They tell you to never look back. It just stifles the present. In writing, it makes one think of the negative points of one’s writing. I wish I had done it better one moans. However, I do not mind looking back at what I have written in the past if just for the curiosity of rediscovering how my older work sounded.
The headline, the opening paragraph, and the photos, all come together to set the tone for the article. The editors did this extremely well, although I wasn’t expecting it, nor did I intend it. But it did serve the readership and I am pleased how the article turned out. The whole article reflected one basic idea that was introduced in the headline, the photos, and the opening paragraph which would make the reader identify with one main idea. What a writer thinks should be emphasized isn’t always going to be fitting or appropriate for the readership so the editors can construct a frame for the article which fits. I am quite happy with this, although I intended another emphasis, but can still along with how it was done.
Do small touches make the difference to an article? Like a slight tweak, a slight delete, a shortening, a change of word? Emphatically, yes! But it depends. Sometimes, it wouldn’t matter, but other times, it may sort out the clutter and expression, say, into something more readable, exciting, or colorful.
An editor of mine, a while ago, had the good sense to ‘broaden’ or ‘widen’ my paragraphs. In my submitted piece, I sometimes stopped a paragraph quite short, but the editor widened the paragraph out, to add to that paragraph the next one after it, so it became one paragraph. In the end, it worked.
It’s nice to have read through an article I got published and find the editor did nothing significant at all–in terms of editing it. It just didn’t need a polish this time round. This is a compliment from the editor to the writer. “We like your work so much that we don’t want to touch it–so will publish it as it is.”
This week I’ve been turning paragraphs around in terms of their arrangement within the paragraph. But what about swapping two paragraphs around, so that the bottom paragraph goes at the top and the top paragraph goes to the bottom. As there are only two paragraphs in this piece this wasn’t a case of plowing through many paragraphs to see if swapping top to bottom wouldn’t make cohesive sense. Even so I risked the possibility of losing the sense of this two paragraph piece. But it sounded better when I swapped them.
Looking back, a really old review of mine was given major editorial treatment, in other words it was in need of cosmetics. It was given a face lift. I provided the content, that went untouched. Thank you, editor.
Editors are there to present your work, but I wasn’t expecting life lessons as well. However, I’ve finally grasped what they were on about. And it’s all true. There were two lessons, both points resonating now.
Eagerness to submit and get published may prevent one from getting the piece right first. A fault of mine in submitting, which may still slip me up from time to time, is submitting before the piece is ripe.
I’ve learnt something from this which I would like to tell others about. That the best time to submit is not immediately after you’ve edited something.
Once this week I thought: I’m still ruthlessly deciding on what devotional ideas to use or not to use. If any are worth writing up formally, so I can relax by writing less.
But the material’s mostly gone –been rubbished, binned and formally incinerated. Remnants, though, survive. Even those I thought I could recycle in another form are mostly gone. But as I say, some survived the burning process. And one has an eye on better devotions for the future.
Writers on their own, with a book in hand, may need an agent or representative, because agents are closer to the publishers. Agents are also good because they save the writer having to concentrate on marketing work as well as writing it.
One can go it alone in the grand scheme of choices a writer has in getting their work published. Send an email. Try and meet the publisher, even if out of town. This is the hard work of marketing one’s work alone. Some go out to the workforce and work as a writer, full-time. They are in the job as it was.
The opposite of the problem of writers block is too much writing. There are lots of ideas and written passages on my notebook and computer and I think I am under an obligation to use them all, which feels oppressive. Then comes liberating the notebook/s, by eliminating useless ideas. But, who knows, in years to come, they be viewed better. So, it’s probably a good idea to keep them and not worry about the clutter for a while.
On last count, a few minutes ago, one-third of my shelved devotions that I have looked at again have been recoverable. The key to recovering them is to focus them on one point. It eliminates waffle.
I wrote just over a dozen devotions recently, but only two I decided to submit, the salient ones. I realized that the rest were flawed in some way. So, I have refiled them in another kind of folder. Perhaps 10 percent of what writers write is really suitable for publication. Wouldn’t it be great of all of it was suitable for publication?
My first draft looked at a little tatty, what’s new? I was going to flag it. Never to submit the piece. So, I said to myself, leave that genre of writing alone. A day leaving it alone did wonders. Then, I thought, try harder. And I think the piece looks better than before. In a few days, I can send it. A key to not surrendering, a key to not chucking in a piece, is to try harder, when one can’t be bothered. That’s in my experience.
Budding screenwriters take note.
Writing is a catch-22, but I’m not talking ’bout the film or novel on which a film is based. Catch-22 is a novel and a film, but let me use that title’s meaning for the purposes of this post. Saying catch-22 is synonymous with making a choice between two equal values and one or the other won’t really do considering that you’re in a predicament between the two. So, writing is a catch-22 in that sense or something like it. I mean that one may write a piece. The writer thinks he should revise it out of the normal process, and also thinks it’s probably good as it is and doesn’t need revising. What does the writer do? This is my predicament at the moment. I would say to myself, just wait. Let the piece smolder under the surface for a while until it’s ready to resurface and face the writer once again. Then, all becomes clear.
Talking Writing 