Editing. Such a lovely pastime…..not. I know I’ve written about this before. A lot of the times there are gaps in my posting, whether blog, poem or story, it’s because I’m not sure I’ve written about the subject before and I don’t necessarily want to repeat myself. This particular subject, probably because I’m in the middle of editing right now, has been bugging me to write about so here I am. Early Sunday morning when I should still be sleeping, with my first cup of coffee, definitely not my last, talking about editing.
So where was I. Oh yes, this lovely pastime we as writers struggle through for some unknown insane reason. 😛
At the moment, I’m on my second proof of Fated to Be from the Destiny series. Like my series Obsession, Destiny has been rewritten many times over the years. Each version changing and evolving. But not so much as this last time. This time I realized what was missing and decided to add it to the story, a supernatural element, and wallah! It started to make sense to me. Unfortunate, it also added characters and changed a lot of what I had already written. The hardest part for me is what of the already written pages still work and what doesn’t. This dilemma has slowed down the writing process, a lot.
Now I don’t know about you, but there are some passages that when I first wrote them I really like them and I don’t necessarily want to lose them. So I spend hours, sometimes days, trying to make them work until suddenly I decided it has to go. To me, this is like cutting off my right arm. These words are my baby come to life on paper. Some passages that are large enough that I cut and paste them onto another document that I label “excerpts” of whatever book I’m working on. This is an attempt to save their life, telling myself that maybe I’ll use them at some later date when I know that will probably never happen. It doesn’t mean what I come up with isn’t just as good and probably fits much better in the story as it is now. It’s just hard to let go of something that has been written down for a very, very long time. (Yes, I’m old enough to use ‘very’ twice when added to the word ‘time’. :P)
Hopefully, when I open the proof today, I am still in that mindset that if it doesn’t work, stop trying to make it fit and let it go. As I writer I want you to enjoy the book. Have it flow like it does in my head and feel what I feel. Not get mired down in the convoluted mess trying to use something that no longer works can create.
So on that note, I bid you have a lovely, and if you live in Washington, hopefully not to wet Sunday and I will see you all later. 🙂
Copyright 2016 Heidi Barnes
