Light blogging ahead
I probably won't be posting much this week. I'm revising an essay that I haven't looked at in months. I often have to do that. It's my worst trait as a writer - I fall in love with the shape of certain phrases, the way they feel in my mouth, warm and sweet like a peach pit, and I can't, or won't, recognize that however muscial a certain phrase might be it doesn't serve the larger work and it has to go. Until my ardor has cooled I can't bring myself to make the necessary cuts. So this piece has been settling in a filing cabinet and now I can read it with the distance I need to be ruthless with the editing pen. There's a lot in there that is good. There's a lot in there that drags down the good parts. Time to clear out the deadwood.
3 Comments:
good luck, and take the time you need! i often wonder if i have sentimental weaknesses as well and perhaps this is what impells me to revise like a madwoman. i am an editors worst nightmare! and as an editor myself, strangely, i do not judge a work with this same kind of revisionists eye... well, i either accept it or not, but think i am a pretty open reader. anyhoo, try not to think of revision as the death of a piece or certain parts of it per se, hold those revised/cut bits perhaps for another piece later on... what are you writing about? fiction, article? pray tell! ;)
arghh...i hope you will understand that when i type comments i am typing freehand or one-handed in some cases and therefore there might be spelling errors or other grammar irks... (( : o ))
What are you writing about?
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