Tuesday, May 22, 2012

editing and my temper tantrum

Editing is hard. Not grammar and punctuation editing - that's easy. Fun, even. Content editing. Story slashing gut-wrenching tear-jerking mind-blowing face-twisting horrible terrible no good very bad day kind of editing.

So, I've been told my story has a slow start. It takes a while to get into the meat of the story, the real gripping part. Okay, I says, I'll cut out a bunch of the not-so-necessary stuff. So I did. I took my pencil on the hard copy and I slashed and dashed it all to pieces. Some of my favorite parts were gone, just like that.

Thought I was good for a while. Then I hafta go and read some stupid blog by a lady who knows what she's talking about that says "NO BACKSTORY, ESPECIALLY IN THE FIRST THIRTY PAGES." Well, guess what is freaking in my first thirty pages! That's right, you guessed it: back story!

And here I thought I was about done editing. My last full manuscript edit was focused solely on hyphens and dashes - that was fun. But I tell ya, I'd do it all over again if I could avoid trying to figure out what to do with my back story. If I should move it, cut it even more, cut it out entirely, I really have no idea what to do. I like the way my story is. I wanted it to read like a memoir, like a genealogy, with my character reminiscing about her childhood and growing up. Now I wanna stomp my feet and cry like a baby is what I wanna do, lemme tell ya. (This very blog is an avoidance technique.)

Okay, okay... Ima goin' Ima goin'.

>:( (that's my final word)

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