Monday, March 28, 2011
Annie Dillard
Well I've began my reading of Annie Dillard's 'The Writing Life' and in the very beginning she speaks of a hard truth some of us have already experienced. We've had to get rid of many things in our own stories and have to leave behind the tracks. She says when you write a book you can either get over the deleting of some of your work now or waste a whole year thinking about it. She describes writing by first describing painting. A painter can go over older versions and pretty much get rid of them easily (Obviously she hasn't tried certain types of paint. *laughs*) but a writer must right left to right, on the left is the discardable beginning chapters while in the middle we have the begginings of the latest versions and they harden at the end. She is indeed right when she says that we love our stories. We go over them so many times that they seem like poerty too us-- almost like every word fits together, but the key is reading from another person's point of view. Does it make sense if you were reading for the first time?
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Anne is definitely write Kira. It really is hard to get rid of pieces of your story that you love and truly look at as being the meat of your story. If there isn't any meat on the plate being served for dinner, then honestly I don't want to eat lmao! But in regards to writing we might not want to, but to look at our material once or twice over we see there is room for adjustment. I always tend to look at my work in a another person's point of view. I seem to know what people like, what they want to hear, what will make them laugh or cry. As I said in one of my earlier blogs, true we have to enjoy our own individual work, but if we are putting our stuff out to be sold, other readers have to like and buy our stuff....Not us!
ReplyDeleteYes, parting w/ our own stuff is difficult. After all, WE know it's important but as Duane said, it has to be appealing to others IF we plan to market it. I keep remembering something Kim said to the effect of "killing our babies." So true. Ouch!!
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