Editing Isn't Fun

When I relit my creative candle, I knew that one of the most dreaded steps in being a writer and content creator (I have recently learned that being a content creator does not include being a writer) was going to be editing. Typically, when I edit my work, it includes approximately an hour of self-hate and intense criticism, so much so that the actual editing process doesn’t start until at least the two-hour mark of my dedicated editing time. This, however, only becomes true if I even get to the two-hour mark of editing. Now that I am a slightly more experienced writer, I can make very small edits on the fly when I’m writing, even when I’m experiencing a writer’s high. Eight years ago, when I was beginning to find a voice and style that I could seriously narrow on, I was still in the experimental stage of finding who I am as a writer. The following is an excerpt from a vocal challenge four years ago:

Dominic stared at the page. Nothing more was written. He nervously closed and opened the book multiple times. There was no change. He thought perhaps this was a joke, a trick book of some sort. He tore the page out and threw it away in his emptied trash bin next to his small computer desk. He closed the book and reopened it. A blob of ink started to form on the newly restored first page as the words Hello Dominic Carter, son of… "Okay, okay, just let me think," Dominic said aloud as he now gently placed the book on his neatly organized desk. That night was a restless one. Thought after thought blew through his brain. He started to talk to himself out loud for brief moments. He thought that maybe a logical explanation might arise from his own words. "I'll just try it. I'll go get the coffee." Dominic laid his head on his old pillow, on his old bed sheets, on his uncomfortable mattress, and fell asleep. The familiar sounds of police sirens and loud music once again serenaded him to a couple of hours of rest.

This was my first vocal challenge and perhaps my third attempt at a horror piece. Before this, I focused mainly on a novel; then I changed gears into short stories, especially on platforms like Vocal, to try and make some money for writing. If I were to take this piece now and rewrite it to a style that I currently favor, it would be a completely different story. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I almost feel “cringy” reading something I was REALLY proud of when I wrote it. It is like being an adult in your mid-forties, seeing a picture of yourself as a teenager, and wondering, “I thought I was so cool.” So let’s take this piece “The Karma Book,” and let me try and dissect this.

I wanted to try a “less is more” approach to writing. I didn’t want to bog the reader down with too much description, especially when these challenges have a word count limit, but I went way overboard with it. I don’t necessarily know if I was trying to go a more Hemingway approach to writing, but I could see and read that there is no flow. My original intention with this approach was to build a scene that amplified unease with sharp, direct sentences. This wasn’t supposed to be a fantasy narrative where I could lead you into a scene and continue on about some sort of magic and its properties. I wanted this to feel like you were watching a film go from frame to frame using smash cuts or jump cuts.

The premise of this story is that Dominic finds a book that gives instructions to the handler. You could ignore the instructions or complete the tasks, with each task becoming more intense. The original piece was written for a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) idea; I loved the idea because it had elements of horror that I enjoy, which is “the choice.” You give the illusion of choice because, to the reader, they don’t know if the actions even matter until the very end. The original piece was well over five thousand words, so I had to cut a lot from the work to fit the criteria. I re-read this piece, and if I were to approach the same challenge now, this would be a completely different piece, as I stated before.

My edit choices were not great; from poor word choices to moving paragraphs around to try and mimic a scene jump, I know I could do much better with this. I will eventually make this into a short story because I still love the idea, but I had poor execution. I thought I had a David Lynch vibe going, but it just missed the mark by about a thousand miles. This was a complete experiment on tone. I ignored many writing rules for this piece. It was fun to write because I did feel like I was orchestrating the unease of a book, giving out instructions in very precise details, only for the tasks to get more uncomfortable. I had a problem coming up with a target audience as well. I kept it to an elementary writing style because I didn’t want the main feel of the story to give way to complicated sentence structures and syntax. Overall, the piece fell flat of my goal, which is okay to say because I can only make it better. I can’t wait to give this idea a second attempt.