OCE: Obsessive Compulsive Editing

Good morning! I just got back from a brisk, early morning hike (I’m so proud of myself! I got up before the sun!). I’m doing laundry. I paid the bills. It's shaping up to be a good, productive day!

Yesterday I was editing a project, and I realized that I spend about as much time (if not more) editing a piece as I do writing it.

Here’s the drill:
I finish the first draft of a chapter or episode and breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Then I print out a copy and run around the house with it giggling madly. A trusted family member or friend will shoot me with a tranquilizer dart before things get out of hand (okay, so I made that last part up). Once I’ve calmed down a little, I will take a pen to the first draft, slashing paragraphs, writing notes and drawing arrows until the page looks like it’s been assaulted by an inebriated kindergartner (disturbing). Then I’ll put all the changes into the computer and print out a legible copy for my parents to read (yes, they are my parents, but they don’t pull their punches!). Repeat the above.

When polishing a finished product, my mantra is always BREVITY. I believe that good writing doesn’t draw attention to itself. It says exactly what it needs to say, no more, no less. That is not to say that there is no merit in a beautiful description or in attention to detail. Those are both integral to allowing your audience to immerse themselves in your world. However, most readers can tell the difference between a skillful turn of phrase and an author that is showing off his/her vocabulary. Most of the time, your average, everyday word will better communicate what you are seeing in your head than a big, fancy word fished out of the Thesaurus (something I had to pound into my head with a mallet). Save the ten-dollar words for special occasions!

If on the third or fourth reading a story starts to feel stale, odds are it needs to be revamped. Do something crazy with it just for funzies. I have been known to cut up my stories into little sections, spread them out all over my bedroom floor, and rearrange them into different configurations. Sometimes all it takes is tweaking the order of a few scenes to make the plot flow more dynamically. In other cases you’ll discover that you’re missing a scene (or have a scene too many). I will also rewrite certain scenes from another character’s point of view just to get a fresh perspective.

A friend of mine once told me that a writer’s work is never done, we just make a conscious choice to stop. There will always be another comma out of place or a repeated word or not enough variance in sentence structure. If at the end of the day, you like what you’ve written, then let it be. Of course if you take it out in a month or a year or ten and feel differently, break out the old red pen. I have reworked Shards at the very least fifteen times all the way through. We writers may never hit perfect, but damned if we’re not gonna try!