The Story Behind the Story: part 5. EDIT/REWRITE. AKA: Murder!

 

Kill your darlings.

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Editing: writer's bane and blessing.

It's easy to fall in love with my words...after all, I dreamed the dream and then crafted the tale. They're my words, used to make the dream visible to others...I'd better love 'em!

Problem: more ain't always better..."But, let me make myself perfectly clear by adding that there are times when a judicious word here or there actually renders greater clarity..."

Hah! The author's patron saint needs to should be  is Les Izmore. The favorite surgical instrument the scalpel, not the suture and needle.

William Faulkner is credited with the quote, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings."

By that, he not only means characters whom you love but whose utility to the story line has long ago ended, but also those lovely turns of phrase that flow trippingly off the tongue, blessing the reader with alliterative or allusive attribution that demonstrate your wit, style, humor, and prowess with the pen. Ahem, keyboard.

[An even better ppgh: By that he means, get rid of no-longer-useful characters as well as extra words or pretty phrases. Ruthlessly.]

Now, I dearly wish Mr. Faulkner had taken his own advice--recently, I tried rereading something of his him...I so wanted yearned to take out the blue pen and strike out ten or twenty or forty percent of the verbiage. Felt like I was wading waist-deep. In molasses.

Not that every writer can or should be Hemingway: "Nick entered the woods. The day was warm. It was good."

That said--may Hemingway's spirit live on. Faulkner deserves highest grades for creativity, local color, and characters...but his editing? far from such a high grade.

In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, write (paint, sculpt, sing, invent, create) a lot. Days or weeks later, delete all the crap and fluff. If you have anything left at all--huzzah!

Ah, good point. The critical part of our mind needs time to sift, filter, and assess. Going into editorial mode too quickly, we're more likely to mount a defensive action: "Nah, that's a good phrase, it builds the tension...not bad. I like it."

A week or two later, one might be able to say, "Wordy. Prune it a bit and rewrite. No--actually, just lop it right off."

Sorta like pruning a vine or fruit tree--if in doubt, cut it out.

In sum:
--creative, brilliant, insightful writing is half the battle;
--decisive, cold, and bold editing...that's the other, winning half of the battle!

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- ===== -- -- -- -- -- -- --

All that glitters is not gold.

(Wm. Shkspr. The Merchant of Venice.)



 

I Imagine, therefore, something is!

PHANTASY

"Remarkably, in the ancient traditions, the imagination or "phantasy" was considered a sense. In that psychology, in the detailed summary of Robert Burton's 1620 Anatomy of Melancholy, in addition to the outward senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch,
we have three inward senses: the Common Sense, Memory, and Phantasy. Burton stated:

Phantasy, or imagination...is an inward sense which doth more fully examine the species perceived by common sense, of things present or absent, and keeps them longer, recalling them to mind again, or making new of his own.

This old idea of imagination as a sense that produces "monstrous and prodigious things by recombining and re-forming the more orderly perceptions of memory and the other senses. As in dreams, the ingredients are familiar but the new reality is not."

--from: Robert Pinsky's SINGING SCHOOL: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters. 2013. pg 148.

. . . . . . .

I like "monstruous and prodigious things" --guess that's why I write fiction and poetry and am a Stephen King fan...and a Dean Koontz fan...and CSLewis and Tolkien and Asimov and...you get the drift.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I traveled far and wide today

   I did not take a cab

I took neither bus nor car

   nor trip on substance from a lab.

I rode in comfort, but not by train,

   nor boat nor aeroplane.

Departure...arrival--by seconds parted:

   Yes, I got there, as soon as I started.

No luggage, no seatbelt,

   and no need for "security,"

I arrived by conveyance

   of eld, not futurity.

Yes, book in my lap

   and others beside

I tip my cap

   to my magical ride.

--DLS 11/9/13



It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

What did you see today?

I saw people paying rapt attention in church.

I saw people leave a wonderful concert at intermission--and not return.

I saw the sun reach its arms up over the mountainous horizon, steady itself, then throw itself into the morning sky, showering the land with pure, malleable gold!

Old H. D. Thoreau's quote makes me think of Simon and Garf..."people hearing w/o listening...writing songs that voices never share..."

I saw a friend, grinning at me like one or both of us was a pure nut-case...likely true--both!

----

Now for a serious thought--we often look and do not see,

but we still have hope that those who have honed the sharp edges of their eye/mind/heart/soul

will look and hear and see and listen,

and then convert that into....

 

poetry

prose

sculpture

visual imagery

etc.

 

 

World Series, World of Ideas.

From Cabot Wealth Advisory (free, here. I like the price and the info!)
     --------- ---------- --------- --------- ---------- --------- --------- ---------- ---------
Winning in Baseball … and the Markets I don’t know if the rest of the country is as interested in the World Series as the citizens of Red Sox Nation are, but with the Series on, I had an idea about how to explain growth investing.

Hall of Fame baseball manager Earl Weaver of the Baltimore Orioles used to say, “You win games with good pitching and three-run home runs.” And I think that’s a pretty good analogy for the way you win at growth stock investing, too.

In growth stock investing, good pitching means keeping the other side from scoring runs, which is another way of saying that you keep losses small.

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(and, David adds: likewise, in the world of ideas...I think you have lots of 'em and kill off the losers sooner and keep plugging with the winners. Ya never know which little one may make it, Ortiz-like, outa tha pahk! )

(Hit any outa the park lately? I'd love to hear about it...comment below or leave me a message on FB.)


 

The Story Behind the Story: part 4--the PROCESS.

CONVERSATIONS INSIDE A WRITER'S HEAD

...or...

    okay, you guessed it, the voices are at it again.

=-=-=-=-=

"Think, dream, wonder, ask..."
             Oops, stop right now and put fingers to the keyboard.

"But, I'm having some great ideas!"
             No idea is great unless it's given form and boundary.

"Some ideas are without boundaries."
             Great. Write 'em down anyhow. Anyway...but not any-when!

"But, that interferes with my creative process."
             Can't call it creative if it don't create nothin'!

"But--"
            Bum-glue. Stick yer bum in the chair, yer fingers to the keyboard, and go!

"But, I need to consult my muses for inspiration."
            We are your muse, and your muse is telling you to consult your fingers--they're 
            the only way us muses gain a voice. Right?

"Well, when you put it that way..."
            'That way,' nothing. The only way to be fair to your muses is to get us out
            where others can listen and see and wonder and judge for themselves.

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Hmmph. So, when do I get to listen to my muses?

Every day. Read, walk, drive, meditate, listen to music, ponder great (or not-so-great) art and literature; watch people and birds and animals and trees and plants. Reading good poetry widens my thinking and my appreciation for many of the little daily goodnesses all around us. The "creative process" captures all those thoughts and observations and endeavors to give them focus or meaning or balance or story.

Or poem.

Or song.

Or...

Hmmph. Okay...go away. I'm writing. And leave the door closed behind you, thnx.