On writing

"Writing is the most demanding of callings, more harrowing than a warrior's, more lonely than a whaling captain's?that, in essence, is the modern writer's message." ?Melvin Maddocks

I just wrote to my RL writing group about how there are no good writers, just good editors. In fact, it's gotten to a point where I spend more time revising than actually writing. Part of it is because as a writer, sometimes it's necessary to just push a story ahead and not worry about the quality of the writing until later.

I make no bones about the fact that I despise editing passionately. Writing is easy, editing is hard. I do my own initial editing -- spellcheck, grammar check, rewrite of passive voice sentence, removing 'that', rewording clunkiness, and adding details -- and then it's off to a second or sometimes third or fourth opinion. And then I delude myself into thinking this is perfection itself and that the editor is absolutely going to love my story; after all, what can possibly be left to fix? Ha!

There is truth, y'know, to the statement that the writer lives in her own world. It's the only possible explanation for the delusion that one's writing is perfect hot off the press and requires nothing more than a rubber stamp of "Good for you! You rock!" If ever an editor came back at me with those sentences, I'd probably fall out of my chair and then once I picked myself up off the floor, I'd find a new editor.

Writing is demanding because there are 'off' stories, 'off' days, 'off' ideas -- things that just never get quite off the ground. Then there are moments of pure unadulterated brilliance. I occasionally squee when I write something that's just absolutely (mho) wonderful and then other times, I'm kicking myself because I just turned out a paragraph of pure crap.

Even when something goes off for editing, I already have an idea of what's going on with the story. As I said to Rocky the other night, "This story is very heavy-handed and beware of falling anvils." I already knew I was beating the reader over the head with a message but being so close to the story itself, I have no idea how to actually fix it, or what should go, or what should stay. It's difficult (but not impossible), as the writer, to make those kinds of decisions easily, especially if one is emotionally attached to the story and has been working on it for a long time (in this case, the story in question is about 5 years old). The objective point-of-view is necessary -- and sometimes that POV comes down to, "This story sucks. The writing isn't so good either. You need to start all over."

Yeah, that kind of FB stings, but it's necessary. If I'm doing something wrong, I want to know. If there's something about my style or character or plot that doesn't work, then I need to know. And if a story doesn't work, the story doesn't work. It's that simple. Sometimes all of the editing in the world just can't save the story and that's okay. Put it away, start something new and move on. It's impossible (and discouraging) to expect perfect copy and perfect stories the first time everytime.