During a dinner I had with Jay Udall, he said, "Writing poetry is dancing with the dwende," a line that has stuck with me since. Beyond just poetry, any creative act is ultimately based in the idea of reaching out and touching the mythical, of embracing the unknown and unknowable. This blog is about the dance.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Under the Chopping Block
A while back, I announced they were doing line edits over at Edittorrent, and today they did mine. It feels pretty cool to have gotten a once-over by a pro, even if it's just a paragraph. ^_^
It seemed pretty gentle to me. Of course, that's always easy to say when they aren't your words. But she seemed to get your voice, and that was pretty groovy.
I thought her reasoning behind a lot (actually all) of the suggestions was good. What's neat is that with a paragraph of editing, you get a real intense, focused cross section that you can apply to the whole piece. When you're reading an entire piece, you can't get to the sentence-specific details except to say "Take a look at X" without really marking up a manuscript. And there are different times to look at different things.
For instance--if your story isn't going well then you may have to remove entire sections of sentences, so what would be the point of fixing the sentences first? Plot/story/character first, then raise the sentences.
I wish I'd submitted something for them to check. Now I'm curious about how to bring out a voice a little better. This was a cool eye-opener. Did you enjoy it?
3 comments:
It seemed pretty gentle to me. Of course, that's always easy to say when they aren't your words. But she seemed to get your voice, and that was pretty groovy.
I thought her reasoning behind a lot (actually all) of the suggestions was good. What's neat is that with a paragraph of editing, you get a real intense, focused cross section that you can apply to the whole piece. When you're reading an entire piece, you can't get to the sentence-specific details except to say "Take a look at X" without really marking up a manuscript. And there are different times to look at different things.
For instance--if your story isn't going well then you may have to remove entire sections of sentences, so what would be the point of fixing the sentences first? Plot/story/character first, then raise the sentences.
I wish I'd submitted something for them to check. Now I'm curious about how to bring out a voice a little better. This was a cool eye-opener. Did you enjoy it?
It was interesting to have my work so closely scrutinized like that. I didn't feel roughly handled at all ;)
I definitely like the explanations, too.
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