Week 61 – cut out or keep?

Editing.

Say it out loud and if it makes you shiver with dread, you’re like me.

I’ve said before that I find editing a struggle, but I have to do it.  Unfortunately, working across multiple pieces, some of which are a year or more old, I have found all sorts of issues.  Some are simple typos, and some are more extreme. Factual errors, consistency errors, or worse: stories that aren’t telling the tale I want to tell at all.

My problem this week has been deciding what to scrap and what to save, or what to salvage from the messy sections that have no intrinsic value to the story.

I am not frightened of cutting large sections if necessary; I have done so before with success.  It’s working with what’s left behind that is off-putting.  Large scale revisions often lead to completely new stories; ones that are only tenuously linked to your original idea.  That’s fine if you have no guidelines or themes to write within, but a pain for some submissions.

Editing a few sections, words or phrases here and there to get back on track is generally harder for me, though.  Every word has to be weighed and synonyms investigated, sentence structures examined and punctuation reconsidered. Sometimes it’s a bit like a crossword, trying fit everything into the structure and plot without leaving gaps or getting things in the wrong places.

So from now on I will try to be strict – I’ll learn my lessons from this week’s disjointed editing approach and be systematic.  To cut out, or not to cut out, will be the question.

After all, it’s for the good of the story!

In other news – I’d like to say thank you to the lovely Lee A Jackson for nominating me for a daisy award. I honestly can’t say enough how much the support I get means – not just the awards, but followers, anyone who clicks on the ‘like’ button and those of you who comment. Anyone, in short, who is generous enough to give me a little of their time. So big cheers all round, and I’ll visit all the blogs I haven’t had a chance to look at as soon as I can. 🙂

Also this week – I read this article, about the number of books shortlisted for the Booker prize that are published by independent presses. I thought this was interesting as it is a long-discussed subject that mainstream publishers are taking less and less risks. Maybe this is a positive step for writers of less easily categorised books – we can but hope!

And finally, my project update for the day – well, another day has passed without great progress but I have been working through some characterisation issues in ‘The Story of One’, doing some more space research and am off to do some more work on those draft poems…  Oh, and I bought three magazines which accept short story submissions so have started looking at the content they are currently accepting.

I feel OK still but am not enjoying the countdown clock any more!

Happy writing

EJ

🙂