Josh Mayhall

They don’t tell you when you make the decision to write anything substantial how hard it is to rewrite that thing of substance you’ve labored on for months or even years. They being anyone that take the time to listen. Much less read your stuff.

They tell you to hone your craft. That’s the one you get the most. The instruction you get is always vague and will screw a hole in your head if you give it too much thought. Nobody wants you to know their secrets because nobody told them theirs. It’s a vicious cycle of selfishness, art.

For me it’s easy to sit down and write. It’s all mostly shit anyway. That is one thing that they will tell you. Most of what you write is not going to be good. Just write a lot of bad stuff everyday and see where your confidence lay, they tell you. Most days it’s way down at the bottom.

What they don’t tell you is that working on your craft is in essence rewriting. And no one tells you how to do this. No one ever tells you how to rewrite. There is no blueprint for rewriting. There is no step-by-step outline of how to destroy and rebuild your work. It’s just throwing spaghetti against the wall.

My plan of attack for the longest time was to write something, mostly novels, three hundred pages or so, and then when it came time to rewrite, start at the beginning again and write a whole new novel. This has been my rewriting process, to write whole new novels upon novels.

As though starting over from the beginning was some sort of obsession. Some sort of cruel punishment for sitting at a desk all day typing words. Like it wasn’t a real job if I wasn’t toiling away at something. If I wasn’t suffering for my art and all that.

The thing about rewriting is that whichever way you decide to do it, it’s a toiling process. Especially if you choose to do it the way I have. But why do I feel I must start all over again every time? Maybe it’s because I have no problem with starting over.

In life, in work, in everything I chose to do. Starting over is the easiest thing to me. It hasn’t helped my writing, or in general, my life. Maybe it’s time to examine it.