Many Cups to Drink From
This is kind of weird. I don’t remember starting this post or choosing this picture or what the title meant–“Many Cups to Drink From” but I must have done it in the past week. It was here in my drafts and I feel compelled to continue it in some way. Perhaps we’ll look at it as cups of guilt to drink from.
One of my many sources of guilt is my writing submission record. There are all these great calls to submission I read about and file away and highlight in the back of Poets and Writers Magazine, but I am incredibly lazy about submitting work. It could be some subconscious avoidance of rejection thing I’m doing. Or it could be just pure laziness. But because I hold YOU to higher standards than I do myself, dear reader (isn’t that the definition of hypocrisy?), I want to make today about revision and submission.
First, I want you to check out www.dmvarts.com; a list that my friend and colleague Jessica maintains. See how awesome that is?
Then, I want you to look at this handy standard story manuscript formatting guide.
I just want you to know those resources are there, that you’re not doing this in a vacuum, that there are lots of us–people you know and people you don’t–here with you. Know that. Now forget it.
Turn back to your piece of writing. The one that gave you such relief to write. The one that ended so naturally it was as though you ran out of ink. That piece of writing. The one that came straight out and felt absolutely perfect right away. Here’s the thing, my dear reader: it was not. It is NEVER perfect right away. This is terrible news I’m giving you. I know that. Because if we’re sending this poem or story out into the world, we must prepare it. It’s a hard world out there. There are many poems that it will have to duke it out with for column space. This is just the truth.
If you’ve just written it, let it cool off. You won’t be able to see it clearly right away. Put it away for a day or two. A week even.
Then read it aloud. Are you hearing a repetition of a word that is meaningless? Fix it.
Do you veer off into something that may well be interesting but isn’t necessary to the piece? Fix it.
Are you hiding behind the beautiful vague to avoid the truth of the specific? FIX IT.
Do you feel like no art makes sense anyway and if you string some good sounding words together to patch together the meatier content no one will notice? That is possible, I suppose. But you’re better than that. Fix it.
Do you have a last line that explains the whole thing, sums it up succinctly, as if you don’t trust your reader to have been paying attention? (I am so often guilty of this) Remove it.
Now read it aloud. Now put it away. Go back to the beginning. Read those journals listed, see what you like, which magazines seem to post things that align with your aesthetic. Then let’s talk about a practice of submitting work.
—————-I posted this yesterday, and then the AMAZING Terri Shrum Stoor posted this list which is full of wisdom————-
1. Write.
2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
7. Laugh at your own jokes.
8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
