By Kyle Flood from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (Waaah!)
CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons The last time I saw those words, attributed to Steven King, and believe me, you'll see them a lot in the "Writers' Advice" areas, they were followed by some sage advice about working with editors.
I've had my ups and downs working with editors - most recently a down, but that's another story. But I will continue to seek out good editors. A second pair of eyes beyond mere proof-reading is a godsend. And speaking from personal experience, working with a good editor can be a crazy, exhilarating, annoying, useful and humbling learning experience.
Did I mention "humbling"? It bears repeating… Humbling.
But while you're busy prostrating yourself before the Altar of Improvement, offering up your first-born to the gods of Writing Better, just please remember this. You may, like Abraham, be ready to sacrifice your tender Isaac, flay him alive, eviscerate your beloved child in your single-minded pursuit of the Holy Grail of Authorship (just to mix in another metaphor), but DO NOT burn the body.
"What's this?" you say. Keep the bleeding corpse, mangled and savaged… what are you? A barbarian - a masochist? Do you like picking at the barely-healing scabs on your wounds?
Well, no I don't actually. But I do have several files of ideas for stories, outlines for stories, and one of dead ducks (Oh, no! Not another metaphor!).
I used to be very precious about the words. I thought I had to preserve each golden, hand-crafted phrase because I'd never find those words again.
Right?
Wrong!
Here's why. I've had the unfortunate experience of an erratically functioning program that simply "forgot" to save almost twenty pages of my first mystery novel. I think the poor dear was tired of my incessant pounding on the keyboard and decided to ignore repeated usage of the command.
As you can imagine, after recovering from my near-heart attack, I worked feverishly to retrieve the missing pages. They had to be in there somewhere. To no avail. Tried every trick I remembered and begged a few from friends. Searched online. Wasted the better part of an afternoon. The pages could not be brought back - not by any means I could afford.
Long story slightly longer, I had to rewrite the whole lot. And, surprise! I ended up with twenty-seven pages of better-written work, and a solution to one of the plot-lines I'd been struggling with for three days.
I'm not recommending this as a writing exercise - for anyone - but it did prove to me that I can recreate the words. We can all find those sparkling phrases again - or better ones to take their place.
As long as we don't lose the IDEAS behind them.
Those ideas are the babies we all too often throw out with the dirty water.
We need to hang on to them. Even if the some of those ideas suck.
It could be the context is off. It could be the way the idea is used is out-to-lunch.
Truthfully, though, it could also be a really bad idea. Even so, that bad idea could be the springboard for a better idea, even a great idea. Or a reminder to not go there without a very careful rethink. Sometimes when we go back and reread those lame ducks, those limping, gutted discards, we can actually winnow out something useful.
And sometimes, they weren't as awful as they seemed at the time. Time… Coming back and rereading your bits and bobs after a few weeks, or months, or even years can give you a different perspective on your work, a wonderful vantage-point from which to retrieve a few of those little still-born efforts and see if you can - or want to - breathe life into one or two of them…
You could be very pleasantly surprised - or have a good chuckle.
Either way is good.
