Writers revise. Editors edit.
–Author, editor and journalist, Rhonda Crowder
Good novels must undergo both processes. As to who carries them out on a work of fiction is a matter of subtle and often unconscious debate.
Author, editor and journalist, Rhonda Crowder whom I recently interviewed on my weekly blog talk radio show, Book Talk Creativity and Family Matters, made it exquisitely clear the work of the author such that an editor is in the best place for accomplishing what she or he does best.
Edit means to prepare a text for publication, thus implying it occurs in one of the latter stages of the process of launching a book or written text into the world. Editing also includes the cursory process of deciding whether a work is worthy of being made public. Lastly to edit is to cut unnecessary material.
Revise is to rethinking and altering text such as to provide a clearer and more succinct version of a written text, what we call an updated version of the text in question. To revise is to also review.
Pablo Picasso stated, “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”
The ability with which editors can accomplish her or his task with greatest quality is rooted in what the writer has or has not achieved in writing and revising her or his text.
To cut away what is not needed, naturally assumes a sizeable amount of text with which to work.
There can be no revision and editing without a first draft that even when rendered in the most perfected quality a writer can offer, is still rough and needs work.
Too often writers and would-be writers set out to write a novel the way we drive unfortunately, for others and ourselves. Our thoughts lay on the destination and not on the experience of driving to the place we are headed.
And then there are those of us who seek to intoxicate ourselves in an effort to loosen the brain’s knots, again our effort at rendering process of creativity as pain-free as possible, while seeking to drive it at light speed.
America is a young country. Our ability to let go and observe is at best in its nascent form of development.
Recent slumps in the economic markets around the world have caused all of us to take a pause, if for no other reason than we have no money, often meaning and leaving us with no other choice than to strike out penniless. Alas, that will get you nowhere in America.
That is unless one adopts the perspective that with emptiness comes the possibility, the opportunity to re-create, re-shape, perhaps even re-define and re-divine the nature of our existence, what holds meaning for us and what we do, moreover, how we do what we do that gives our life meaning.
Perhaps writing has become so painful for many of us because we are not only trying to hard to become stars and celebrities in less time than it took Rome to fall, but also our view of success if warped at best. At worst we have no conception of what it means to adopt the writing life as a means of not only making ends meet, but making the means that leads to the ends that we pray will fuse into this thing call a life well-lived.
The best thing that many of us would-be writers can do, for our own salvation and that of our characters and stories is to slow down, observe and savor the moment. Then and only then will we have the opportunity to hear life at is fullest and grow full of something to write that is also worthy of readers and their time.
How fast are you traveling?
How would you rate your driving skills?
Does some part of you long to slow down, to adopt a slower pace at greeting life?