Top Tips for Editing Your Writing During the Time of COVID-19
There’s a beautiful scene in High Fidelity, Stephen Frears’ 2000’s film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel, that I never tire of watching. Facing the camera, Rob Gordon, the character played superbly by John Cusack, shares his top tips in making the ultimate mixtape:
The making of a book, regardless of its future standing in literature’s canon, is equally hard to do and it also takes ages to complete. In fact, it is never completed. Like any work of art, a published book is nothing but a draft. What winds up in our hands just happens to be the better draft the author manages to conjure up within the timeline given to them. Understanding writing in this context gives us encouragement whilst tackling any deadline-caused anxiety.
In the same way Cusack’s Gordon advises us to kick off a compilation tape with a killer, we, writers, should also hook our readers into our piece straight away. That was one of my three tips in my previous post.
(Click below to read part 1)
Once we’ve got the reader’s attention, go deep. Don’t just report. That is, as the name indicates, for reporters. Strip. Strip away the layers of what makes your story a story. Don’t just tell readers what Mrs Barts told Ms Francis. Dig in and tell your readers why Mrs Bart is making that statement at that precise moment. What led her to do it? What were the circumstances? Was she perhaps holed up in a one-bed flat in inner-city, Covid-19-afflicted London with four screaming children under the age of 10?
The dismissal of our internal editor in my previous column allows us now to push for the creation of manifold stories. Whether they end up in your final cut or not is moot. The point is that as a writer you want to have as many options as possible at your disposal.
Then, fellow writer, it’s time for the snip.
I mentioned my eyes-closed, touch-typing approach before. I conveniently left out any mention of the Microsoft Word-generated red and blue lines I’m confronted with when I open my eyes. The same goes for the mind. You open the floodgates and the material flows out. But not all those words and phrases will make it. You will need to sacrifice some. And if you have an editor, a flesh-and-bone one, brace yourself because yours won’t be the most painful edit.
(Click below to read part 2)
Compromise and negotiation are not just the stock-in-trade of politicians. One of the first lessons a writer must learn is to let go. No matter how much we love a particular phrase or image, if it jeopardises the rest of the piece, we have to get rid of it.
As artists, we come to writing in order to conceptualise that which evades our senses. That is, we offer a reality that is different from the “false reality” we operate under. A “false reality” that is nothing but a model encoded by our experience, bias and social interactions. The literary work that emerges from our endeavours is a call to our reader: here’s the soul of what I’ve created. Please, accept it. You do not have to like it or agree with it. You just need to accept that, as a writer, I am invoking a moment of silence and respect for my work.
Oh, hear now our inner-editor’s laughter! They look at us, point at us and say: “But I thought I was banished. Surplus. Useless”. The only logical answer I can come up with for our internal Cutter-In-Chief is that the art of writing is never simple. That hook at the beginning of your piece? It is but a whispered promise of things to come. No matter how well written and powerful, it won’t give you (it’s not meant to give you!) a fully-formed picture. That, you will get as you move through the text.
(Click below to read part 3)
I’m pretty sure that John Cusack’s Rob Gordon went back and forth a fair bit after his initial song selection. How many tracks did he delete and tape over? I don’t know. But before getting rid of the surplus, I’m certain that he filled up the cassette.
Next up for us, writers, is the dilemma of how much I should go into our I-piece. This is where the personal clashes with the public. How far do we go in revealing our souls?
© 2020