Owwww!!!
Ah, the joy of crits and edits! Yes, I am experiencing the existential angst of the editorial chopping block - both as the one wielding the blue inked ax and the one screaming "owwww!" Learning tons, but have had little time for anything else this week. Why, oh why is it so much easier for me to spot errors in the work of others than to pull the plank from my own eye, er WIP?! For someone who loathes cliches, I sure use an awful lot of them! And don't even get me started on stuff like pronouns, ellipses, em dashes, pet words (love "just" and "really" - not sure why), not to mention the overuse of "um" and "ah" in dialogue. Yes, people do talk like that, but many readers don't want to read it. And the whole dialogue tag issue. Plot moves too fast, too slow, repetitive info, lack of clarity, not enough sensory info. Ack! Eek! Ick!
And with that, I dive back in for round two.
posted by angie @ 9:58 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
My dear Lazy,
As Kenneth Patchen said: "I only want to write what is essential. But everything is essential."
I personally like the idea that all interesting things can be reduced to a haiku.
At the same time an ellipses more accurately suggests this life than a plain ol' period...
Okay, I'll shut the hell up.
I'm the same, luvvie. Spot it in someone elses, not in mine.
I think we get too close to our own work.
Happy editing!
:o)
art is pain.
oops, another cliche.
I always struggle proofreading my own stuff too. I keep inserting words that aren't there and correcting words that are mispelled. Such torture.
Dearest c. atrox - Love the ellipses too much, an infatuation I cannot seem to shake...
Yep, m.e. - someone critted/edited for me, pointed out the cliches & how funny that was since I had pointed out cliches in her draft. Ouch! But that's why I have others look at my work. I wouldn't put that crap in if I were aware of it!
LOL, Anne! You bet yer ass it's pain & fraught with cliches. At least mine is!
Yes, Amra, proofing/editing is a drag. On the other hand, I'm learning a lot. Clinging to that!
The irony of all this writerly angst is that I spent the better part of last week editing for others. I learned so much from that process that I was shocked, SHOCKED! I tell you! to see all the crap that cropped up in mine. Hence the weirdness of being on both ends of the editing pain-o-rama - the one wielding the blue pen, then the one left with the bleeding draft!
Suck it up, already.
You don't hear me whining, do ya?
That's what Lala's for.
Shut up, Mindy. I don't care if you're whining or not.
I can whine if I want to, and I'll leave your friends behind. 'Cause your friends don't whine, and if they don't whine, well, they're no friends of mine.
And stuff...
From Lala Scrivano's Book of Wordy Wisdom:
Smile and the world whiles with you;
Whine and you dine alone.
In other news, she says 'Send chapters three and four when ready. Sven's been called away on an emergency bourbon run.'
Um, no. Not ready, not even remotely. Rewrote the first PAGE and it's already light years better. This is good and bad. Good because I know I can do it and bad 'cause I have to do that to the rest of the fucking book. Shit. Mo-fo. GodDAMN!
Maybe when Sven's back from his fourteenth bourbon run...
Yeah, it's that whole book thing that keeps dragging me down. But, y'know, after reading A Brief History of the Dead, that had 280 some odd great pages and 20 last crappy pages, I can see why it's important to give a great story all the way through. Much as I kind of want to hit some agent over the head and scream - 'Look! It's mostly wonderful!'
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