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
Legends of Windemere 
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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