Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Putting on my Editor's Hat (Or: Why in the name of all that's good did I write this crap again?!)

I don't remember who said it, but one of my favorite quotes about writing is actually about editing:
"There are no great writers, only great re-writers."

It's funny I consider that a favorite quote, given how much I DETEST EDITING.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I like editing. I like editing...maybe a bit too much. I have been known to get overly zealous with papers, articles, hell even greeting card messages. And not just my own, ohhhhh no. My siblings received grammatical and structural advice on many a paper, whether they wanted it or not. I correct my friends' spelling mistakes on TWITTER, for crying out loud.

But there is no one whose work I like to tear apart  more than my own. And that can be a problem sometimes.

This is what draft 1 looked like this morning, hot off the printer in all its sparkly glory:

I've no idea why it's sideways, and blogger won't let me adjust it. Bad blogger!

 I sat down intending to edit at least a few chapters today. I only managed to edit chapter 1, because after more than an hour, the sight of all my pen marks was starting to depress me.
Terrible! Fix! Why did you write this, fool?! GAH!
At one point, I apparently got so fed up with some of my word choices that I left a comment at the very beginning of the chapter:
"Better adjectives, please"
I freely admit to having a slightly out-of-control Inner Editor, and I would bet money that I'm not the only writer out there who is perhaps a little excessively critical of her/his own work. 

Okay, maybe more than a little excessively critical.

The simple fact of the matter is that no story pops out of our heads completely formed and perfect. There are plot holes, inconsistencies with characters (prime example: my main character's eye color changed thrice--THRICE!--in the first seven pages. Someone did not take good enough character notes! Someone also mentions eye color TOO OFTEN in the first seven pages!) and a host of spelling and grammatical errors that we just ignore in the first run-through because ohmygodjustneedtogetthiswrittendooooowwwwn!

Yeah. The beauty and grace and polished prose that we all dream of when we first set out on the writing journey? Definitely not going to completely show its face until the draft's undergone an edit or two or two thousand. It's not glamorous, and sometimes its downright depressing, but if you love that story--if you love those characters and that world you created and you want other people to see them as you see them (read: awesome)--you will grit your teeth, put on the editor's hat, and you will edit the bloody thing because it deserves it. And because no matter how good we are as writers, at the end of the day it's the rewriting that makes the story great.

Now, if you will excuse me, there is a pan of stress-relief chocolate cupcakes cooling on my oven, and they need to be iced (and, let's face it, CONSUMED NOM NOM NOM) before I attempt chapter 2.

Keep at it, everyone!

~Katherine

(p.s. In the interest of accuracy and proper citation, I looked up the above quote for a source, and am no less flummoxed. Half of the internet is certain Ernest Hemingway said it, the other half thinks it was Nabokov and a handful insist it was Stephen King and/or their own English professor. Help me out, fellow writers: is it one of the above? Someone else entirely?)

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