Member-only story
Save Me From My Editing
It’s got to get done but I’d rather take a field trip.
It’s what we’ve got to do, what we are here for. Our purpose of getting words down on the page each day, that burning drive to express. That love of sharing our thoughts and feelings. That deep need to create. It’s taxing and luscious and vexing. It’s the knot in our stomach and the best thing we know.
But what happens when it’s time to edit?
Rough drafts are the worst of our writing, the bare bones down on paper or the screen, yet they have the satisfaction of getting out of us. How do we view the editing process, the notes and revisions, the rewrites and feedback? It hones us, makes us better writers, yet we so often balk at getting it done.
It’s a necessary part of the work, yet we twirl our pencils and daydream. I’ve known other writers who’ve put off the editing process because there was so much else to write, so much else to get out of them. Ideas pouring out that needed to be captured before they ran away to become someone else’s ideas.
Have you ever discovered that? When you shelve a concept and then read about it in somebody else’s book? Stories have a mind of their own at travel at will. We only think we own them; if we buy into that we’re delusional. We have to work them or they will evaporate and go…
