Mantra

"Writing is when you make the words. Editing is when you make the words not shitty."--Chuck Wendig, in his essay, "How Not to Bug the Fuck Out When Writing A Novel."

Hmm

A funny thing happened on the way to the edit.

A friend asked me to take a look at a story he was working on. I'd helped him a few years back, giving some suggestions on tightening his prose. He tends to be wordy, and I have always reveled in the editing/rewriting process. I have called myself a tweaker and a mechanic. A fine-tuner. I love the way moving or reshaping one word in a sentence can make the whole thing gleam. I like doing it with my own work, and I like doing it with others'. So I agreed.

Maybe because of the relationship I have with him, I was able to really dig into the story. I didn't feel bad circling words and writing "cliché!" next to them. (No writer of worth should ever compare blue eyes to the sky. EVER. Find a new way to get your point over.) I hacked off an opening section. I tweaked. Buffed. Scraped. Excised. Razed. All, of course, in a constructive way.

Then we talked about it. Just for 10 minutes or so at the start of the workday, but we talked. I talked. I talked about writing. I talked about the economy of words, of why the opening bit was trite and how it stood in the way of a strong storyline, about paring down his phrasing and creating beats and rhythm and tension to really bring this story to a new level . . .

I talked. And for once I didn't feel like I had nothing to say. I didn't question myself. It's been a while. Maybe it's been since the last time I taught writing. But I came out of the conversation and didn't think I'd babbled or been wrong or came off looking like a wank. I felt like I'd said something of worth, something that helped, something I knew something about. Which was interesting. As in different.

Interesting.