Ta da!
I opened up a document and did some editing/writing. It felt good. I felt confident, and while I was still having difficulty with ‘this is crap’, I saw that as a good thing. Sometimes we writers have to be brutal to our work. The crap has to be cut, often that means entire scenes or chapters. Some go through each scene and ask: is this something that goes toward the plot or is it ‘fluff’? If it does not go toward the plot, out it goes. Today I took the first page from Butch Girls and cut it down to about half. Mostly it was fluff because I used forty words to write what should only take four, you know? When I was done, I actually liked it!
I’m going to print out a bunch of stuff and attack it with a pen. Maybe go sit outside with it and have at it. I plan on going through it in order first, looking at structure. I already know how it ends (it’s a romance, how else does it end??).
I once was a potter. Long story, really, so just take my word for it. Potters take a lump of clay and, viola, they make a pot. In this example, it’s a bowl. While on the wheel, the focus for the most part is the inside of the bowl. The outside is next followed closely by the rim. They take an idea for a bowl and make a bowl. Then they cut it off the wheel and let it sit for a bit, until it is ‘leather hard’. They take the bowl, turn it upside down, and start taking off the excess from the bottom. The part that didn’t get much attention before. Sure, it got a quick trim but nothing else. Now the bottom, or ‘foot’ of the bowl is formed. Lots of clay is shaved off, forming little curly bits. Sometimes the trimming goes further and excess is taken from the rest of the bowl as well, but that is rare.
Now the other stuff begins. Cut a design? Impress an image? or just let the glaze do its magic alone?
We writers do the same thing to our books, poems or short stories. We take that idea out of our head and make it real. Then we start hacking off the excess. It may seem harsh, but when it is done, it will be our finished product. Sometimes we add more to the characters or toss in a new twist to the plot. Sometimes we leave it as it came out, just pretty it up some.
Often, when the bowl comes out of the final firing, potters look at their work and are disappointed. Perhaps that design just didn’t do it as much justice as hoped. Or the glaze pooled at the wrong place. Thing is, what is a flaw to the potter is most often not even noticed by the viewer. What a potter sees as a line where the glaze rolled instead of ran, the purchaser sees texture and authenticity.
Writers need to know when to let the work go and get it out there. What we may think is a flawed plot or a weak character may be seen by the publisher as a good thing. Maybe its the latest trend. Who knows what goes on in their heads??
Another similarity between potters and writers is what is known as ‘cat licking’. Sometimes the best thing to do to a pot on the wheel is to just stop, cut it off, and set it aside. If the potter keeps messing with it, trying to get the clay to do something, the clay will get weakened from the movement and from the absorbed water. Design on a pot is the same way. Sometimes simple is best. That constant touch up here, touch up there, round off this rim just one more time, push out from inside one more time, choke in on the top a little bit… that’s cat licking.
Writers are notorious for cat licking a piece to death. It becomes weaker from the cut and paste of a scene here, a line there, and a phrase here. Soon it feels all disjointed. The sentence that was smooth in scene X but moved to scene IX no longer fits. The first paragraph or page is rewritten umpteen times. The ending is rephrased or changed all together. We cat lick it to death.
Okay, well, I rambled enough.
