While I’ve recently had more time on my hands, staying at home and practicing social distancing during this pandemic, I decided to tackle our spring pruning. With my brain relaxed and hands engaged with this down to earth task, I couldn’t help thinking about the similarities between editing and pruning trees.
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I like history; I like to understand why the world is as it is. I like to make sense of things. I like to learn. I like to read. These times feel unprecedented and I’ve found myself caught up in the 24 hour news cycle. Before the internet and social media, I always read the letters to the editor, hoping it would shine a light on what my fellow Canadians were really thinking. Now this has exploded with facebook and twitter, where I can read what hordes of people think. Some of it scares me and some of it brings me comfort, but all of it is way too much distraction. I have to limit myself.
I’ve worked from home for a long time, so this new paradigm of social-isolating is not so strange to me. Saying that, I had a busy life with skating lessons, hockey, choir, writers group, book group—which are all things that feed my soul and exercise my body. In other words, necessary.
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Interview with Self:
Me: What are you afraid of?
Myself: I’m afraid of being a bad writer.
Me: But people have complimented you on your writing; it can’t be all bad?
Myself: Yes, but that’s after many edits.
Me: But writing is editing.
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It seems some days, I will never learn from my mistakes.
You would think, from the number of examples I can remember, of my utterly dismal performance, that I would improve, get better, and learn how to re-read my work before submitting.
However, recent events would suggest otherwise. Read more
Having just celebrated a birthday, it’s hard not to forget I’m getting older—maybe even, “over the hill”. And I’m doing okay with that. I have no urge to be young again even though I have great memories. While I don’t need to keep up with the latest trends in fashion, I do need to keep up with writing trends. I don’t want my writing to seem out-dated. If age gives us one thing, surely it’s a bit of life wisdom we might impart on our fellow humans, or at least an interesting perspective. Read more
I imagine there are some writers out there who write their first novel effortlessly, a couple edits and they’re done. These people would be known as “naturals”. I am not a natural. I’ve only met one natural who was such a great storyteller I could easily see why novels just flowed out. But for most of us, the first novel is a great experiment, or learning experience. And many writers throw their first novels in the garbage. Read more
As a newbie to writing, and related editing and publishing processes, I recently experienced an eye-opening, roller coaster ride of a learning curve as the Ascribe writers prepared a collection of short stories with plans to publish.
It was an ambitious project. Several group members served as editors, for each other and for the rest of us, in order to ensure our work was the best it could be. Each story was reviewed by four editors. In our scramble to meet deadlines, we created quite the log-jam at the end, making for extremely short turn-around times for writing changes and submitting stories to the next editor. Read more
Yes! I am no longer a virgin!
I will have to say, Saturday was one of the scariest moments of my life. Entering a room full of about sixty people, armed with six copies of 10 pages of my own original writing, about to hand it over for semi-strangers to read and give their analyzed comments and criticism to me. They don’t just write down their comments on your manuscript – NO – these cringeworthy words are said OUT LOUD for ALL to hear. Okay, not everyone in the room is listening, thank goodness, just the six people at my table and any eavesdroppers who were lurking (yes, I was even worried about eavesdroppers).
So, what’s the big deal? They read it, they comment on it and you go home, right? WRONG. Read more