I’m having more "A-ha!" moments than eight seasons of Oprah lately…

So, I’ve been editing today, and reworking a sentence, then the next sentence, and finally the paragraph, and as much as it is better than it was before, it still isn’t magic. Then I finally started looking at it from a different angle, which is basically stopping myself from fixing what IS THERE and instead questioning qhat SHOULD BE THERE.

I think there is such a tendency to just try and polish and hone, when sometimes what is on the page now doesn’t really get questioned enough. Basically, every sentence has to earn its keep. Most of the time that something doesn’t seem right is just an indication that perhaps it isn’t supposed to be there at all.

Of course, as soon as I pushed past whether the troublesome paragraph was needed, the answer was a quick "no." And, a much more amazing paragraph quickly came from nowhere to fill that hole and make it so much better.

I guess the ongoing issue seems to be that I have good instincts, but my skill level isn’t at the point where I can easily identify them yet. It’s just that something is wrong, as opposed to immediately identifying the culprit. Just a matter of plugging away and becoming better at this, it will all sort itself out over time.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 2:57 pm and is filed under diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.