Like a Hygienist

There's always blood. Anyone who's had their teeth cleaned by a dental hygienist know this. They get right up in there with tools that must have been designed by a psychopath (or at the very least a sadist). They aren't gentle. And there's always blood. But afterward, your teeth sparkle. There's that smooth feeling as you run the tip your tongue over them. It tells you they're cleaner than they've been in months and it actually feels good.

I feel the same about the approach I'm being forced to take to my latest effort. It's a short story. Shorter than most I write. It's also fantasy, which is something I've not written for a while. I'm writing it for reading out and at the pace I read we're talking about 200 words per minute. So what we're left with is a 1650 word second draft that needs to be at most 1200. So like the hygienist of my nightmares, I must take up my implements and really clean the story.

It's refreshing. Normally when things turn out this short I'm worried. This time I've got permission to hack even more. That feels good.

A Changing Approach

I'd not edited any of my friend's for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I sat down in a free half hour and picked up where I left off, four chapters into a friend's novel. The red pen had a mind of it's own. The balance of red had shifted from circles and comments to straight lines drawn through the things that didn't work for me. The result was a much cleaner looking document and I had to spend less time trying to write really small. I like the fact that I'm happier to make cuts rather than changes too. I wonder if this is because my own style and voice are changing...

Personality vs. Critique

Okay so I'm told (and I whole-heartedly agree) that having your own voice as a writer is critically important. I'm pretty sure I've got mine... or at least I thought I had.

I have to wonder exactly how much critique from others affects the way my work flows. I like to think my prose has a certain rhythm to it. I tend to favour short, sharp sentences, followed by longer, softer turns of phrase. Does that make sense? I don't really care. Anyway. I have to wonder about the way in which that flow changes when you take the advice of other people. When I edit other people's work my opinion is always affected by my own opinion of how a sentence should flow and I always offer critique with that as part of the disclaimer, "Don't take this as writ. It's contaminated by the voice of another writer."

It's a real skill (and one that I'm working hard to develop) to edit another person's work based on the style of the piece as it stands. When it comes to integrating other people's opinions into your work it's a real balancing act. Do you sacrifice that turn of phrase that you think is just perfect, because one (and only one) of your friends thinks it doesn't quite read right. Is it something your other friends didn't pick up on? If you pointed it out to them would they then agree with your detractor (used in the nicest possible way)? Do you want to take that risk?

So yeah. Writing. Editing. Taking criticism. Integrating...

Subjective balancing act or pollution of your voice?

Editing Others

There's no two ways about it. I like editing other people's work far more than I like editing my own. Perhaps it's because their writing style is sufficiently different from mine that I can better see the sentence structure. Maybe it's the fact that I've got no familiarity with the words or the story and the pleasure comes from having greater objectivity. Whatever it is, the fact remains. I not only prefer editing other people's work, I find it easier too.

I also think you can learn a lot from it. Paying attention to the process you go through can help to highlight the order in which you examine the various components. This translates across to editing your own work. When editing a story you've written the process of examining the prose is forced back into your subconscious by your familiarity with your own work. So... The more aware you are of the process, the better you will become at editing your own work and you'll find it easier to detach yourself from even the most personal of your stories.

Having attempted to review/edit around seven short stories and three novel chapters I've realised the following...

• I'm still very much a beginner at this writing lark.
• I find it very difficult to read through an entire story before going back and reviewing it. If I spot something that I want to comment on I prefer to do it then and there. This may disrupt the flow of the story but if I was reading it as a published piece the issue would disrupt it then as well.
• Looking at other people's sentences is a great way to learn to be efficient with your words. You can practice removing those unnecessaries without getting all precious about how it will ruin your magnum opus. When you see how much better someone else's work is without all those extra words you'll be a lot more comfortable removing them from your own.
• The fact you know so little about the story means you don't have all the information (obviously...). This means you've got a much greater awareness of what information you're lacking at any given point in the story. This is especially true when it comes to attaching dialogue to characters.

That's about all I can come up with for now. There were a couple of other ideas floating around in my head but they didn't translate to the typed word. I can only hope they're now ingrained in my subconscious and make me a better writer!

Oh yes. One more thing. You get to see other people's clever turns of phrase and fancy sentence structures... and you can commandeer them and bastardise them for your own purposes! Sad, slightly evil perhaps, but true.