You don’t have to be a journalist – although you may have to be of a certain age – to recognize the entreaty “Get me rewrite!” from vintage scenes of reporters on deadline calling into the office to dictate or update breaking news stories.

Even before the arrival of portable computers, allowing reporters to rewrite their own stories even a continent away from the home office, the phrase was mostly an inside joke. But rewriting is if anything much more common in journalism today, when stories are constantly updated on the web.

As a veteran of the disappearing era of print newspapers, I did plenty of re-writing, on my own or in collaboration/argument with editors. But the rewrite usually had to happen fast, and once the story was in print, that was it.

It’s a tired but true saying that journalism is the first draft of history, and crucial and vivid and truthful as that can make it, a first draft is still a draft. Looking at my old newspaper clips, there are stories in which I think deadline pressure helped me produce a gem. There are also those I wish I could rewrite.

Today, as I write without any deadline (nice) and without the certainty of publication (not nice), rewrite has taken on a different cast. I like it.

For several years now I’ve been laboring to write and link together a series of essays about my maternal ancestors and their homes in the American South. My Northeast grounded colleagues in the Mystic Writers have regularly been subjected to stories that some candidly admit feel like missives from a foreign country.

Their outsider perspective, comments and suggestions have been invaluable to me, and much as writers love to hear, “Don’t change a word,” I’ve discovered that rewriting, along with being a lot of work, can be a lot of fun. We can’t rewrite our lives, so this could be the next best thing.

There are writers in our group who have rewritten novels, which might not be quite as much fun as rewriting a short essay. I have to think in any event that it’s a lot more work, as I’ve seen how hard the decision can be to even undertake it.

“Great novels aren’t written, they’re rewritten” is another tired but (probably) true statement for any type of writing. Writing on deadline for decades as a journalist, I had to accept that I didn’t have that luxury. Now I do.

Illustration: From a vintage poster circa 1960s by M. Norman, “Hello, sweetheart, get me rewrite!”.