Writing: My current project & goals

Having cranked out books before, I never stopped to consider what a book needs to make it from my hand to the public. Before, I thought all writing had a place simply because they are words important enough to a writer to set onto paper. However, I've learned much since my earliest days of arrogant writing.

Now I know words important enough to make it to paper are also words dear enough to require rewrites. Polishing one word, one sentence, one paragraph takes more time than the writing took! But that's a big part of the craft, having patience to review E-V-E-R-Y word and evaluate whether it's a keeper. Sometimes I like the words, but the sentences stink. Sometimes, I'm in awe about the sentence "idea" but the words cannot support an ant on stilts. Often all I need are some rocks to anchor thoughts and give them some weight. Sometimes, all I need are a few broad leafs floating between rocks to make my words convey thoughts from one spot to another in the current. Unfortunately, though, a lot of my ants drowned while I floundered about where to place a rock and where my weightless leaves would fall.

By far the hardest task for me has been finding all the ways to cut words. When I hit onto a formula (xyz =b), editing moves fast. But few pages submit to formulas, either in writing or editing. Yet, I admit to secretly looking for every formula I can find to help me know just WHAT to edit, what to cut, what the heck to do with so much writing that now sounds like... crap.

No, I swear I didn't write crap. I didn't set out to write it that way. But after the 101st edit, look-see, browsing for trouble, one's one words start to sound no more interesting than cow dung in a barren field at the coldest part of winter. Even the steam has long ago dissipated from what I thought had sizzled when I wrote it. The uneven spots that looked so interesting in my head now just look as compelling as a flattened pancake from the cow's back end.

The good thing about editing, though, is how eventually you've got to turn your attention back to the front end, the side where things went into writing, got chewed, and twisted until ready to give nourishment. Looking at the front end again, I decide that at least the cow does have two ends, and possibly, just maybe, if I feed my writing a better blend of food, I can salvage what I already wrote. Maybe it's not all cooled, lifeless cow dung.

The problem remains that no cow will ever tell me which parts of my writing suit which part of the cow. At some point, I just have to stop editing and let the damn cow out to pasture, let it see the sunshine, and let others see it.

That's probably, in one swooping motion, the worst--and best--part of writing. If only I wasn't so convinced that others would only step in cow pies, maybe I'd be more excited to open the barn door wide and let the cow roam.

Judith