My Lovely World of Editing

A first draft is simple, easy. A first draft is when the story leaps out of your mind and onto the page, stepping clumsily and leaving muddy footprints in the hallways, running into walls, falling through railings, that kind of thing. When it is finished, I usually allow myself maybe 30 seconds to ooh and aah at the saved document, I get it printed out and flip through the ream of papers full of my words that hold my story and my characters and my world. Okay, so after the printing it's more like 60 seconds, especially seeing as how I have to do that printing at Kinko's because my printer is lacking in oomph, so I'd darn well better get some pleasure out of blowing twenty bucks.

But once that minute and a half of "Holy cow, it all survived the journey from my head to the paper!!!" it is on to-- cue the ominous music-- editing. I start to see just how much of the story really and truly survived the journey. I have to choreograph its steps, clean up its muddy footprints, scrub down the walls, repair the railings. I have to check the technical stuff-- the story consistencies, the grammar, I have to have my editor cross out half of my commas (I was writing before anyone ever taught me punctuation; all I knew was that, when reading out loud, you make your voice pause at a comma. So if I pause in my head while I'm writing, doesn't it make sense to stick a comma in there? Don't look at me like that, you know that it's only logical!). I have to tear it all apart to make absolutely certain that it is all put together correctly. I have to make sure that it isn't stupid.

Editing is an extremely complex process! Which is why Speechless, my poor ink-and-paper-child, is being edited-- oh, about a third or fourth time now. Dang it, Jeff, can't you just grow up and be a man already? And Alishia, speak up! I can't hear you over Jackie! Not to mention that Speechless is about a reform in American Public High Schools, so there's a bunch of politics and technical stuff that has to be explained without distracting from the story. And I still hate commas.

So, chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence, Speechless is being dismantled once again. Oh well, it's a nice excuse to avoid actually starting the Cinderella story, the Castle story, the Artist story, or the Redneck-girl-moved-away-from-the-farm-and-getting-looked-at-funny-by-the-kids-at-school story that have been running through my head and stealing my consciousness in everything I do. I'll have to pick one to start on eventually, but for now I shall simply edit Speechless.