Rewriting

By Jen Bokal
For the past few weeks, my writing life has centered around one dreaded word: rewriting. I have been rewriting the beginning of my newest work (which also doubles as my Master’s Thesis) to include only to exciting parts.
One might ask, as I have asked myself, how can the writer tell if something is dull? Wasn’t I the one who created this work? And by creating and including certain scenes I have deemed them to be, if not exciting, then at least necessary? The answer is, “yes”. AND the answer is, “no”.
It is, “yes” because as a writer, there is much of the story that we need to understand. Take the story I am working on as an example. It is set in the early days of the American Revolution. And one of the most contentious questions of the day was if people bough English goods or not. So, as an author, who is trying to recreate the 18th century world for the reader, I need to include something about the boycotts and probably the most famous boycott is that of drinking tea. So as I am writing the story, I can include all the trivia I have learned about tea drinking, tea serving, what the Colonists drank instead of tea, other items that were considered taboo. The list can go on and on.
Is this exciting? For me it is. For me to understand the story it is not only exciting, but necessary. But what about the reader, the person I want to pick up the book and join me on this adventure? Some of the details are necessary, others exciting and even a few interesting. And as a writer who wants readers, it is up to me to discover what those are and how best to present them. It sounds hard. Believe me; it’s harder than that.
I suppose this is why we all dread the rewrite.