Take Away

A quote, by the writer who has become, perhaps, my favorite fiction author:

You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery, from Wind, Sand and Stars

I think of it as applying, yes, to design, but to life. I think I started my adult life thinking of things I would acquire--a car, a house, furniture to put in the house, and so on. And now that I am older, I am constantly simplifying. I need less, not more.

And of course, like everything . . . it applies to the writing. Yesterday's post brought comments from John L. Krueger (who has a MUST-read Demon Dog story on his blog . . . you will not be sorry if you visit) about back stories, and how he was taught by a legendary editor to remove them. I used to think writing was so much about what ended up on paper. But now I realize, so much of writing is in what I take away. So that only what is essential remains.

I never realized life would be about what I give away. What I pack away. What I no longer feel I have to have. About every word I delete. About the the back stories I remove. Wind, Sand and Stars is a beautiful memoir . . . and I wonder even in its title. When I think of the world, so much of it is mucked up beyond belief by humans and their excessive consumption--landfills and pollution, global warming. But the creator of the universe, whoever that might be, or the magic of a Big Bang, brought us Wind, Sand, and Sky. Anything we add to it just screws it up.

Thoughts?

Peace today, all,
E

Heart and Head

Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.
~From the movie Finding Forrester

I write with my heart. I don't know any other way than to sort of spill out what's jumping around in my head, begging for release, onto the paper. It's like finally letting go of a "good cry" (and sorry, fellas, if you don't know what that's like, but for a lot of women, a "good cry" is extremely cathartic--we may even rent sad movies in order to have one). Sometimes, it's as if I have this fury in me, and I have to just regurgitate it and get it out and then, and only then, can I sigh and relax. It's hard to explain, but that's my best attempt at describing my process. That's what writing my first draft from the heart is.

But then the head takes over. I spent well over a decade editing other people's manuscripts before I sold my first novel. I learned how to get rid of passive voice, how to shape and hone someone's words. My own words. I learned, from much banging of my head against my desk (thank you, Jon Van Zile) to ruthlessly delete words that didn't propel my scenes. To cut whole chapters that just sat there, doing nothing but showing off pretty words. I learned to edit with my head.

I know a writer who once bitterly resented that she could not get published. She was writing what was "hot" (at the time, it was chick lit), and she could craft a sentence. Three top editors in a row passed on her manuscript--and all three said variations on the same theme--"no heart," "paint by numbers writing," and "I didn't care about any of the characters." This writer could target market, but the heart piece was missing. I could see it--I kept saying "dig deeper"--but you can't really SHOW someone how to. It's a process in which you find your passion for the work and stop chasing publication by creating what's "hot" for instead what "speaks to you."

On the flip side, I have seen enough horrid manuscripts that come through the slush pile to know that heart's not enough. You can see the person poured their soul into their work. It feels naked and autobiographical as you read it. There's rawness there. But it's so poorly executed that the head's missing completely.

They go hand in hand. It's what I aim for in everything I write.

Thoughts?

Sit Down

I was blog hopping and came across a writer who posted the first chapter of her work online. It's with an e-pub, and let's say the excerpt was 1,000 words. I would cut 500 of them. If there's one thing that will drive many editors nuts, it's excessive wordiness. Why take 50 words when 25 will do? Eliminate unnecssary adverbs, adjectives, and prepositions, and be vigilant about it in your work.

Examples?

You don't have to sit down. Just sit. The "down" is implied.

You don't have to inhale a breath or exhale one either. If you are inhaling and exhaling, BREATHING is implied. So is air, unless you're an alien and can breathe some other gas.

Once you mention an eye color or hair color, unless there are fifty characters in your scene that we need to distinguish between, we shouldn't read the color again. We know. She has blue eyes. We get it.

Don't "take" things. Don't "take a step forward." Simply "step forward." Don't "take" a breath. Just breathe.

Don't "steal" things either. Don't "steal a glance." Just glance already.

Chances are if you have a "was" or "is" you can rewrite the sentence to a more active verb. Example . . .

"The thought was terrifying." How about "the terrifying thought . . . " and continue from there. Better YET, if you have described the scene well or the terrifying thought, then guess what? You don't need to TELL us it's terrifying. In fact, if the terrifying thought causes your heroine to shake or tremble, it's enough to have them shake or tremble without telling us it's the terrifying thought that did so.

Don't have people say something arrogantly. Write the dialogue so we KNOW it's an arrogant statement.

Don't arch an eyebrow upward. If it's arched--the eyebrow went up.

Good editing isn't usually noticed. BAD editing is. A good editor will rip all the excess junk out of your writing. You may miss it if you have ingrained habits that led you to write this way. But your readers won't.

So sit. Don't sit down. And edit accordingly.

Thoughts? Any other editing pet peeves you care to share?

Ripping Out Stitches

I love to knit. This is somewhat of a revelation to me, since I am the LEAST crafty person I know. My mother is this utterly amazing knitter, and she has helped me to learn. Now, I find myself wandering the aisles of Ben Franklin, and one entire wall of my walk-in closet is yarn. One WALL! I get Yarn Lust. I hate to shop, yet a trip to Ben Franklin can take me two hours. My clothes? Order them online. My makeup? I order it online. I mean, I SERIOUSLY hate shopping. Except for yarn.

When I started knitting, I HATED to rip anything out. I was just so happy I had stitches on my knitting needles, that if I made a mistake, I'd kind of doctor it so you wouldn't notice. My scarves were lopsided. Not so anymore. The better I get (better being a relative term), the neater my stitches are. I've graduated to cute hats for my baby, and he will have a hat for every day of winter, I am sure.

Which brings me to writing.

You see, there was a time when I was just happy to have the words and the pages. The first time I wrote a novel, the very IDEA that I could write 300 pages was astonishing to me. Because I had only written poetry and short stories before I wrote Spanish Disco, when I started hitting 80 pages on my novel, I was amazed. And then I kept going. When I hit 200 pages . . . I couldn't believe it. Then I kept going. My writing was lean and spare, and I was writing 50,000 words. It was an adventure.

Since that book, my critique group added a member who can easily toss out 50 pages--just delete them as if they had never existed. The thought made me want to throw up. DELETE whole chapters? MULTIPLE chapters? But if they didn't move the plot along, or they were deeply flawed . . . they went bye-bye. The knitter in me who didn't like to rip out stitches wanted to choke.

But I've since learned. I am working on my next comedy proposal. There is a whole homage to The Wizard of Oz in it. And it's funny. But I realized the set-up was taking too long. As fast as you can say "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore" I deleted three chapters.

I am working on a YA proposal. Same thing. I am suddenly less attached to my words and more attached to the art of it--to the finished product. If it's not working, I need to mercilessly rip the stitches out. I may save it on my hard drive in case there's something in there--some turn of a phrase I can use later. But most of the time, I don't look back, just as my finished scarf banishes the memory of the lopsided one.

Thoughts?

Editing for Word Choice

If you're not a writer, it might seem as if writers simply spill a sentence out onto their keyboard, hit the period key. Sentence done.

Okay, I've stopped laughing. No, wait . . . still chuckling. All right. Now I'm done.

Word choice is such an essential choice of editing. While writers might--and it depends on the writer--simply bang out a sentence, you can bet they will go back and substitute words. Here's a look at how I edit for word choice.

Daddy waltzes in smelling of his sins.

Nope. "Smelling" isn't really what these sins do. And waltz isn't the right feel for this. Edited version?

Daddy breezes in stinking of his sins.

Better.

Moving on . . .

Around the meal I can't eat for the lump in my throat, we bow our heads and speak our grace. Amen.

Nope. CLICHE! Writer prison for me. And "grace" as you'll see, it too obvious a word.

Around the meal I can't eat for the pebble in my throat, we bow our heads and speak our peace. Amen.

And if you haven't guessed, this is from one of my published poems, called Grace. And poetry taught me much of what I've learned about editing word choice. And yes, I still go through all this picky trouble with prose. The good news is I self-edit in my brain, so I don't have to do as much of it as I used to.

As for "lump in my throat," I have had writers argue with me--argue!--as an editor or writing coach, that there's "no other way" to describe certain things. Tough. Find another one anyway.

Thoughts? Your editing process?

Writing Changes Everything

Once again this weekend, I got a SPAM-type ad for a new book. The cover was hideous, in my humble opinion, with people who looked rather like avators designed by someone with a sick view of anatomy, and the premise left me cold . . . but still, in the world of books, I will often click on ads just to see who's out there, who's writing what, to look for trends, to I hope have a sense of wonder about something another writer dreamed up, as I did when I read this book.

Truly, I look to be awed by the creativity of others.

Once again, it was a self-pubbed book. And just maybe to prove myself wrong, I clicked on "read an excerpt." Once again, I wanted to scream.

I get that we all read different types of books. What I enjoy isn't what the next person enjoys. Considering THIS is my bedside reading (and it's an AWESOME book, folks), I know I don't read what most people read. But the thing is . . . we can ALL agree that a book needs proper editing. That it not be riddled with mistakes the average copyeditor would pick up inside of five minutes. That is not be so full of cliche that the average high school junior in a creative writing class would give it a D.

There's something to be said--good and bad, I suppose--for thinking outside the box when it comes to publishing. Yes, many great writers languish unpublished and unagented. But many, many more aren't ready and take shortcuts that a professional would just cringe at.

But even more, I suppose, is what it says about me as a reader. Because I am a writer, it changes everything. There are some mainstream-published, commercial fiction writers I used to read that I simply can't anymore. I start many, many more books than I finish. Knowing how to craft a sentence or a plot changes how I read. Maybe others don't see what I see. But I do and it changes my reading habits.

Has writing changed your reading habits? And what are your thoughts on the self-pubbed route?