I Started a Novel at 33. I'm Revising it at 45. Here's What I've Learned.

INSIDE THE REVISION | NO. 2

What changes when you return to a novel twelve years later? I reflect on revising an old manuscript with new experience, a different perspective on publishing, and a deeper understanding of the characters and conflict at the heart of the story.

By Julie Tyler Ruiz, PhD

CONTENTS:

• Where this novel began
• Experience changes what you can see
• Sometimes revision means finding the truer conflict
• Time can make you less attached, not more
• Your work doesn't have to prove you're a writer
• Keep the heart and let the rest move

Where this novel began

I was 33 when I started writing my novel. I'm 45 now.

At 33, I had a brand new PhD in English with no formal training in creative writing. I had spent years writing about stories as a scholar and teaching them as a professor, but creating a book-length story of my own was new territory.

But I had a story idea, so I started learning.

I read books on craft. I took writing courses online and in person. I sought feedback. I started attending conferences, where I learned not only about writing fiction but about the publishing industry surrounding it. I pitched my novel over and over, getting nervous almost every time.

Along the way, I discovered that I had some useful instincts.

• I could seize an idea and start writing before I'd had time to talk myself out of it. 
• I loved digging deeply into characters and themes. 
• I could build a plot and lead it toward a nice, satisfying conclusion. 
• I wasn't afraid to throw away enormous amounts of writing when I realized they were draining the life from the story.

Twelve years later, that same novel is open on my computer again.

The story at its heart is still recognizable. The writer working on it isn't.

This is the second installment of Inside the Revision, where I'm documenting what happens as I take this novel apart and put it back together. In the first, I told the story of how the book almost got published and why I'm revising it again instead.

Read: My Novel Almost Got Published. Now I'm Revising It Again.

Experience changes what you can see

When I started this book, I already knew a lot about how stories worked. What I didn't have was twelve years of experience making them.

Since then, I've taught creative writing, helped other writers get publishing deals, written professionally, and explored forms well beyond fiction. I've spent thousands more hours putting words together, taking them apart, and figuring out why something on the page does—or doesn't—feel alive.

But more has changed than just my approach to craft. 

It's me. I've changed.

That matters because fiction asks us to understand people.

The two central characters I imagined at 33 are still the two people I want at the center of this novel. They're both deeply wounded, and both profoundly want to love and be loved. But they don't bond over their wounds. They fall in love because something between them feels rare: an intimacy and connection neither has found elsewhere.

I understood that when I created them.

What I understand differently now is what those wounds can do to a relationship.

Sometimes revision means finding the truer conflict

Earlier versions of the novel relied too heavily on my protagonist's bad decisions to drive the story forward.

Emilie created conflict, certainly. But in retrospect, some of those choices feel less like the inevitable consequences of who she is and more like machinery I was using to make the plot move.

Now I'm interested in a conflict that grows more organically from both characters.

They want to be loved, but being deeply loved requires them to become deeply known. And that kind of vulnerability frightens them both.

The closer Emilie and Michel become, the more their relationship exposes the wounds each has learned to protect. Instead of asking Emilie to generate conflict through increasingly destructive choices, I'm exploring what happens when two people genuinely love each other but don't always know how to tolerate the vulnerability that love requires.

That change redistributes responsibility for what happens between them. Emilie can hurt Michel. Michel can hurt Emilie. They can misunderstand each other, retreat, protect themselves, and make mistakes without either becoming the villain or the innocent one.

To me, that's more interesting. It makes both characters more complicated, and it moves the conflict closer to the heart of the story I wanted to tell all along.

I'm not sure I could have written that version at 33. Or maybe I just couldn't see that version clearly. 

Time can make you less attached, not more

You might expect twelve years with a manuscript to make a writer fiercely protective of what's already on the page.

I've experienced almost the opposite.

Even early in my writing life, I was willing to cut material that wasn't serving the story. Now I'm even less attached to the specifics.

This novel has already moved from third person to dual first person and eventually to a single second-person point of view. Characters have changed. Motivations have deepened. Entire pieces of the book have disappeared.

I'm willing to keep changing them.

Not because twelve years have made me distrust the original story, but because I trust its heart enough to distinguish it from the particular choices I once made to express it.

If changing those choices makes that heart beat harder, I'm interested.

Your work doesn't have to prove that you're a writer

Something else has changed since I was 33: my relationship with publishing.

Back then, I thought of agents largely as gatekeepers. I pitched and hoped someone would pick me.

And eventually someone did.

There was relief in having an agent in my corner after I'd worked on the novel for so long. There was some validation, too. Everyone likes being picked.

When I'm ready to pitch this novel again, I'll still do my homework. I'll position it carefully among comparison titles. I'll write the strongest pitch I can.

But I don't expect my emotions to be wrapped around the process in the same way.

I'm already a writer.

I'm building three growing websites that are becoming publications and knowledge hubs in their own right. I've been paid for my writing. I've taught other writers and helped two reach publishing deals of their own. I'm writing another book alongside this one.

So this time, I won't only be wondering whether an agent wants to represent me.

I'll also be asking what an agent or publisher can offer the book and whether they're the right business partners to help me put it into readers' hands.

That's a very different place from which to knock on the door.

Keep the heart. Let the rest move.

If I could hand this manuscript to the 33-year-old woman who started it, plenty would surprise her.

The second-person voice, for one.

But I think she'd recognize the people inside it.

And perhaps she'd recognize something else that's becoming clearer to me now: this isn't only a story about whether my protagonist gets the chance to love and be loved. It's also about whether that love can become an opportunity to confront and heal wounds she's been carrying long before the novel begins.

Maybe that's what I was trying to write at 33.

I don't know.

But twelve years later, I can see it.

That's one of the strange gifts of returning to an old manuscript. The intervening years reveal the best of the book and its writer. 

And sometimes the best thing we can bring to an old story is everything we've lived, learned, written, lost, questioned, and understood since the last time we opened it.