I am reading "Getting the Words Right: 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing" by Theodore A. Rees Cheney. Writer's Digest Books: 2005 that I bought from Powell's the other day. I spent some time at the store to make sure it would be a book I really could use. It is proving to be just that.
In the first chapter, it goes after a habit that I have and one that many writers have and that is including extra words, paragraphs, chapters, whatever. I will look at a chapter or a sentence and love the way it sounds or looks and hate to push the delete key. Not too long ago, I would not hit it at all. Now, I am getting better at it. One writer, Carolyn See, says it is "killing your children". Oh, I can tell you from experience it is exactly that.
Someone asked a friend of mine who is a published writer how he knew how he knew what to put in and what to take out. "Feelings will tell me every time. Make no mistake. When I write some incredibly beautiful prose but it makes me uneasy then I know it is something that needs to be removed. " Another writer who writes some of the best prose in the business removes more than she writes and she just puts it in a special file she keeps on her word processor so she can do it without tearing her nightgown (she writes in her bed clothes.).
I think that is where extensive reading comes in. A writer who reads as well as writes just knows what is working and what is not. If something sounds clumsy, it usually is. Sometimes, you have to put the writing down and take a break and eat some lunch or have some coffee but come back and look at it again. I knew one writer only who was drunk or stoned all of the time he was writing. When everything in his body began to fail, he took an overdose and left this world and he was stoned when he did. I think he was the rare exception. I don't think he ever wrote sober so never knew if he could nor not. He said he could feel his feelings better.
I never write drunk or stoned and when I tried it many years ago and read the result I was convinced that I was not one of those rare examples. I need to be sober when I write. I think I need to be sober when I exist. I often tell people I rarely drink because of the calories, but truth be told, I just don't like the feeling of an artificial high. I get high naturally although never too high because one can fall really fast and long and that is no fun.
Again, I am the kind of writer who depends on feelings. I also listen to what I am writing so I can see and understand what it is I am trying to say. I also put things away and then pick them up again and read them again. Often when I read old blogs, I re-edit them. It helps to put the stuff out there because I am practicing my writing and then publishing them. I don't get paid for my blog, but I try the best I can. I have learned so much blogging.
Of course, it is a one-sided conversation with myself. I often don't know what I am thinking about something until I write about it. If I write something and I feel good about it, and I put it down and come back and still have that good feeling about it then I did it well. The main purpose in life is to have a good time at it. Writing is something I don't have to do, but it is. Call it a compulsion but it is one of the treats of life as reading and listening to music. Editing can be fun too.
