Saturday, September 26, 2009

Cut, Revise, Snip, and Bleed

Editing is a funny business. I've been working on the stories for my 1st book the last few days. Oh how hard it is to cut something out, revise how it's written or snip a few words out of a sentence. Each time I hit the delete key I feel like I'm bleeding to death! But you know what? After it's done, and I go back and read it over, I like it even more! And I can't even remember exactly what it was I cut, revised or snipped.

I'm wondering if anything you write is ever really done? How do you know when it's perfect? I can think a piece is there, and then I read it again in a few days or weeks and see more cutting and snipping is needed. I'd love an answer to that question from a professional, published, or experienced author or editor.

Our Pastor gave a teaching a few weeks ago about how when we let God shine through us it's like brush strokes by God on the canvas of our lives. It so impacted me and I loved it so much I wanted to work it into my book and stories. So the title has changed. It's now (today anyway) called 'Heavenly Artwork On Exhibit' with 'Brush Strokes by God' as the subtitle. I rewrote the ending to the first three stories, revised my Introduction and printed three copies. I handed them out to people I trust to give me honest feedback and now I anxiously await their comments.

On a side note: We went to a dance last night. What fun it was to just kick up our heels, be silly and have good old fashioned fun. A couple of guys from our church organized it, their wives put it together and did all the work to make it happen. Everyone had a great time. The majority vote was to do it again in December. Yay! The Mr. and I learned the basics of the two step. Two steps, sounds pretty simple I know, but it took a lot of work to get 'em down. We'll be practicing and be ready for December, you just wait and see!

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