Daphne Clair/Laurey Bright

Kia Ora Readers

Newsletter February 2012-02-02

With holidays over and the weather finally - mostly - realising it's summer, things are moving along. I'm revising a manuscript that didn't quite work a few years ago, and it's interesting how clearly a writer can see every little fault after a good long time of not looking at a work.

Also I'm entering a couple of stories in a contest - something I haven't done for some years. Short stories tend to languish unsent while I catch up on other things. But this year I intend to write more of them and send them out into the big, wide and sometimes cruel world to take their chances. Kind of like pushing grown children out of the nest to see if they can fly on their own.

Short stories, I'm told, are coming back into fashion, with the advent of e-readers and smart phones. In this increasingly time-pressed world the digital revolution has resurrected the venerable form of fiction with stories that can often be read in five minutes or less.

Also it's very good practise, as most of us use too many words in our first drafts and have to cut much of what we write in the throes of inspiration. Very few people when editing their work have to add more words. Mostly editing is cutting out extraneous matter that clogs the flow of the story - repetition, unnecessary adjectives, adverbs and phrases, pretty sentences that add nothing new to the reader's understanding, long descriptions of scenery or setting, or dull everyday dialogue that goes nowhere.

That said, a few writers, often coming from a journalism background, are so spare in their writing that it becomes merely a chronicle of events with no colour and little impact.

All writing is a balancing act. Attaining just the right balance between too much and too little is for most of us a matter of trial and error. Hence the art of re-writing.

It is an art that usually takes some time to learn. I used to hate revising, rewriting, fumbling around trying to work out what was needed or not. What to cut, what to change, what to add. And it is possible to overdo the titivating and end up changing things without improving them.

With experience I learned to hone my work and recognise what was needed to create something clean and polished. I'm confident now when I begin a rewrite that I can make the piece better, and that I know how to do it. Not that I can claim perfection. Sometimes I read a published story and cringe at something I missed. This is why editors and copy-editors exist. An expert impartial eye is able to discern where something could be improved with a tweak here or an excision there. Writers don't always see eye to eye with them, but we do value their services. They make us look more closely at things we may not have noticed. If something bothered an editor, then maybe it will bother a reader too.

Occasionally an editor or copy editor may be too intrusive or too picky. Some will not allow any fiddling with the rules of grammar. Yet good writers know the rules before they bend or break them, and don't do it without a specific reason. The rules, after all, are supposed to make reading pleasurable and clear for the reader, and sometimes they just get in the way. A few editors have been known to try to rewrite entire books to their own taste. They probably don't last long in the business. But both author and editor aim for the same thing - making a book as good as it can possibly be.

HINT FOR WRITERS: Writing something short every day is good exercise for writing muscles. Particularly if you've been away on holiday or had other interruptions to your normal schedule. And with the new popularity of short-short stories and even poetry reportedly having a resurgence, you may find a new market.