The power of the red pen + Sit & Write #84
Greetings, friends!
This week I'm thinking about revision. I'm not yet in the editing stage of the novel-writing process--far from it, in fact--but after spending the weekend working with a friend on their piece of fiction and doing some homework that involved condensing unruly dialogue, revision has been on my mind. I'm not too proud to admit that there was a time in my life where I was fundamentally opposed to editing my writing. I had developed this theory that if I edited my poems, I would be straying from the pure emotional state I'd channeled to produce them. This was also the period when I thought I could only write in a heightened state of anguish. I was 15 then, so some of this can be chalked up to that, but plenty of people maintain an anti-editing mindset well into adulthood. Ego is a factor, sure, but so is fear. What if revisiting a work makes it worse? What if something irreplaceable gets lost in the process? To that I say, the sooner you can figure out how to work around…