One of the most influential people in my career was definitely my high school English teacher, Mrs. Taylor. She's one the of the people that drove me to study literature. She also taught me some of the most important lessons about being a writer. With every book we studied in class, Mrs. Taylor belabored how much care and craftsmanship had gone into each work. Back then, I thought of writing as coming up with a single good idea and packing enough filler around it to make a book. I remember sitting in class and thinking to myself, "Could an author really put this much thought into every aspect of their book? Is it true that they craft every sentence to fit perfectly in the larger dialogue?"
Having edited writing for myself and others, I would have to say that the answer is: it's as true as the author wants it to be. In an earlier blog post I mentioned the importance of setting a schedule and sticking to it, no matter the quality. Once you've got the story written it comes time to edit it, and that's when the true craftsmanship shows itself. At that point you've found one way to tell a story. The thing about language though is that there are limitless numbers of ways to tell the same story, and each way conveys a slightly different meaning. As a storyteller it's not just your responsibility to tell the story, it's your responsibility to decide how the story is told. Here's what that looks like for me:
Once I had finished Much Love and set myself to the task of editing it, I reread every sentence. On the rare occasions that I liked what I said, I left it alone. If I thought it needed retooling I highlighted it in green, and wrote an alternate version in yellow. If that still didn't sound right, I wrote yet another version in blue. If the sentence just didn't belong at all I highlighted it in red to delete later. I would do this for four or five emails, then set my computer aside and go to bed. In a couple days I would come back and read every different version of my emails and decide which I liked best. Sometimes my first draft won out, sometimes my second or third. Sometimes it was a mix of a few. Sometimes I thought I had finalized an email only to discover it didn't fit well with the final drafts of later emails, and I needed to start the whole process over. No matter the outcome though, you can see from my screenshot that hardly a single sentence escaped scrutiny.
As anyone who's done this will tell you, this is not an easy task. It's hard enough making it through a book the first time. It takes diligence and resolve to make it through a second, or a third, or a fourth time... however many times you need to get it right. It takes something more too. When you've finally finished your book, and you're staring down tens of thousands of words that make up 'one way to tell a story,' you may hear a nagging voice in the back of your head. It may sound like the voice of relief as you've finally accomplished something you were never sure you could do in the first place. However, it may also be the voice of doubt. It might be telling you that what you've created so far is the best that you can do. Being an editor means silencing that voice. It means acknowledging your shortcomings and pushing past them. Writing, like any craft, requires practice and work and experimentation to improve. Once you've got your rough draft finished you can begin to play with every aspect of it, to tweak all the phrases, and to discover how the story is really meant to be told. As I said before though, this will only happen as much as you let it happen. So that's my takeaway for this blog post: be fearless when you edit, and marvel at what wonders you may create.