This may seem like a contradiction coming in right on the tail of my post on drafts and my reluctance to "re-do" one. But while I refuse to waste a perfectly good effort by completely starting it over from scratch, I am in fact a big fan of reworking it.
Okay, maybe not a big fan. Editing is hard work. It takes a critical and objective eye which is usually beyond difficult to cultivate in reference to your own writing. But I love the process, just the same. I love the head banging frustration, the tears, the coffee guzzling, cussing and hair pulling. And that's just the round I do by myself. Fun stuff, that.
Sounds a bit like torture doesn't it? So why the affection?
Well, I went to art school. You can look at that two ways. #1 I've been programmed to enjoy a good critical beating :) and #2 I can really get into the so called "process" of creating. And let me tell ya, editing is where the process is at.
Don't get me wrong, writing that draft is art. But it's art in the pure, oozing form. At least for me it is. I liken it to mixing the paint, spinning the yarn, kneading the clay... pick a metaphor. But the editing stage, is really where you get to dig your hands in and get messy. It's the crafting stage, the tactile part. The part where I usually splatter black oil paint all over the ceiling. When I fully dive into editing/revising/reworking it feels a great deal to me like I'm weaving again. It feels like I've rolled up my sleeves and gotten my hands dirty.
I was a very messy artist.
I also do a little of the head banging and hair pulling when I paint.
Interesting.
Thankfully, rather than making things messier (which is good in painting, really) editing "process" tends to clean things up a bit. It's still a very visceral, engaged dancing with your creation, and I suspect that it fills that need for me now that I rarely pick up a paint brush. At least now the ceiling is safe. So far. I have yet to fling any plot up there...and the stains are so much easier to get out.
~ Frances
award-winning animal stories