AUTHOR’S GAB, READER TALK.
A LETTER TO YOU, THE READER, SO THAT YOU CAN FINALLY FIGURE OUT WHAT I’M THINKING.
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THIS MONTH: Finishing at Step Three (Editing and Publishing)
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“Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then, when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity…edit one more time!”
—C.K. Webb, Suspense Magazine columnist and co-author of Cruelty To Innocents: The 9-1-1 Abductions & Collecting Innocents
“Measure twice and cut once.”
– English Proverb
“There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.”
-Charles Caleb Colton, eccentric English cleric, writer and collector
Dear Reader,
Once upon a time, I used to stop writing when I was finished revising. There was no sense in looking anything over one more time, letting it sit or having someone else critic my work. Once I had something as I wanted it, I would call it a work of genius and slap that sucker out there so the world could partake in my brilliance.
Then, at 16, I went to Interlochen for writing camp for three weeks, and everything changed. My instructor, a professor from Oregon, wholeheartedly believed in constructive criticism, and she was not afraid to give it. Suddenly, my gorgeous, mad genius pieces of writing were edited, debunked and sent back to the drawing board, begging to be better in some way, shape and/or form.
Naturally, I was crushed, but it ended up being a good learning experience for me. I had to accept the fact that my work would not be perfect after the first revision, and that, in fact, it could be constantly be polished and improved. Furthermore, I had to wince at but be ok with someone pointing out those imperfections, and take them to heart and correct them. And, I had to stop spitting out my writing like blowing bubbles with my watermelon-flavored Bubblicious bubblegum. Instead, I had to carefully consider what I had written, savor it and publish it later (see “Unearth”).
To be truthful, it changed my outlook on my writing. Because of these lessons, to this very day there are pieces in my arsenal I have not published, and I plan to keep it that way. And, I don’t think I’m alone. J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher and the Rye, now considered a classic masterpiece of American literature, even kept certain works of his unpublished to his grave, requesting they not be published until 2060, 50 years after his death.
(p.s. By the way, I have little respect for the impatient cads who leaked three of those stories 47 years too early, as was just reported this week: <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/29/salinger-stories_n_4358088.html>.)
I say all of this because, in an age of insta-publishing online with little editing, the art of “measuring twice and cutting once” is largely being ignored. People are simply publishing and not editing, rather than editing and not publishing. It’s unfortunately becoming a lost art, when it is still a very relevant part of the writing process to this day. You should still edit AND publish, not one or the other. After all, that’s how you polish your work and make it SHINE.
But, once you get past that, “how” becomes the better question, because many times you just don’t have your English or Journalism professor there to tell you to dot your “i’s” and cross your “t’s”. Nope, you have to do it yourself. So, in this month’s Ad Lib, I hope to provide some helpful tips to do just that: edit and publish. As I said in the previous articles in this series (this is the final one), there have already been many articles published on the writing process, so I will focus on things that work for me and, hopefully, they will work for you as well. 🙂
Sincerely, Your Writer,
Jessica A. McLean
- Important Note: This month’s Ad Lib is a continuation of last month’s Ad Lib, a series on the writing process, and is the final installment in this series. Please see September 2013 for Step One, Prewriting, and October 2013 for Step Two, Drafting and Revising. I have not touched on these issues directly before, so I hope that, over the course of the next few months, you will find this series helpful to your writing and reading.
The Rose 