This is a piece I wrote several years ago, and I still feel the same way.  What do you think?

Can Groundhog Day, that little made-up holiday that distracts us from the long haul of winter, become as big as Christmas? Okay, maybe not, but I’m making the case that Groundhog Day , the movie, should become the It’s a Wonderful Life of this generation. I want families to gather round on Groundhog Day and watch this movie together, just like It’s a Wonderful Life has become the Christmas tradition. This movie evokes the same deep feelings, shows the same possibility of transformation through love, only while Frank Capra did it with sincerity and angels, Harold Ramis does it with humor, cynicism and Bill Murray.

It was easy to dismiss this movie when it first came out in 1993 as just another in the long line of silly movies Ramis and Murray had done together (like Caddyshack and Ghostbusters). But the screenplay by Danny Rubin is actually addressing something much deeper. He does it so effectively, and addresses our modern, existential, God-suspicious existence so subtly that some might not even be aware of it. Those out on the spiritual frontlines have noticed though. Ramis says he’s gotten mail from “every known religious organization and discipline, from yogi’s, Hasidic Jews, Jesuits, psychoanaylsts” claiming this movie’s message “perfectly expresses our philosophy.” And the message holds up

No one embodies the modern I’m-smarter-than-you cynic who’s always out for himself better than Bill Murray. And it takes someone with his attitude and comic genius to make this premise work, and help us modern cynics find the meaning of life in our world today, by showing us how to literally live life “one day at a time.” Who would have thought that he would become the Jimmy Stewart of our time?

In It’s a Wonderful Life we got to see how one man’s dreams keep getting postponed but he naturally does good in spite of himself. In a crisis, he feels life is not worth living. He gets his wish. He sees what it would be like if he’d never been born. Only then can he see how many lives he’s touched, how many people he helped, all from his small home town. It never fails to make us cry, because we realize that our ordinary lives are worth living too.

Groundhog Day has a different premise. Here we see one guy who is stuck in what to him is the worst day of his life, putting up with stupid inferior people in a small town. He thinks it’s hoakey, and people who are optimists are stupid too. Phil is mean and cruel in a casually off-hand way, only thinking of himself and how he can get ahead. He’s a weatherman in Pittsburgh, who has to go make the trip to Punxsatawney to do the Groundhog Day footage. He’s mean to his cameraman (Chris Elliot is good as this nondescript, easy-to-overlook guy) and physically attracted but intellectually repelled by his producer, Rita (Andie McDowell, who’s great at playing the sweet optimist). After spending the night in the bed and breakfast (he refuses to stay in the local hotel), he ignores a homeless man and runs from the boring Ned Ryerson from high school who tries to sell him insurance. He goes through the motions of the broadcast, much to the disgust of his crew, but then they are snowed in by the blizzard he didn’t predict. This is the set up.

The next morning, he wakes up and has to relive the same day. It takes him awhile to realize what’s happening. When he wakes up again on the third day and it’s still the same day, he panics, and tries to get help, but no one else is having the same experience. For them it’s a new day. He thinks about all the really good days he’s had in the past. “Why couldn’t I get that day?” he wonders of a day on a tropical island with a beautiful woman. He sits in the coffee shop with two local yokels and asks without irony, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?” “That about sums it up for me,” one of the yokels replies. This is the situation most people are in today. If every day is the same, what choices do we make, what is our attitude? Are we cynical and smart, not giving money to homeless people, pushing away the obnoxious Ned Ryersons’ of the world, only out for ourselves, mad at God and feeling powerless? This is actually a serious philosophical question. How do you live life one day at a time? The humor and the pathos in this situation come from making it literally one day. Ramos and Rubin explore all sides of it (actually using Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of dying as the model).

First Phil realizes (as the yokels point out): no consequences! So he eats all he can, doesn’t floss. Tears the town up, has sex with a pretty girl by telling her everything she wants to hear because there is no tomorrow. But eventually even this gets tiring, and he decides to pursue what he really wants: Rita. But his tricks don’t work with her. After he meticulously plans a “perfect day” for her by finding out all her likes and dislikes, she sees through him. “Is this what love is for you?” she asks as he keeps plying her with more and more of her favorite things. “I could never love someone like you Phil, because you can never love anyone but yourself.” “That’s not true,” he responds. “I don’t even like myself.” He gives in to despair. In his next on camera report he says, “It’s going to be cold, it’s going to be gray, and last you for the rest of your life.” He decides to kill himself by stealing the Groundhog and running the truck over the cliff, then by putting a toaster in his bath, by walking in front of a truck, jumping off a building, and many more. But nothing works. Every morning, like clockwork the numbers turn over to 6 am again on his digital clock radio, he hears Sonny & Cher sing “I Got You Babe” again and the same inane chatter from the DJ’s on the radio.

After his suicides fail, he tries a new approach. He levels with Rita. He proves his story is true because he knows everything that will happen. She thinks it’s a trick. “Maybe the real God uses tricks,” he responds. “Maybe he’s not omnipotent, he’s just been around so long he knows everything.” She finally comes to believe him. They sit on the bed in his room flipping cards into a hat. “Is this what you do with eternity, Phil?” she asks him. She admits she’s always wished for a thousand lifetimes. “Maybe it’s not a curse. Maybe it depends on how you look at it.” He has a flip reply. “Gosh, you’re an upbeat lady,” but she’s struck a chord. As he watches her sleep, he admits to himself that he loves her kindness, how nice she is to people. And that although he doesn’t deserve her, he would like to and he would love her the rest of his life.

The next time the clock flips over, Phil’s attitude changes. He gives money to the homeless man. He brings coffee for his crew and asks their opinion. He finds the homeless man having a heart attack and tries to save him. The next (same) day he plies him with food and stays with him, but he still dies. Then he turns himself to doing good for the living and making more of himself. He reads. He learns to play the piano. He makes a magnificent speech out of his piece. And attracts Rita to him. That night he becomes the man of her dreams from the inside, and he has a revelation. “Whatever happens tomorrow, I’m happy now because I love you.” This is the message of Groundhog Day, just as “No man is a failure who has friends” is the message of It’s a Wonderful Life. He’s learned to live in the moment and be satisfied. And as a result, he gets his reward. The curse is ended, and Rita is his. He is so joyful, he decides he wants to stay in Punxsatawney. His first question to Rita is, “Is there anything I can do for you today?”

From my current Newsletter, November 2011:
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Several people have been posting and asking about the recent NY Times article about Amazon working directly with authors and leaving publishers out. What do I think of this, they wonder. I haven’t actually responded yet, because what I think is the result of all my 30-plus years in publishing and a great deal of thought and observation. I couldn’t put it into a quick Facebook note, or a Tweet. I will see if I can unravel some of it for you here.

There are several issues involved, and it’s easy to come away with the wrong impression if you don’t see them all. Let’s start with the obvious one. Do authors need publishers? If you can go directly through Amazon yourself, should you bother with the big, mainstream publishers? This is actually a question I have been putting to the authors I work with for years. And the answer is, it depends. First off, it is true that authors are often neglected by publishers. And it’s not just that they have a hard time getting their editor on the phone or can’t seem to get their own sales figures. I have observed, from my very earliest days in publishing, that there can be an attitude of disdain for the author at the publishing house. I could never understand this, which is why when I started my own publishing company I was careful to be clear that the author is the centerpiece. After all, without authors, there is no publisher. The author is the creative source – the goose, busy laying those golden eggs. So authors’ fear that the publisher doesn’t care about them is often accurate.

Now I will put on my other hat and defend publishers. Authors (and Amanda Hocking is only the most recent example) actually would rather be writing than figuring out what the best price is for their book, or learning which bookstores are worth giving a reading at. When it’s handled properly, the author/publisher relationship can be a beautiful thing. The author is supported in getting their creative work out into the world. And I do believe every author’s work can be bettered by some time with a good editor (although that work is usually handled directly by the author these days).

So what about Amazon then? Is Amazon supporting authors and dis’ing publishers? Should authors abandon their publishers and join them? This is where it gets tricky.

Amazon has been seen by the outside world (that is, those who are not inside publishing) as a “good” company, like Google or Apple, whose products and services are great and who do business in a fair way. Those on the inside have seen something very different. While Amazon is an incredible database and has done a great job of connecting readers and books, they also have exhibited many signs of being a dangerous company. First, they behaved just like the chain stores in undercutting independent bookstores by offering better discounts that were not offered to independents. (This is a long story. A good link to read more is this 1999 article by Bill Petrocelli, co-owner of Book Passage, who was involved from the very beginning with the series of lawsuits pursued by independents. Also, see his Huffington Post blog, for continued, informative weigh-in’s on the publishing industry.)

And then, they have been behaving very aggressively about not collecting sales tax. (This is a flagrant violation of clear and long-standing law in California and most other states with sales taxes.) In its beginnings, Internet commerce sites were given a break to encourage business, but I don’t believe anyone in government intended for this to continue after the larger businesses began putting others out of business. When California began attempting to force Amazon to collect sales tax, they threatened to shut down all their “associates” — the small businesses who get fees from Amazon for connecting consumers to Amazon through links on websites.

Why should this matter to authors? Well, if they behave that way to others, even their ostensible best customers in publishing, you can expect that, one day down the road, they may behave that way with you.

I don’t believe it is ever good for one company to have as much power in an industry as Amazon has today. What to do about it is not something I am even thinking about. I’m just saying it’s worrisome.

Now, despite my uncomfortable feelings, I have gone into business with Amazon. They carry my titles. And I like their transparency with numbers (sales figures and royalties), and ease of access to that. But I think of Amazon as a distribution company, not a publisher.

One final word about the big publishers. I really don’t feel sorry for them. They had no qualms about allowing almost 2,000 independent bookstores to go out of business in the 90s (and another 1500 were gone by 2008), by undercutting their pricing. My view at the time was that they were being incredibly short-sighted in giving all the power to the few people who headed these companies to decide what books would be published. It shouldn’t surprise them that they are now on the receiving end of a similar business strategy.

So where does that leave you? And how can you decide? I think the answer is still the same one I have given authors for years. Think of what would serve you best. Is your book the kind of book that the big New York publishers do well? Is it fiction? If so, try the mainstream route first. Are you an independent self-starter with a lot of opinions about how you want your book to be? Then self-publishing or an Amazon-hybrid of self-publishing may be good for you. The global way to think of it is: who are your readers and how can you best reach them?

From my Newsletter, Late Spring 2010

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I have worked on many books. I should say I have worked on many ideas that became manuscripts that became books. I know from all this experience that the closer you get to the end, it seems, the more there is you realize has to be done. This can be very frustrating! You think you have a finished manuscript that just needs a couple of things added, or a few facts checked, and it will take a week to get it done. Three months later you are wondering what happened. It’s a little like the night before you are getting on a plane to go on a two-week vacation and you realize how much more there is to do than you thought, and you are lucky to get a few hours sleep by the time it’s all done.

This is the energy of completion. It is very different from writing in flow, or some of the more creative parts of writing. It’s the nitty gritty, slogging through the muck part. You just have to keep going, putting one foot in front of the other until it’s done. Yes, there may be an element of avoidance, an element of fear of having it done. But it’s also just what it takes to finish.

This is the time to think of the song in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!  What do we do? We swim!” Or if hiking is more your thing, this is the time to keep your eyes focused in front of you on the next step and the next step, and not look up to see how far you still have to go. Because there’s just a lot of details now, and there’s no way around it. They just need to be done. And you probably don’t have the option of putting the rest of your life on hold to do it. Or maybe you do, but it’s still a lot.

This is the time to make checklists and check items off so you can see your progress, and keep moving through without stopping. Moving forward is key. And then, finally, it’s over and you have handed it off, and the next step is the one many of you have already envisioned in one of my classes: the moment the doorbell rings and the UPS man hands you a package, and you open it up to find your finished book!

From my Newsletter, Spring 2010

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We had a lively discussion about this at the end of one of my writing classes a few weeks ago and since the subject is coming up in the press frequently I thought I would address it here.

First, let’s talk about what an e-book is. There are a couple of different types. There’s a simple e-book you may already have seen online. It’s just a downloadable file that you can purchase (or it’s sometimes free) usually from someone’s website, and usually it’s in Adobe Reader.

Then there are e-books that are specifically designed for the new crop of electronic readers – Kindle being the most famous.  And now, the iPad and Google’s Android apps. These are designed to be more like iTunes, where you go to a site and purchase and download a book, directly to your device. Many people use the iPhone to read books as well.

One question that’s coming up is, will these devices take over and kill the market for traditional books? This was an idea touted a lot in the ’90s with an early crop of readers. The early ones never really took off because they were clunky and expensive. But the new crop of readers does seem to be well designed. And people are more accustomed to reading electronically thanks to the success of smart phones (the iPhone especially). So I’m sure these will do better than the previous generation.

But I said then and I will say again that I think the book itself is a genius of technology. It’s easy to store, easy to flip through, easy to read, easy to bring with you into the tub, to the beach, outside on your walk. If you want to read for pleasure, I think the book is still the best way.

Then there’s the book that is an object of art in itself, the well-designed book that does more than just allow you to read words: heavily designed books like Griffin and Sabine. Finally, though, there are things you need to read for school or work, textbooks and technical articles. These I think will be lost to electronics, in fact they already are.  And I have to admit that I prefer reading the newspaper on my iPhone now because it is much easier and more portable.

There is another issue, which is the cost: what to charge for e-books? When people discuss this in business journals and the NY Times (Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book, by MOTOKO RICH, Published: February 28, 2010, Business Section: Media and Advertising), they all go on the assumption that part of what people pay for, even in electronic form, is the book itself.  I disagree.  I think people pay for content. Only when the book itself is an object are they paying for that. So I think publishers are once again making a mistake and perhaps giving away the store by allowing Amazon and Apple to set the price for them. They are going on a smart assumption that people will need to buy the device which is much more expensive than the book.

Going along these lines, if you are a writer, how should you feel about all this? I think you should do what you’ve always done. Create the best content you can and connect directly with your audience. If you do that, the format in which they read you actually doesn’t even matter. It’s you, your characters, your writing that they love.

From my End-of-Year Newsletter, 2009

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I want to revisit a topic I brought up back in July (“The Value of Doing Nothing”). It seems even more important and appropriate as we turn into winter, the fallow time of the year. The topic is this: the importance, no -  more than that -  the absolute, vital necessity of going deep in order to do our creative work. By going deep, I mean really having enough time to immerse yourself deeply in your work, or to discover what in fact the work is.

One of my former student/clients just told me her cell phone had been stolen (along with a lot of other things in her purse-ouch!). At first she didn’t know how she would survive without it until the new one came. But then something unexpected happened. She discovered that going “off line” was incredibly helpful to her in focusing on her dissertation, which is the project she is currently working on.

It is so easy in our lives today to be distracted: by the cell phone and the email and the 24-hour-news programs and everything else. What I think it really boils down to is that everyone now expects everyone they want to reach to be available at all times. And if you are working creatively, this is not OK. You need to be able to block out time when you are uninterrupted so you can just think, or mull, or play, or waste time, or daydream, or whatever it is you do to get to the source from whence all our creativity springs.

What would your life look like if you did this: start every morning with two whole hours to do as you please? Does that sound impossible? How about a half hour to yourself before you begin your writing time, and no checking emails or phone messages until you are through? Or if all that really seems not feasible right now, how about a whole day on the weekend where you leave the cell phone and email behind and do what you want (including your creative time)?

This client asked me when we were talking, “How did you get deep enough to write your book?” (referring to It’s About Time, which was published in 2003). I told her, “I walked every morning, by myself.” That’s how I go deep.

Obviously, in my life right now walking alone is not possible very often. Mostly I’m walking with Mia in the stroller, but I find if it’s the time she’s needing to get quiet for her nap, even that can work for me (as long as I don’t pick up the cell phone to talk!).

From my Newsletter, Autumn 2009

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I was talking to my mother on the phone two weeks ago and she said, of going to the new Yankee Stadium, “That’s another thing off my bucket list!” That night, while giving the exercise of writing down ten book ideas to a new class, I thought, hmm, what if you had a book bucket list?

If you are wondering what the heck buckets have to do with anything, a bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die (“kick the bucket”). This isn’t supposed to be a depressing thing, but a focusing tool. In this new class, I had a student in her twenties – much younger than most of my students. So when she listed ten book ideas I thought, “That could be a lifetime of work right there.”

Now that I’ve turned 50, I realize that my current list of ten books needs to be prioritized. These are my categories: the one, two, or three that I must write before I die (i.e., now), and the four-to-seven that are less important (that maybe I can give to someone else to do, or just save till after these are done).

If you were in one of my classes and did this exercise already, you may want to pull it out and see if there’s anything there you want to think about (especially if you are in the process of completing one). If you are afraid of feeling overwhelmed, it’s actually my experience that having a new book to write is a help in letting go of lingering (“perfecting,” i.e., procrastinating) over the current book.

If you didn’t do this exercise in class with me, you can do it now, on your own. Here’s how:  Set a timer for three minutes. Make a list from 1 to 10 on a page, then turn the timer on and just write all you can think of. Having a small amount of time actually helps you access your subconscious – where all your really good and fun ideas live.

Note: I write my newsletter articles in advance of publication.  See below for sad news about one of the writers in our community.  In her, and all of our honors, I did not change the article for this issue.

From my Newsletter, August 2009

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Because I am now working on this myself, and because it came up in my last Microsoft Word for Writers class, I thought it worth bringing up again how helpful it is to have your files in order on your computer, and to name your different versions correctly so you can find everything in one place. This is a little like creating a binder on your computer for your work. And since I think what our work is about is bringing ideas into form, putting them into form, even in a file on our computer, is significant. Respecting our work, and giving it the right shape, all help us in creating the final masterpiece. I know I often feel like I don’t want to “waste” precious writing time on something as mundane as file naming, until I go through the process again and realize how essential it is. As I’m going through the next draft of my memoir and putting the chapters in the correct size and order in the folder, I’m getting further insights about what the focus is.

So if you don’t have it already, the simple way to do this is to create a folder on your hard disc simply called “writing.” Take every folder, file, note, idea you have about writing from wherever it is and put it in there. Then you can break it down into further segments by creating additional folders (such as “fiction,” “nonfiction,” “story ideas,” “character studies,” etc.).

When you have one folder for one book, if you name all the files the same thing at the beginning, and use a number system before you put in the particular chapter or segment name, all your files can line up in order within the folder, which I also find helpful. (This only works if you are viewing by “list” and not by “icon.”)

The naming protocol looks something like this:

Draft1Ch1beginnings.com

Draft1Ch2ourstorystarts.com

One final reminder, since I did just lose my laptop (it was stolen just outside my door), do back everything up consistently! Luckily I only completely lost notes for one new project. I learned my lesson from the time my computer crashed!

From my Newsletter, Late Summer 2009

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In our busy-busy; go-go culture, spending time idly, perhaps even staring into space, is not thought well of. In fact, if you went by what people say in the press, you’d think having some alone-time is highly suspect. When reporters couldn’t follow Obama at all times on the campaign trail, because, gasp, he wanted to have some moments alone, they didn’t understand why. And yet, for creativity to emerge, we need some down-time for it to formulate itself, or for us to access it (however you want to look at it). All artists have always prized this time. Let me quote from two great ones. Keats, in “Ode on Indolence”, wrote this:

“…Ripe was the drowsy hour;

The blissful cloud of summer-indolence

Benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;

Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower”

***

“O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,

That I may never know how change the moons,

Or hear the voice of busy common-sense!”

(and that written in 1819!)

In a slightly different take, John Lennon & Paul McCartney (mostly Lennon), wrote in “I’m Only Sleeping”:

“Everybody seems to think I’m lazy

I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy

Running everywhere at such a speed

Till they find there’s no need (there’s no need)

Please, don’t spoil my day, I’m miles away

And after all I’m only sleeping”

According to Wikipedia, Lennon loved hanging out in bed and would do his writing there.

Without some real down-time, you won’t be able to hear the prompts of the new idea beckoning to you. I recently had a client finish her novel. She was brave, and at my suggestion made a date with herself to sit in her writing office at her usual time, with nothing to do. She has a couch in there, and some books to read. What happened was, her next book came to her. Because she made space and allowed it to come.

So if it’s this important, and we know it is, why is it still so hard to give it to ourselves?  Because we fear what we will find, especially if we are just completing our first book. All sorts of fears come up like, what if I never have another idea again? What if I can’t top this idea? What if I do have an idea but it requires too much of me? All these things can be underneath the disguise of busyness, which is always so easy to fall into in our lives today.

You may not have a separate office for your writing, but you could surely make a date with yourself to go for a walk. Or even go to a coffee shop and sit and stare into space (one of my favorite activities). You may have to pretend you’re meditating (if you live in Marin) so no one will bother you…or put on dark glasses and put earphones in your ears so people will think you are listening to a book on tape. But get your down time however you can.

From my Newsletter, June 2009

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I had an interesting discussion with a student in a recent class. Someone had made editing suggestions that she wasn’t sure about, and she wanted me to review them. As we went over each suggested change, I realized what was going on. My student tends to write from a more auditory position, and the feedback was from a more visual perspective.

Some of you may be familiar with Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). As with many things I know, I first learned of it through publishing a book about it, in the late 80s. The basic theory is this: We actually think with our senses. That is, our brains process information through one of our five senses. It makes sense if you think about it (no pun intended). Although there are the rare people who mainly use the sense of taste or smell (usually both together, and these people are often chefs or perfumers!), for most people it comes down to one of these three: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. And for these purposes, kinesthetic can be either physical or emotional feeling.

Here’s where it gets interesting for writers. We seem to have been moving as a population from being mostly auditory, in the nineteenth century, to being mostly visual in the twenty-first. (Kinesthetic response has not been dominant in any of these centuries, not sure why.) Think of how Dickens or Austen was experienced in the 1800s – read aloud in the living room. Think of how we experience novels today – reading them alone, looking at the pages. And think too, that we now have totally visual mediums: the movies and television.

Here are some examples:

This is the opening of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859):

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,

we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct

the other way – …”

Clearly this was meant to be read, and read aloud. It’s almost like poetry.

This is the opening line of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813):

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man of good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Both of these books take a few pages to land us with one character and begin the story.

This is the start of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (1997):

“At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring. Inman’s eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake. So he came to yet one more day in the hospital ward. He flapped the flies away with his hands and looked across the foot of his bed to an open triple-hung window.”

And here is classic Danielle Steel – The Promise (1989):

“The early morning sun streamed across their backs as they unhooked their bicycles in front of Eliot House on the Harvard campus. They stopped for a moment to smile at each other. It was May and they were very young. Her short hair shone in the sunshine, and her eyes found his as she began to laugh.”

You will notice that Frazier combined sound and feeling, and this will certainly hold up when read aloud, yet we have a visual sense of the scene by the fourth sentence. Danielle Steel is all visual, as is a lot of commercial fiction.

It seems to me that there is a lot of pressure on writers today to be more visual. All the “how to write” books advise it, and it certainly makes it easier to transfer them to film or television. And yet, I still feel there’s an important place for a strong auditory narrative – one that sounds great when read aloud (or in your head). Auditory writers hear the words, and want a certain pace and flow that they hate to interrupt to get quicker to a scene, or even to make grammatically correct.

I think the best approach is to be conscious of your own bent, to consider enhancing your writing by using other senses, and to be true to yourself. Certainly even the most visual writer needs to have good dialogue, which is obviously auditory, and every piece of writing is enhanced when the scene is set clearly.

From my Newsletter, Spring 2009

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A student who finished her first draft (yeah!) asked me, How should I approach doing the edit?

If you’ve taken my and others’ advice and let yourself just write out the first draft to the end, there are a bunch of things you have to look at in the edit which will produce the second draft.

First, structural things. Are there places you know things need to change? What things do you know now that you’ve finished the draft that you didn’t know in the beginning? I would advise making a list of these. And even before that, remind yourself of the theme and the point of the book. This is helpful to decide which things are staying and which are going.  For instance, if you’ve decided that the focus of the book should be much narrower and you have too many plot points, knowing your theme, and making the list of things you now know,  can help in deciding which things to lift out. (And remember, you don’t have to lose these plot points, they can be saved as good material for another book. It can help to create a separate document into which you put all the things that don’t fit the new version of the book.) For example, you discover your theme is about finding love and you’ve got too many scenes that are about self-discovery, which do not move the story forward. Or, you thought you were writing a biography but realized you actually only want to focus on the most relevant decision in the person’s life, and you can let go of the part that describes where he was born and grew up. You could also decide that everything is staying, it just needs to be in a slightly different order.

Sometimes, it can help you get an objective view to look at your structure in fun ways, like putting all your plot points on index cards and lining them up on a bulletin board, or using rolls of architecture paper to write out all the themes and where they appear throughout the manuscript. Using different colors can help you keep track.

Second, the writing itself. There are probably a bunch of things you know need fixing. This is where the old-fashioned editing style can come in handy. After you have made the main structural changes, I would print out a hard copy of the book – double-spaced!!-and work from that, with a pen, to make the revisions. (I know no one wants to waste paper, but at a certain point it would be like trying to build a house without nails-these are the tools of your trade and you need to give yourself permission to use them.) This part is laborious and can even be painstaking but it is well worth it to create a clean manuscript. Then enter the changes into the manuscript, and print it out again for a final read-through. Then you can call this your second draft. Now you are ready to send it out!