 Mystery: May 07, 2014 Issue [#6310] |
  Mystery
This week: Your Precious Words Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: Even great works of literature had to start somewhere (and that somewhere usually required extensive rewriting). If you agonize over the idea of throwing out your words and revising them over and over again until you get them right, you're in good company:
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) is quoted as saying, "I have rewritten - often several times - every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers."
In an interview with The Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway was quoted as saying that he rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. When asked what had made the ending so difficult, he replied, "Getting the words right."
Colette (Gigi) said, "Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his stuff's own worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."
Helen Dunmore (A Spell of Winter, The Siege) is attributed with saying, "Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need."
And finally, Roald Dahl (James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda) says of his writing process, "By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least 150 times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this."
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YOUR PRECIOUS WORDS
There are all kinds of sayings floating around along the lines of "kill your darlings," "kill your babies," etc. relating to the concept that you can't be precious about the ideas in your writing. If a particular scene or character or bit of dialogue isn't right for the greater good of the story, it needs to be excised and left on the editing room floor, even if it's something you personally love. The thing is, though, you have to be just as objective with individual sentences and words as you do with those greater creative constructs. Sometimes, the technical execution itself just needs to be thrown out.
Tossing the words you've written can be a difficult thing to do, especially since we spend so much time crafting them. Nobody wants to spend days or weeks or months writing something only to realize that it all has to go; to discover that, at best, they've just written one of the many ways that the story doesn't work as well as it could. We might even have a tendency, during the rewriting period, to try and salvage as many of the words as possible, changing only what's absolutely necessary so that we can preserve the maximum amount of what we've already written. But we have to realize that, as writers, we're going to be generating many, many words over the course of our careers (or in the exploration of our hobby if we're not professionally-oriented). A few lines, or a few chapters, or even a few manuscripts are just a small piece of our body of work. While it can certainly be painful, what does it matter if we have to throw those words out and create new ones that work better? Isn't that the goal, to find the best words we can?
I have a writer friend who approaches rewrites to his work from the perspective that he's only going to change what's absolutely necessary. Unless there's a specific problem that needs fixing, once he's written it, he's not going to revisit it and change a thing. And even in the cases where he does need to change something, he looks for the quickest, easiest way to address that change that will result in the least disruption to the rest of the words. And I completely understand that mentality. He's worked hard to craft those words and why should he look to change ten thousand words when he can get by with only changing two thousand? But because of that mentality, he doesn't look at rewriting as, "How can I make the best possible version of this?" but rather, "What version requires the least amount of work?" Those two questions may occasionally have the same answer, but more often than not, they don't.
If someone reads your manuscript and says, "The protagonist isn't very well developed," the solution is probably going to require more work than inserting a couple conversations about her life goals, or to show a scene of her arguing with someone over her political opinions. There will certainly be times when fixes are easy and can be addressed with a few quick changes here and there... but you have to look at the changes you need to make and ask yourself if they're a big problem or a small problem. If it's a small problem, sure, maybe a little retouching, or a fresh coat of paint, or a few additional chisel strikes is all it takes to smooth out that rough edge. But if it's a big problem, no amount of paint will cover up the fact that the house you built has a shaky foundation. Sometimes, you have to tear it all down and build it back up again. Sometimes, minor repairs just won't cover the problems that need fixing no matter how badly we wish they could. And in those situations, you have to be okay with investing the time and effort into doing it right.
In a way, we're blessed. There are a great many crafts out there that require a significant investment in materials as well as time. If you're a painter and you don't like where a piece is going, you have to replace the canvas, you've wasted all that paint you've used, etc. If you're a filmmaker, you're spending thousands, maybe even millions of dollars to get a movie on film, only to realize that you have to re-shoot some or all of it if it's not working. If you're a sculptor, you're going to need to find a new chunk of marble to start over on if you make a big mistake. If you're an architect, a flaw in the design might cost a builder all those materials if the inspection deems the structure uninhabitable. For writers, you just have to toss the pages or highlight some text on the screen and press 'delete.' That's not to say it's any less painful than throwing out physical materials that cost something... but it sure is cheaper! 
The next time you're writing something and agonizing over the words on the page... give yourself permission to re-do them. In fact, if you're anything like me, it might be freeing to realize that every word doesn't have to be perfect before you put it down on paper. No one's going to see your rough drafts, just like no one is going to see all the canvas a painter tossed out before they show people the finished one, or all the broken marble chunks in a sculptor's studio before the final one gets shipped off to the gallery or auction house. Give yourself permission to not treat your words so preciously, so you can take the time to experiment and find the right ones to present in the right way.
In the end, it's not the individual words that are precious; it's the overall work you create with them.
Make that overall work the best it can be, even if it takes more than one pass at it.
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
NICOLA WRIGHT is a single, attractive psychiatrist around thirty years old with rich and powerful friends and a wealthy clientele. She has the ability to hypnotize her patients into scripted dreams to treat their mental problems. But now her gifted ability to hypnotize her patients has become nothing more than just hypnotizing them into their own desired fantasy dreams. This dream-making has become a medical ethics issue; Nicola’s walking a fine line between practicing psychiatry and playing God.
My mother decided that the way I should spend my time was helping her "find" her long-dead sister.
My aunt had been reported missing in St. Louis a year before I was born, fifteen years ago. A week later, she was found dead in an old tree on the top of a hill in the small town of Wooster, Arkansas. My mother had only recently decided to investigate, and had been following "clues" that eventually led her to the town.
She'd gone crazy, was what I thought.
But what I didn't realize was that there was more to my aunt's death than I realized, and my mother, had recently received a call from a VERY old friend.
And this road trip would be the thing to drive me crazy.
A regular guy wish's something different will happen in his life that moment is about to happen so the story begin's here.
My life started out normal, I guess you would say. I lived in a small town that was close-knit. When I say my town was close knit built, I mean it. Everyone knows everyone, and thus everyone knows every one’s business. When my neighbor, Mr. Thompson and his wife had divorced after twenty-three years of marriage, and having three boys, everyone knew every juicy detail of that divorce. Even the children of the town did. When the couple was fighting, the whole town knew it. The whole town knew all the drama that happened, because we feed off it, and it never really happened.
Amy had dealt with monsters all her life, from headaches that lifted the top of her head off, bad hair days that lasted for weeks or new shoes that felt like the end of the world was soon, but nothing prepared her for the Monster that she stood facing right now. A noise in the living room had brought her in to investigate. Grabbing Lady Bug her dog, she rushed into the room and flipped on the light. The monster stood still, stunned by the sudden brightness. Too scared to move they both stared at each other with wide terrified eyes.
Sarah Rainwater was a pretty twenty-seven year old woman, about five feet and five inches tall and with long light brown hair, who enjoyed curling up on her sofa, her comfy chair or in bed with a good romance or mystery suspense to read. She had enjoyed reading from a young age and that is part of what had her decide to become a librarian while she saved up money to own her own bookstore someday. She especially liked Nancy Drew or Agatha Christie novels when it came to mysteries. But she enjoyed reading about them and yes, sometimes watching them in movies and on TV, but she did not enjoy being part of a real-life murder mystery.
"It was 1872 the year I first visited Lyman's town. It was noon but the place was deserted. And, o'course I wandered what was going on. There were no cowboys fighting, no women with their endless washin' there was nothing. " Billy told his captive audience. "It were a mystery all right. One I'd ne'er thought I could solve. It were a Ghost town weren't it Jim?"
The air was unnaturally still. Heavy snow carpeted the normally lush green hills visible from the window in the tiny upstairs bedroom. Rhana, still cloaked in her mother's old fur cloak, shivered vocally. She tugged at her sister's jacket pocket, and again begged her to change her mind.
"Please don't, I'm too scared, you know what they say."
Lidia did know. She knew it all. She knew the folklore, the legends and the rumours. |
Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
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Feedback from my last newsletter about the different branches of the armed forces:
LJB  writes, "What rating do you accept to post in these newsletters?"
The content of the newsletters needs to be E-rated, but featured items can be 18+ or below.
Quick-Quill  writes, "Jeff! just keep them coming. The Thriller novel a wrote for NaNo a couple of years ago is sitting and waiting for more intel. Who can you ask about Homeland Security without seeming like a terrorist when you are writing about a terrorist? A conundrum. Another great newsletter to keep in my reference file!"
I've always thought writers (especially crime/mystery authors) must make very interesting subjects for intelligence agencies. The things we sometimes have to look up or research in order to make sure we're depicting them accurately!  
DB Cooper writes, "Every time someone graduates from a service academy taxpayers pay about {depending on the academy} a half million dollars!"
Of course, you have to weigh that cost against the value they provide, just like any paid training or education. The real question is whether a person graduating from a service academy provides taxpayers with a half million dollars or more in value over the course of their careers. I can't speak for the military as I've never served, but my feeling is that people more often than not provide a considerable return on their investment for whoever pays for their education and training.
G. B. Williams  writes, "I do not have an item to submit, but I do wish to compliment you on this newsletter. I found the descriptions of the various U.S. armed forces to be clearly written and understandable. The read was easy, and informative. Thank you."
Thank you very much for the compliment!
freedomforge writes, "Offering a clarification to this entry: Our federal government is rarely clear and straightforward about anything. If using the Coast Guard in a story, it would be worth looking into some recent changes in its organizational structure. Though the US Coast Guard is recognized as a "uniformed service" and in the past was traditionally thought of as a branch of the military, a recent reorganization (2002) of the federal government makes this no longer true. The USCG has been reorganized as a part of the Department of Homeland Security. During peacetime, the USCG has a law enforcement agency mission; this also makes it decidedly NOT a branch of the military because federal law restricts the law enforcement activities that the US military may undertake. The president can transfer part or all of the USCG to the Navy, or during times of declared war, Congress also has the authority to transfer the USCG from Homeland Security to the Navy."
Yes, when researching a story, I would always advocate for doing one's own research and really exploring topics in depth rather than relying on a general overview/summary from a newsletter. Personal inquiries, interviews, and targeted research are always recommended when writing about a topic one is unfamiliar with! Thank you for the clarification!
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