Monday, September 20, 2010
Cleaning up the Dirt
We have a very tiny mission church in our home. A couple of weeks ago, as our priest was packing up, he glanced toward the kitchen. “Did you get new cabinets?” he asked. “They look brighter.”
“No,” I said, handing him his first mug of coffee for the day. Our denomination has a tradition of fasting from midnight, so making coffee after services is considered a great work of mercy. “Rebekah (my sixteen-year-old daughter) polished them when I had surgery.”
I thought about those cabinets Saturday when I began tackling Bryony’s third round of edits. The story is structurally sound, but it does have some smudges and stains that dull its sheen. A good editor doesn’t mind looking over your shoulder to say, “Hey, you missed a spot here, here, and over there.”
Some of those in my closest circle—the ones that read Bryony's crudest drafts--worry that editing means content changing. I think they will be pleasantly surprised at the finished product. I doubt they will notice the changes. The inherent story is the same, but smoother and, like my cabinets, brighter.
“No,” I said, handing him his first mug of coffee for the day. Our denomination has a tradition of fasting from midnight, so making coffee after services is considered a great work of mercy. “Rebekah (my sixteen-year-old daughter) polished them when I had surgery.”
I thought about those cabinets Saturday when I began tackling Bryony’s third round of edits. The story is structurally sound, but it does have some smudges and stains that dull its sheen. A good editor doesn’t mind looking over your shoulder to say, “Hey, you missed a spot here, here, and over there.”
Some of those in my closest circle—the ones that read Bryony's crudest drafts--worry that editing means content changing. I think they will be pleasantly surprised at the finished product. I doubt they will notice the changes. The inherent story is the same, but smoother and, like my cabinets, brighter.
Posted by Denise M. Baran-Unland at 2:20 AM
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