When Killing is Kind
I know we writing teachers/editors can be glib with our aphorisms. “Show, don’t tell,” “Cut those adverbs,” and, perhaps most patronizing, “Kill your darlings.” The last one used to really bother me. If it’s darling to me, it must good right? How dare you tell me that an entire scene, much less chapter, isn’t working. …
You Already Know (What you need to do)
When my clients send off their manuscript to me many of them will then embark on a 4 to 6 week-long process of agonizing. Some of them email me during the process, even though I say up front that I will only give feedback in total. They want to know if I hate it, love it, …
It Happens to the Toughest of Us
“The first draft reveals the art, revision reveals the artist.” Michael Lee No one is immune to the discouragement that comes in the process of scaling the craggy, seemingly impossibly high mountain of revision. Just last night, after two weeks of gleefully gutting my manuscript I hit the sinkhole. The feeling that, even after all this …
Revision Grief Redux: We’re in this Together
My facebook/twitter status this morning: gutted and slaughtered darlings everywhere. It’s carnage over here in novel revision land (said gleefully, like a serial killer!) I try to make clear to my clients and students that I am a writer too. A working writer striving her hardest to get to the same place as they are: published. …
7 Stages of Revision Grief
If you’ve come away with anything this week with the help of our first two writers of the Writers on Revision series, I hope it’s this: writing is rewriting. That is to say, after the first ecstatic gush, the rush of the story and characters flying down onto paper willy-nilly, it’s time to do the …
Recent Comments