Skip to main content

Editing

I'm not sure how many of you are interesting writing, either as a hobby (as it is with me), or as a casual observer (much as say, I take interest in someone who might collect the odd 1960's era Brazilian Pogs issued by the Oscar Myer Corporation), or quite possibly as a pie in the sky hope of one day doing it for a living (also me).

To have more blather, I thought I'd talk about my process. As an unpublished fiction writer. I realize that this is like a carpenter who has never been paid for his work, discussing his woodworking technique. While theoretically it may be correct, its most likely is complete rubbish.

But that's not going to stop me.

So right now I'm going through my final edit (I hope) of my first book. The entire book has gone through at least one revision/edit. Parts have gone through as many as four. The thing about revising and editing is that it's a completely different beast than writing. At least it is for me.

When you're writing, the old adage is "you're allowed to write crap", meaning that you should just pump out that first draft lickety split. Otherwise you procrastinate, take an avid interest in orchid cultivation, start blogging, and in other ways stop yourself from getting those words to hard-disk. So there is a certain freedom to it. You write the most horrid and awkward phrases. You just keep chugging along. You tell yourself, like the hollywood director who has just had a Honda Civic drive through his pastoral setting of 1895 England, "I'll get it in post".

The editing phase is for honing. There is no amateur hour here. You have to write as well (if you are talking genre fiction) as a Stephen King or Terry Brooks. Your lines have to be clean, your meaning clarified from it's current state of murky "coffee pot been sitting for 23 hours" to "something that one might consider drinking" to "as transparent as the Bottled Water cash grab Industry is". Characters have to materialize, plot has to move along, dialogue has to flow, descriptions have to sizzle. There is no net.

This is where the real craft is, I believe.

This is also where you can simply freeze, staring at your words, with no idea how better to rephrase the clunkiest sentence ever put to paper.

Comments

Gareth said…
You need to edit this post to actually include your process. :P

Popular posts from this blog

Insults From A Senile Victorian Gentleman

You SIR, have the hygeine of an overly ripe avocado and the speaking habits of a vaguely deranged chess set. I find your manner to be unctuous and possibly libelous, and whatever standard you set for orthodontal care, it's not one I care for. Your choice in news programs is semi-literate at best and I do believe your favourite news anchor writes erotic literature for university mascots. While I'm not one to point out so obvious a failing, there has been rumour that the brunches you host every other Sunday are made with too much lard and cilantro. If you get my meaning. There is something to be said about your choice of motor-car fuel, but it is not urbane and if I were to repeat it, mothers would cover their children's ears and perhaps not a few longshoremen within earshot would blush. How you maintain that rather obscene crease in your trousers and your socks is beyond me, perhaps its also during this time that you cultivate a skin regime that I'm sure requires the dea...

People You Meet on Transit #5

Thanks to Jay Morrison for the photo. Transit Drivers Bus drivers are an archetype in North American culture. In the imagination they are generous in girth, have staunch opinions about unions and eat 300% the recommended intake of red meat. The odd one adheres to a strict conspiracy theory, which they manage to work into the most innocuous conversations. At least, that's what's been ingrained in our collective subconscious along with "Han shot first" and "Dukakis, 1988". But transit drivers, like everyone else, are individuals. Unique, utterly one of a kind from the 5 billion others who roam this spinning mass of molten iron with the cool, carbon life-form infested shell. Sure, you see the reticent ones, who have a 100 yard stare and coolly watch passengers get mild hypothermia while they take their union-sanctioned 15 minute break inside their cozy bus. But there are other, more colourful characters as well. In my city, there is one that calls out every st...

Cyberpunk 2077

 Like a late 90's webring, replete with link back and hints at an actual relationship with other authors, this is a piece I'd like to say in.. rebuttal is too harsh a term, in reply, to my very long standing internet friend, zompist, where he posts his various gripes with that great sprawling hot mess, Cyberpunk 2077. Now I say hot mess because that's what the internet at large thinks of it, but me, playing on the worringly over-powered computers on GeForce Now, have experienced nearly no problems. Or at least not problems that bother me enough. Keep in mind I'm the Homer Simpson when it comes to critiquing alot of things. I just like, alot of things. Cheap date, as it were.   It might be my hundreds of hours in Bethesda titles and regularly having to look up console commands to debug yet another janked out quest, but it takes a rather large bug to befuddle and begrudge me. Like if a bug repoed my car, maybe, or  told me how much weight I had actually put on during ...