Fry from Futurama
Returning to the words
That have gestated and grown
Will they work
Or reveal my first draft stumbles?
*
Music turned on
To break the itching silence
As I sit down to peruse
And carve out broken bits
*
Fix a sentence here
Delete a word there
Bursts of progress
That feel draining to the mind
*
Not as much to change
As you dreamed and feared
The story is solid
Which chills you to the bone
*
The rule emerges
To scrap most of what you did
You see others swear
That this is how it goes
*
Anxiety takes hold
And you let the red ink fly
Unsure if your editing is true
Or misguided by doubt
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog.
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Thanks for the reblog.
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Thank YOU for the post, Charles 👍😃
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Happy to hear it worked. Wasn’t sure it came out well.
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It worked great 👍😃
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I always cry a little when I have to delete paragraphs I just finished sweating to write. But, it generally makes the story stronger and that’s what counts in the end. 🙂
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I’ve rarely had to remove whole paragraphs. It’s usually a few sentences or moving things around. Still editing can be rather exhausting.
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Sounds all too familiar. Nice job, Charles.
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Thanks 😁
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Thanks for the reblog.
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My pleasure! Thank you for posting.Michael
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Small-scale tweaking (deleting or changing a word, fixing punctuation, moving a sentence, etc.) can be fun. It’s like a final polish to something that’s pretty much perfect. But re-imagining a whole scene, ripping out and replacing whole paragraphs — that is hard. I think it’s because you have to switch from using one side of your brain to the other, analytical to creative.
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Good point. You have to find a balance between the two sides as well. If analytical mind removes all of the creative then you might lose an important piece of the story.
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It’s great that you can articulate your process in such a creative way, Charles.
Do you print your manuscripts by hand or edit on screen?
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I used to print my manuscripts out, but then my printer died. The one I use now is for everyone in the house, so I can’t crank out my 200+ manuscripts without running through an entire ink cartridge.
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