Self-Editing for Dummy…aka, Writing Tight vs. Tight Writing…aka, Tightie Whities, Man Or Myth?

Editing is like…a simile, one that you can’t quite come up with but know if you think about long enough and hard enough, that it will come to you…or that something will come to you. And that something may not be brilliant or ring the bell at the top of your whack-a-simile-with-a-sledgehammer game, but it will be, you now, um…the simile you thought you could write when you decided to take a stab at it in the first place.

Metaphors are even worse.

If that sounds like complaining, it’s like, not. I love editing...

What I’m not crazy about is the deadline part. But even the deadline—as necessary (and evil) as it can be—is useful. In the beginning it’s like the stick that holds the carrot, goading you peacefully forward. Eventually that same stick will be used to whip the big smelly horse bottom of your editorial self. That really hurts. And let’s face it, does very little for the quality of your carrot. 

As you may have already guessed, I’m hip-deep in soupy bog of Fix-It.

What that means is that every night I sit down with heavily marked manuscript pages. I then try to decipher my scribblings and incorporate them into the story. My problem is that I can never leave well enough alone. It’s like…I end up slaving and slogging through droves of what I deem deficient passages. My silly little brain tries to convince my muse to work overtime on these trouble spots, the logic being—obviously, since you so royally screwed up this sentence here or that paragraph there, then your penance is to massage those spots into utter brilliance. You must atone for your writer sins, slacker boy!

But it never works.

What happens is I spend too much time belaboring one verb, tweaking another sentence, and basically worrying all fun and creativity and spontaneity right out of what is now one stupid paragraph. It makes for an incongruent mess. Trying too hard doesn’t work. But it may be necessary. I don’t know. I don’t even know why I’m writing this…this…this rather long note-to-self reminder to quit overwriting and to just simply tap into the voice and tell the story.

But perhaps you could use the reminder too? (So, for the sake of my deadline, let’s just all agree that you really, really needed to hear these words today and that the world will be a much better place as a result of this woefully unedited batch o’ prose you now find yourself in the middle of.)

So if you’re still reading, I hereby grant you (meaning: me) permission to fail. You (again, me) may now relinquish your insatiable and, let’s face it, unattainable desire to turn every phrase into brilliance. Trying to write brilliantly is like trying to be funny. It will just sound forced and awkward and make people want to pretend they don’t really know you. The good stuff only comes when you get out of your own way. It’s about voice, baby! And when your throat gets tight, you start to sound warbly and phlegm-filled and on the verge of tears. In short, you lose your voice.

(Don’t believe me? Just ask the Memphis Tigers about trying to hit free throws in the waning minutes of this year’s NCAA finals…that is, if you happen to know a few of them. Otherwise that would be weird for some writer person to approach a very large basketballer and quiz them about freezing up at the line in the most important game of his young life. And you might get punched. Which could make for interesting fodder in your upcoming memoir, but would probably hurt a lot too. Much worse then getting smacked on the butt with a carrot-topped stick.)

Anyway, perfection is unattainable. And brilliance can be a real tyrant. That stuff is in the eyes of the beholder anyhow. So give yourself some grace and just write. Not only will you (again, me) produce better writing, it’ll be way more fun. And fun is good.

(Don’t believe me? Ask that other team that played in this year’s NCAA Finals…)

***

Michael Snyder not only writes, he edits. Mostly himself. But as you can clearly see from ramblings above...not nearly enough!

Comments

[Jeanne Damoff]

50 points for that first sentence. I always wanted a whack-a-simile-with-a-sledgehammer game.

Very entertaining, Mike. I'm not even slightly tempted to pretend I don't know you.

I hope your birthday yesterday was way fun and the inner editor let you have cake instead of carrot on a stick.

Jeanne

[Nathan Knapp]

Mike, the world would be a much less entertaining place without your writing. It might be less loopy, sure, but the hilarity would be sorely missed, my friend. ;)

[Dee Stewart]

Ooh, Mike. Why did you have to throw Memphis in this? :) That game was bananas! Happy Birthday again.

[Nicole]

Yes, Mike, no one can say that you don't have a unique voice, so quit trying to change it. You are who you are to sound a little Yogi Barra-ish. That voice got you into this predicament so if you want to stay there or here or wherever it is you are :), write on in your own voice--like who you are. Get me? :)

[Nicole]

Sorry: Yogi Berra. It always looks right when it's spelled right. Right?

[Madison Richards]

Ha ha ha ha! I guess I should have read your post before answering my email this morning! That is just hilarious...

Anyway, if I may be so bold as to quote Robert Olen Butler's "From Where You Dream" I think there's some good stuff in there about voice and trying too hard...

"This is another important difference between the creation of a fictional work of art and a work of entertainment. The evidence is in the text...But the artist does not know. She doesn't know about the world until she creates the object. For the artist, the writing of a work of art is as much an act of exploration as it is expression, an exploration of images, of moment-to-moment sensual experience. And this exploration comes from the nature of art and the nature of the artistic process as I've been trying to describe it to you..."

I guess my point is that the fine line between creating from our "unconscious", as it were, and editing that creation is, well, a fine one. Sometimes trying too hard really does mess up the voices of our characters. I think that is the crux of the learning of craft - it isn't the nuts and bolts of grammar, simile and metaphor, it's a knowledge of timing - when to leave it as is and when to adjust, as you've said. Learning "how" to reach that place where the writing flows naturally is also about timing. It's like waiting next to a dry creek bed for a stream that is fed by the mountain snows in the spring. You can draw from the stream only when it's flowing.

This 'business' of 'art' is the ultimate challenge for a writer, I think. Because in a business we must force certain aspects of life that are better left to natural flow. But time and men and circumstances require a different set of laws for nature to obey. It is a pickle, for sure.

I don't know much, but this I know: Mike, you're a fantastic writer. You can do this. Don't give up. Lucky for you, it's springtime, and I can hear the water tumbling over the rocks as I type. Drink deep, then edit away!