Word Nerd, you may recall, had four chapters of her novel up for critique at the beginning of November.
She's been working a bit to fix some of the things she remembered the critiquers saying at the meeting. But last night, she finally got out the stack of pages returned to her and started looking at them.
One, in particular, is bleeding bright, fluorescent pink ink from almost every page. Every page. Word Nerd thought she might go blind while reading it because of the brightness and quantity of the ink.
It is overwhelming. This is part of critiquing and rewriting that is so hard. Word Nerd really just wants to run all those pink-inked pages through her shredder (out of sight, out of mind) but that won't help the novel get any better. Word Nerd knows, knows, that she needs to sit down and work through the comments, make changes, etc. This is not her favorite part of writing by a long-shot. It's very, very tempting to want to shelf the whole novel up to this point and start over. New characters, new plot.
Such an abandonment is not helpful. Without slogging through the sheer volume of changes, Word Nerd won't learn anything for next time.
That is why she will force herself through the revising. Because there will a next time.
Hopefully, with less pink ink.
4 comments:
Word Nerd: Affecting changes for effective people everywhere.
I was trying to help. ;)
Page, you were/are helpful. Maybe, next time, though, can you edit in a color that doesn't, um, glow, quite so much?
You should have seen the orange pen. I got complaints when I added commas with that one.
I see a green pen in my cups-o'-pens on my desk. I'll try that next time.
Post a Comment