and finds herself in a fight just to stay alive. She rescues Haatim Arison from a terrifying fate and discovers that he has a family legacy in the supernatural that he knows nothing about. Now she’s forced to protect him, which is easy, and also trust him if she wants to save the townsfolk of Raven’s Peak. Trust, however, is considerably more difficult for someone who grew up living on the knife’s edge of danger. 

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