In my 37 years as a freelance writer, I’ve learned to play the waiting game. This is a difficult game with built-in challenges. Although I have learned to wait for many things, I have to work on a different kind of waiting: walking away from a project. Every writing project excites me and I really want to keep going.
However, to get the best possible result, I have to learn to step back, let my writing solidify, and read it later. You may have already learned the value of waiting or you may be learning to wait. As impatient as we are, waiting several weeks or months has clear advantages.
The structure of your writing is clearer. Weeks later, when I reread my manuscript, I realized that some chapters were in the wrong order. If this was obvious to me now, why wasn’t it before? I think it was too close to the manuscript. Going back allowed me to see the book as readers would see it when they read the content.
New word options come to mind. As I read through the manuscript, I thought of some better words to use. There weren’t a lot of replacement words, but they helped me make the points I wanted to make and hopefully spark feelings I want the reader to feel. Nonfiction writing can be tricky. I want to make key points and I want readers to remember them. I have learned that readers remember stories better than statistics.
The style becomes more evident. A lot To my surprise, I realized that some parts of the manuscript looked like a first draft, and this was embarrassing. Obviously, he had submitted the manuscript too soon. He knew why this had happened. Two books had been seeping into my mind at once and came into my awareness simultaneously. I really wanted to finish the first book and move on to the second. Of course, the only solution was to revise the manuscript.
You are a better judge of your work. The novelist Eudora Welby made a wise point when she said, “I think that as you learn more about writing, you learn to be direct.” Waiting a month and rereading my manuscript helped me judge the flow, sequence, and clarity of the writing. Nonfiction writers like to sequence the book in a way that makes sense to readers and allows them to follow the logical trail. This takes time.
Waiting helps us plan. The realization that I would have to revise a manuscript helped me plan my work schedule for the second book, which had already begun. So I put away the second manuscript and went back to the first. It took me a day to “get back” into the manuscript and I worked on it for a week. I try to follow the example of Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Whether the time was productive or not, he would sit at his desk for eight hours a day.
Of course, the waiting game isn’t a game at all, and it’s a skill that all writers like you and me need to develop. Like yeast working in dough, waiting helps a book reach the level we set in our minds. Quality work is worth the wait and we can do it!