Soho Press

They say writing is rewriting. So why does the second part still get such short shrift?

Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell is a craft book approaching novel writing through the lens of revision and rewriting, meant to take the writer from the first page to final edits.

Refuse to Be Done is encouraging and intensely practical, focusing always on specific rewriting tasks, techniques, and activities for every stage of the process. You won’t find bromides here about the “the writing Muse.” Instead, Bell breaks down the writing process in three sections, one for each of the three major stages of drafting. In the first section, Bell shares a bounty of tactics, all meant to push the writer through the initial conception and get words on the page. The second section, Bell explains, is focused on reworking the narrative through outlining, modeling, and rewriting. The third and final section offers a layered approach to polishing through a checklist of operations meant to be applied to a manuscript one at a time, breaking the daunting project of final revisions into many small, achievable tasks.

This is a book to give to an aspiring writer, to assign for course adoption, and even to interest the general reader. While geared for the novel, many of its tips are applicable to all types of creative writing, fiction and nonfiction.