Oct. 15, 2001
October 09th was my deadline to rewrite and submit an article I had written over two months ago to my editor. I sat up late that night trying to combine two different articles into one, and rewrite it to make it better. Somewhere around midnight I lost enthusiasm and clarity and just ended up giving up.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep going and I thought about submitting the article late, but I thought that might be worse, especially since I had a couple of weeks to do it. Instead I turned in an article that I felt wasn’t the best I could do and waited to hear back from my editor.
I waited to hear the criticism, the “you should do this,” or “I liked this version better” or “I thought you were a writer” or “On second thought, we can’t use this.” But I didn’t hear anything from her; there was nothing but silence.
The silence started to make me uneasy and got me to thinking that she was probably thinking the same thing that I was – that I could have done better. The past couple of days I actually thought about writing her to tell her that I was sorry and if she wants I’ll rewrite it again. Actually, what I wanted to tell her was that I was embarrassed.
However tonight she emailed me and said: “Great job! I’m impressed at your story-combining capabilities. Seamless! I don’t have any further changes to request. Thanks for such a thoughtful rewrite!”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was it sincere? Was it true? Did I write something wonderful or did she just have deadlines to meet too?
I went to Chris and told him that I felt odd for receiving a compliment on something I wasn’t entirely sure was good. He said that sometimes we are too self-critical, especially if we’re criticising something we’re passionate about. He also told me because I’ve never taken a writing course or went to college to study writing that maybe that I don’t know how to judge things very well. He said that perhaps I was just good at writing and others recognised that and that maybe I should too.
His comforting should have made me feel better but it didn’t. I knew what he was saying wasn’t the reason I was feeling odd about what I’d written
I handed the article to Chris and asked him to read it and give me honest feedback.
“It’s good,” he said rather nonchalantly.
“I think I’ve written better journal entries than that,” I said.
“Yeah maybe.”
“I think it lacks passion or inspiration. It doesn’t seem to speak to me, it’s just kind of there, kind of just written for the sake of it. It doesn’t ring true for me.” As soon as I said that, I realised that that was what was really bothering me – the fact it didn’t ring true.
It had rung true a couple of months ago, but the rewrite just sort of sucked out any realness and passion I had in it. The article became rewritten because someone told me to and not because I had something more to add. I realise that I had taken the point of view that the rewrite was now “work” and “effort” instead of “here is a chance to make it all work and make it wonderful.”
Since that was my first experience with an editor and with rewriting, I didn’t really have any idea on how to do it or react to it. I just went about it in the only way I thought of at the time which was to just work at it from an intellectual, cold kind of way. I know now that for me that’s the wrong way to go about it.
Now when I have to do rewrites what I really have to do is try to maintain the truth and intention that I wrote with in the beginning. I have to keep it real to me and keep it alive. Even if the editor wants it all changed from here to kindgdomcome and has one million corrections, I have to somehow try to maintain some of the passion that inspired the article in the first place, or else I just won’t be satisfied and the article will show it.
That’s going to be really hard but important to do. One thing I’ve read over is that is has to ring true for the writer. If it doesn’t, the reader will know.
I’m still not sure what to make of having the article that I just rewrote potentially going out into published land without me being really satisfied with it. Perhaps I just have to chalk it up to learning and move onto the next writing piece.
Maybe that’s all I can do at this point.