I have to say it's rather nice writing this blog from time to time. I don't edit much here at all, whereas I edit a LOT when I write my manuscripts. Sometimes I don't edit the blog at all, it's all just off the top of my head, spontaneous. There's something very freeing about that. I don't have to answer to a publisher or an agent here. In fact, I don't have to answer to anyone except my own conscience, and as for pure and simple readers--well, you're welcome to read here, but you're not paying for it, so I get to please myself as I write this blog. :-) I figure that's what most people are doing when they're writing their web logs anyway. My books I write partly to please myself, but very much to please my readers. Here, I write as I please.
That said, there's something satisfying about editing. Once the story's down on paper in raw form, editing shapes it. It's almost a sensual thing, molding a paragraph here, tweaking a sentence there, pulling off pieces that don't quite fit, and adding others that make it more rounded, defining the form. I tend to spend much to much time on it, tell you the truth. I'll even edit while I write, which is probably not a good thing. Best to get it all down first, or so I'm told.
And yet...editing as I write is even more satisfying.
For me, writing's an organic process, one that grows from the first sentence, to the first paragraph, to the first scene and onwards. Everything else that comes after that first sentence sprouts from it, grows from it. I suppose I sort of think of it as training a bush or tree to become a bonsai, or maybe in the art of espalier.
Now, I haven't ever espaliered a rose bush or any other kind of plant, nor have I ever tried to do bonsai. But I can't help thinking that it's best if you espalier or bonsai according to the natural tendency of the plant. Let's say the small tree develops a left-leaning knob in it; it just doesn't seem right to me to force that puppy to the right as soon as it moves that way. What does seem right is to let it lean left, and when it starts to go straight or curve again, gently train it to the right--if that's what you want to do. Maybe that left lean looks be more interesting--why not go with what's developing naturally? It may well be a better development than what you had originally planned....
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Dagnabit!!! I just finished writing some nifty paragraphs--lots of paragraphs--about how I discover my characters as I wrote about them, lovely luscious paragraphs, exciting paragraphs that related that discovery to mountain road racing, and then to my horror suddenly there was nothing in this frame but blankness!!! Utter, utter blankness!!!! Argh!!!! I HATE THAT! It broke my flow of writing!!!!! I was in the ZONE!!!! THE DOGGONE WRITING ZONE!!!! I cherish the Writing Zone! I live for the Zone!
I managed to recover this post up to the word "planned." and that's it. (Stomping feet in big-time tantrum.)
Well. Talk about unplanned happenings. This one not particularly a better development either, in fact it sucks the big moose is what I'm saying. Now I know what it's like to be one of my characters when I put a nasty obstacle in his or her path. Not that I'm going to stop with the obstacles. Oh, no. My temper's up now. This means more obstacles than ever.
Still, I'm a working writer. What a working writer does is pick herself up, dust herself off, and get her butt back in the chair and write.
I'm not going to try to recreate the doggone paragraphs. Dammit. I'm going off in a huff to write my novel and take out my temper on some characters, that's what.
Merciless, that's me. Nasty, mean writer. Going to put my characters through hell now. Better yet, put a villain through a dreadful death.
Mwaahahahahahaha.
--Karen H.
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