Spent a chunk of time revising this morning. I love revising. I love going over a story and slicing words away--looking at your paragraphs with new eyes and thinking, actually, this doesn't flow at all. This doesn't need to be here.
It's one of the things I miss most about workshop--that ready availability of other eyes. Sometimes it's so hard to bring that fresh perspective to your own work. I ran a story of mine by a friend yesterday and his overarching advice was this: cut at least 1000 words. It's repetitive, and slow in spots. And of course he was right. I went to the story and gleefully hacked away. Unsure of something? Slice it. No longer quite as much in love with that little turn of phrase? Bugger needs to go. There are four lines of dialogue here, and everything you need can be said in two. Delete. Delete.
So much of writing, as it turns out, is about undoing.
Undoing. Unwriting. Making each word, as a friend recently said, earn its weight on the line. Paring and sanding and carving away. Sculpting, much like Michelangelo and others have done through the centuries. I saw the angel in the marble, and I carved to set it free.
Except, of course, that I am not Michelangelo, and I am no longer in workshop, and sometimes--as much as I love the process--going back over those stories and slogging away on one's own in a little attic nook (delightful though it might be) can be a lonely, dreary business. How do you know when enough is enough? How do you know when you've pared and revised your story/essay/poem/chapter down to the best that it can be?
You don't. Or, should I say, I don't know. I never know when enough's enough. I just fumble along in the dark. I let things sit. (This is hard for me, as I am not the most patient person in the world.) And then I come back to them, these slippery story things, and if I find myself unsure of something, I'll axe it more often than not.
Kill your darlings is one of those handy phrases that get tossed around writing circles a lot. William Faulkner said it, supposedly, but apparently the quotation itself was borrowed/modified (we writers, we're big on borrowing and modifying) from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who said this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings.
Which sounds a little different from me slicing out a piece of writing about which I'm unsure. This is why workshop was so handy. It's one thing to come back to your work and realize when things aren't working as swimmingly as you thought -- it is, in some ways, entirely a different thing to go over your work and stand apart from it enough to realize that those parts you love might not be working for the good of the story overall. This is why editors and outside readers are so absolutely essential. The story that I worked on this morning -- it might just be better now, thanks to my friend's suggestions. Cut at least a thousand words.
I'm grateful for his advice. I'm grateful for that chance to slice and cut and excise and try, always try, to be better.
In other news, I get paid this week. This is not particularly writerly news, nor is it very exciting (unless you happen to be me), but hallelujah, money in that bank account will sure as heck feel nice. I might even be able to think seriously about a couch. Why doesn't anybody ever talk anymore about writers who survive on ramen noodles and furniture made from milk crates? Wherefore all the stories about starving in garrets in Paris (or Hamilton, as the case may be) and being poor and trudging away at your work in the eerie bluish light of your laptop screen while everyone else is out having a fun Friday night because that's what normal people do? What about all of those success stories? What about the hours of revision and those moments when you crumple in a spasm on your floor and think, if I'd gone into accounting all those years ago none of this would have happened??
Yeah. In and amidst revising and chasing these words and the advice from friends, I think: what about all of that?
It's one of the things I miss most about workshop--that ready availability of other eyes. Sometimes it's so hard to bring that fresh perspective to your own work. I ran a story of mine by a friend yesterday and his overarching advice was this: cut at least 1000 words. It's repetitive, and slow in spots. And of course he was right. I went to the story and gleefully hacked away. Unsure of something? Slice it. No longer quite as much in love with that little turn of phrase? Bugger needs to go. There are four lines of dialogue here, and everything you need can be said in two. Delete. Delete.
So much of writing, as it turns out, is about undoing.
Undoing. Unwriting. Making each word, as a friend recently said, earn its weight on the line. Paring and sanding and carving away. Sculpting, much like Michelangelo and others have done through the centuries. I saw the angel in the marble, and I carved to set it free.
Except, of course, that I am not Michelangelo, and I am no longer in workshop, and sometimes--as much as I love the process--going back over those stories and slogging away on one's own in a little attic nook (delightful though it might be) can be a lonely, dreary business. How do you know when enough is enough? How do you know when you've pared and revised your story/essay/poem/chapter down to the best that it can be?
You don't. Or, should I say, I don't know. I never know when enough's enough. I just fumble along in the dark. I let things sit. (This is hard for me, as I am not the most patient person in the world.) And then I come back to them, these slippery story things, and if I find myself unsure of something, I'll axe it more often than not.
Kill your darlings is one of those handy phrases that get tossed around writing circles a lot. William Faulkner said it, supposedly, but apparently the quotation itself was borrowed/modified (we writers, we're big on borrowing and modifying) from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who said this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings.
Which sounds a little different from me slicing out a piece of writing about which I'm unsure. This is why workshop was so handy. It's one thing to come back to your work and realize when things aren't working as swimmingly as you thought -- it is, in some ways, entirely a different thing to go over your work and stand apart from it enough to realize that those parts you love might not be working for the good of the story overall. This is why editors and outside readers are so absolutely essential. The story that I worked on this morning -- it might just be better now, thanks to my friend's suggestions. Cut at least a thousand words.
I'm grateful for his advice. I'm grateful for that chance to slice and cut and excise and try, always try, to be better.
In other news, I get paid this week. This is not particularly writerly news, nor is it very exciting (unless you happen to be me), but hallelujah, money in that bank account will sure as heck feel nice. I might even be able to think seriously about a couch. Why doesn't anybody ever talk anymore about writers who survive on ramen noodles and furniture made from milk crates? Wherefore all the stories about starving in garrets in Paris (or Hamilton, as the case may be) and being poor and trudging away at your work in the eerie bluish light of your laptop screen while everyone else is out having a fun Friday night because that's what normal people do? What about all of those success stories? What about the hours of revision and those moments when you crumple in a spasm on your floor and think, if I'd gone into accounting all those years ago none of this would have happened??
Yeah. In and amidst revising and chasing these words and the advice from friends, I think: what about all of that?
Yeah, I got a shout-out on your blog! Whoo!
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