Editing: Try This – Cutting

Take something you have already written and rewrite it with half as many words. Start with something that is around 1500 words and cut it down to 750.

It is difficult to cut out pieces of your writing to meet a particular word count limit, yet it is often necessary. What you learn to do as you practice the cutting aspect of editing is to clearly identify what it is you want to say.

When you first begin to cut, it seems that everything is important and you may feel anxious about taking information away from your readers. As you struggle with this, you are forced to clarify, simplify, be more direct, specific, and concise.

The first step is to identify the subject, problem and solution of a piece of work. Summarize it in one or two sentences. Next, identify statements that support each of those aspects. List them in columns headed subject; problem; and solution. Then order the supporting statements according to importance: what bits of information and ideas are absolutely necessary to make your point? What is interesting? What is complimentary, but not exactly essential? What can you let go? Order these on your list.

Reread the piece of writing and see if you can combine two or more pieces of information in one sentence. Cut out some adverbs and adjectives (but not all of them!), and cut anything not relevant to your main storyline.

Put the two pieces aside and in about a week, return to them and read the shorter version first. Make final edits to insure it accurately expresses your idea and intention. Then you can finally read the longer one, your original, to see if all that extra verbiage really makes a difference or not. Keep to your word limit and work with the shorter one until it satisfies your intentions.

Flip Dictionary

I got a new dictionary for my birthday. The Flip Dictionary is “for when you know what you want to say but can’t think of the word”. That happens all the time! Here’s how it works: “The A-to-Z listings include components, concepts, ideas and parts”. So you look up the idea you have in mind in order to find the word that is on the tip of your tongue, but won’t reveal itself. For example, if you are thinking of that soft, flaky sliver-of-a-moon-shaped breakfast roll bread from France, but just can’t nail the right word, look up “bread” in the flip dictionary. There is it: croissant!

On New Year’s Day while we were painting rocks, someone was telling a childhood story about her grandmother’s little dog that had big buggy eyes that popped out whenever the dog got too excited or exerted too much energy. Whenever this happened, the little girl in the story had to poke the eyes back into place.

“What kind of dog is that?!” someone asked. We struggled to answer the question. Several of us could see the little dog clearly in our mind’s eye, but just couldn’t think of the right word. We described the dog vividly and periodically called out the names of various breeds, but we just couldn’t name the breed correctly. A couple of us pulled out our iphones to search the internet for the answer. It soon became a competition to get the right word before anyone else could produce it. Then Carolyn joined in the frenzy and opened the new Flip Dictionary. Standing excitedly in the middle of the room, she shouted, “Pekinese!”

“Yes! That’s it!” The Flip Dictionary sealed the question. Ah, I am certain this will be a very useful tool.

I am reminded of how I increased my Japanese vocabulary. Once I became conversationally fluent, I reached a sort of plateau in my language acquisition. I could express anything I wanted or needed to, but not always in the most efficient way. Nonetheless, I could communicate quite well, so growing my vocabulary was not an urgent need. For example, rather than saying “when I was a little girl, my grandmother had a Pekinese…” I would have to describe the dog in great detail and most likely, tell a couple of stories along the way. My Japanese friends would all interject with various words trying to hone in on my point until it was agreed on one that worked best. I would write the new word in my pocket notebook where I collected vocabulary and in that way, I learned to speak Japanese better.

As I became more fluent in Japanese, it occurred to me that my own native language is full of rich vocabulary that I do not know and do not use. It was then that I began to enjoy a basic English dictionary. But that required me to choose new words and study them. This flip dictionary seems more practical and more fun.

Thank you, Carolyn, for my new Flip Dictionary!

Run-ons and on, and on, and on, and ...

A run-on sentence is one that has too many subjects, too many verbs, too many adjectives and adverbs, too much punctuation, or, to put it simply, too much stuff and way too many points so that your reader ends up getting totally lost and overwhelmed even though you think that what you are doing is providing your reader will all kinds of really good information, so good in fact, that you have to get it all out as fast as you can which is what results in the really long, obnoxious sentence that in grammatical terms, is called a “run-on”.

Phew! Take a breath! Now try to read that sentence out loud. YUCK!

Let’s rewrite it so that is becomes a paragraph with good, complete, yet simple sentences:

A run-on sentence is one that has too many subjects, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, as well as too much punctuation. To put it simply, a run-on sentence has too much stuff and way too many points. The result of a run-on sentence is that your reader ends up getting totally lost and overwhelmed. While you may think that you are providing your reader will all kinds of valuable information, in reality, only end up with long, obnoxious sentence that in grammatical terms, is called a “run-on”.

The old acronym comes in very handy as your basic rule to avoid run-ons: Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)!

The Writing Process - organized

I’ve never been diagnosed with ADD, but I definitely don’t have a long attention span. I know this about myself and so I have learned to focus my concentration for the duration of its limit and then welcome a productive break. The trick is to be able to get back to the work after the break!

For years I suffered with the clutter of unfinished projects until I finally figured out how to utilize the stops to my advantage and restart in a timely manner. The first step (after lovingly recognizing my own personal limitations) is to see projects as geometrically shaped pieces that when fit together, make my completed project.

I know that I can work really well for about an hour and fifteen minutes to two hours. After that I’m just dilly-dallying around and wasting time. I find that what gets done in each hour or so of quality time is a big enough chunk of material to qualify as one of the shapes in the end product.

The second step is to have all my materials organized, easily accessible, and easily transportable. What works for me is to have what I call a “portable office” or my “office in a bag”. I have a simple bag that is big enough to hold manila folders and my hard-backed journal, but not so big that things get swallowed up inside it. The bag opens out completely – this is an important feature), and has individual pockets for the following: 1) pens/pencils; 2) reading glasses; 3) postit notes; 4) paper clips; 5) thumb drives. These items need to be separated for me so that I don’t waste time or mental energy digging through one big generic pocket to find what I need. A cluttered bag leads to a cluttered mind and this is way more distracting than most of us will admit.
And distraction is defeating.
I usually work on several projects at a time, so I keep everything related to one project is a separate manila folder. Inside each folder the papers are grouped and paper-clipped together in the following manner: a) the original assignment and notes from the client; b) the original draft; c) research, resources and references. Note: in order to keep from cluttering my mind, I never keep more than 5 project manila folders at a time in my “portable office”.
For each chunk of concentrated time, I aim to work on only one project. Which project gets my attention is determined first by deadline, and second by inspiration. Inspiration always takes precedence however, whenever it gets a whirlwind of energy, and just between you and me, this is the real gem of a writer’s life – the exhilarating high is magnified by it spontaneous and unexpected arrival. You absolutely must honor inspiration!
So back to organization: I believe that because of the power of inspiration, and because of its unpredictability, you’ve got to be highly organized so you can work under the shelter of discipline in a steady manner. This way, when inspiration sweeps down and takes you on a flight, you are free to go without missing any important deadlines.
One more note about the manila folders: I mentioned that I never keep more than 5 project folders in my bag at a time. The word “project” is underlined to differentiate it from the other 3 folders that go everywhere with me: 1) Planning; 2) Inspiration; and 3) scrap paper.
The Planning Folder is where I keep my lists. I list what I have to do each day; I list what I intend to do; I list what I hope to do eventually; and I list all the things I simply want to remember, at least for awhile. For all you perfectionists out there, I have to warn you, as soon as you start doing something on your list, you will realized there are many more steps involved in that one task than you originally thought, so your lists will grow, often in sloppy, eclectic ways: that’s OK!
The Inspiration Folder is full of words, phrases, images, paragraphs and snippets of stuff that have no particular beginning, middle or end. There is no pressure attached to the things in the Inspiration Folder. These are like pretty shells you pick up on the beach – maybe I’ll do something with them and maybe I won’t, but they are my treasures.
The scrap paper folder is, well, I think this is self explanatory. A writer would rather be caught dead without her underwear on before being caught anywhere in the world without some paper!
So think about this stuff when you are doing other things this week. Give yourself about an hour at a time over the duration of several days and get your writing bag in order. Believe me, its well worth your time!