Editing

Talking about my own writing feels so self-indulgent, but if someone gets anything out of my bellyaching, I guess it's well worth it.

I like writing; I hate editing. I don't have the luxury of beta readers right now, and I'm not currently signed up for any writers' workshops. (I have my reservations about those -- more on than in a minute.) So right now I'm relying on books to guide the process. I'm really liking Susan Bell's The Artful Edit . It's practical, as opposed to hand-holding like Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I love Bird by Bird, but it, offers little in the way of actual writing advice. The Artful Edit is a good place to start for novice writers attempting to edit their own work.

One of my biggest problems, I've discovered, is that I'm quite "subtext-y." I'm a very visual thinker, and when I write, I have to translate the pictures in my head to words. The result is often a somewhat heavy-handed use of leitmotif or theme. And because I tend to writer character-driven fiction, it ends up taking the place of plot.

In the hands of a writer more skilled than I, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it goes against everything I've been taught.