How books are like babies
I enjoy critiquing and editing other people’s work. It’s a time when I can step out of my own box and into someone else’s box. I put on their hat and adopt their voice temporarily because it’s not about me, it’s about them — yet, I use all of me to do it. It’s a true collaboration.
I also enjoy self-editing at this point in my writing life. I like writing something, putting it aside for a day or a week or sometimes longer, and coming back to it with fresh eyes and ideas. Usually it’s only after this process takes place that I let it out of the bag for my own critique partners or a handful of Beta readers.
It’s like when my son was born and I didn’t want him passed around at his Bris from person to person to person. He was my baby, dammit. You can have him when I’m good and ready. And maybe it was like when his sister was born. My son was 3 1/2, and sitting in a big pleather hospital room armchair he was holding his sister on a pillow, on his lap, with their dad’s hands close by, when his grandmother said, “Can I see your sister?”
He said, “She’s my baby. You can look at her but dooooooooon’t touch her.”
We all feel very proprietary of our writing, be it blogs or essays or stories or books. They’re the babies we created out of our own imagination. So it goes to reason that when someone gives you feedback on it, it can be a little tenuous. I always remind people that critique is subjective. It’s my 2 cents. Take what you want and leave the rest. It’s kind how I feel about every kind of advice.
I also recommend something that I do myself. If there are bits and pieces that I feel can come out of a story or a chapter, I say cut and paste and save it for later. If it’s full of good ideas, or a especially lovely phrase or just plain fun to read, it might fit well somewhere else. It’s also less disheartening at first to know you can hang onto your baby — your writing.
I have a file of deleted paragraphs. Even chapters. I’m not saying save the parts strewn with that’s and what’s and thought’s and I’s and your repeatable word of choice. I’m saying that if you take care of your work — it will in turn — at a later time — take care of you. Chance are some of what you’ve written will work sometime somewhere, even if it’s just to spark another story or best of all — remind you how much you’ve grown.
What a great post. You and Erica certainly have me thinking this morning. I’m waiting on critiques from several readers right now and while it was nerve-wracking to send my baby to them, now I’m excited to hear what they have to say. I know my work’s not perfect and I need other’s opinions – I’m excited to see how they think I can improve it!
I keep all my deleted “babies,” too. I can’t bear to kill them–I’d rather banish them to Word purgatory.
great idea to save “cut” paragraphs. I can be ruthless, cutting yards of my own work, but never thought to save what I cut. wow.
Bingo on the feelings about editing (others and self). The great fodder file is awesome for poetry too. Have a good ‘un.
Great point of view!
Yep, an editor has to be heartless and a writer has to be bloodless or no one gets paid.
The only time I’ve had passionate feelings about editing is when I discovered an excerpt of mine posted on a loop by my pub. It was RIDDLED with extra commas.
I was horrified. I was so embarrassed I had written so badly. I was practically in tears. I went to my file, and discovered I had not put in those commas, which changed my meaning. My one pub edits with no Stet opportunity.
So I had to say, please don’t do that anymore.
Other than that, seriously, I just don’t care. I’m usually just grateful someone catches something and I won’t embarrass myself or let down a reader. If it’s a matter of a reader’s taste, I respect their feelings, and that doesn’t bother me.
But when I let down a reader, when I know it’s my fault and my carelessness or whatever… that hurts. That I take to heart. That I will beat myself up for.
I carry ten years of “sent” e-mail on my flash drive. Yes, it’s true: I can’t bring myself to part even with my written correspondence. Talk about babies! Sometimes I remember something I wrote and I spend hours frantically searching for it–like a mom combing the neighborhood for her wayward toddler. I know, I know: It’s downright creepy. Pathologically narcissistic, even.
How ’bout this one: Do you keep defunct blogs online after you kill them? I just killed my main blog, a PR4, earlier this month, and I intend to leave it public so long as I retain my hosting account. I haven’t posted to my previous blog in over a year, but I can’t bring myself to take it down, either.
Here’s another: I still have almost every paper I wrote in college, and I dropped out of grad school in 1979! I really wrote badly then, I know now, but I still enjoy reading that old stuff periodically.
The contents of your “deleted paragraphs” folder does ring a bell with me. I have dozens of such folders. Some are even full of plain text files of stuff I composed using WordPerfect 5.1 in the early nineties. I can’t seem to discard any of it.
I’m a literary pack rat.
I enjoyed reading your post, young lady.
Best regards,
DAVE