Theme of the Day: Imperfection
May. 5th, 2007 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alanajoliThe theme in several recent blogs (and an e-mail from my marvelous editor Shawn Merwin) is that, as writers, we can't expect perfection from our work. While curtailing bad habits is never a bad idea, the main job of the writer is getting the words down on paper to tell the story. Will it have flaws? Certainly. Is the editor going to do their best to make those flaws vanish or suddenly transform? Absolutely.
Is it going to be perfect when it comes out in print? Probably not.user had a great post about this yesterday--accepting the final for what it is and letting go of all of those changes that, were it in a different stage, we'd still choose to make.
One of the struggles for me is that, along with being a writer, I'm also trained as an editor. (Some of my best editorial training actually came from being a writing tutor in college, learning how to get a student to see where a paper or story wanted to go, where the strong points were, and how to bring it all together, without getting them to go on the defense. It was really marvelous practice.) When I'm writing, I have to let the inner editor go, and vice versa--in editing someone else's work, keeping the tone identical to the voice they've created is important, so my own inner writer has to stay in place. Keeping those roles separate is a challenge, because I'm not sure that being good at the one actually makes you better at the other. I actually hope that the skills compliment each other, but I can't remember a time when I wasn't actually inclined toward (if not trained for) both.
Now that I've also become a reviewer, it gets even further complicated, but that may be a topic for another time. :)
So the theme of the day is this: strive for perfection, but be neither surprised nor ashamed when your editor hands you back something with red marks. As an editor once told me: It's good for the story to bleed a little bit before it's finished.
--
A couple of good conversations I recommend following:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melissa_writing has a nice thread about research worth reading. I played devil's advocate over there in a response almost as large as my normal blog post size. I'm hoping someone will respond. :)
sartorias has a few days old (at this point) discussion about meta-fiction vs. fan fiction vs. derivative fiction with comments out the wazoo. Worth reading.
mistborn's last entry in his series on "Ten Bad Elements of Storytelling (We All Use)" is on the device of the Deus Ex Machina, a personal pet peeve of mine. His essay on the subject was quite good. The whole series has actually been worth reading, so if you have some time to back read, check it out.
Is it going to be perfect when it comes out in print? Probably not.
user had a great post about this yesterday--accepting the final for what it is and letting go of all of those changes that, were it in a different stage, we'd still choose to make.One of the struggles for me is that, along with being a writer, I'm also trained as an editor. (Some of my best editorial training actually came from being a writing tutor in college, learning how to get a student to see where a paper or story wanted to go, where the strong points were, and how to bring it all together, without getting them to go on the defense. It was really marvelous practice.) When I'm writing, I have to let the inner editor go, and vice versa--in editing someone else's work, keeping the tone identical to the voice they've created is important, so my own inner writer has to stay in place. Keeping those roles separate is a challenge, because I'm not sure that being good at the one actually makes you better at the other. I actually hope that the skills compliment each other, but I can't remember a time when I wasn't actually inclined toward (if not trained for) both.
Now that I've also become a reviewer, it gets even further complicated, but that may be a topic for another time. :)
So the theme of the day is this: strive for perfection, but be neither surprised nor ashamed when your editor hands you back something with red marks. As an editor once told me: It's good for the story to bleed a little bit before it's finished.
--
A couple of good conversations I recommend following:
melissa_writing has a nice thread about research worth reading. I played devil's advocate over there in a response almost as large as my normal blog post size. I'm hoping someone will respond. :)sartorias has a few days old (at this point) discussion about meta-fiction vs. fan fiction vs. derivative fiction with comments out the wazoo. Worth reading.mistborn's last entry in his series on "Ten Bad Elements of Storytelling (We All Use)" is on the device of the Deus Ex Machina, a personal pet peeve of mine. His essay on the subject was quite good. The whole series has actually been worth reading, so if you have some time to back read, check it out.
