Editing Process

You touch one part of it, and the whole thing shivers, from one end to the other. It's such a delicate thing, revision, and revision is where the artistry is; and so you have to be ruthless, and put away anything--even parts you like the sound of, even the matters that speak from your secret self to who you hope you are--put away anything that does not contribute to the whole thing. And it is hard. --Richard Bausch

The editing process becomes as challenging as the initial creativity of the writing.  Dylan Landis author of Normal People Don't Live Like This her novel in linked stories, says of editing that she works the nails out slowly with a teaspoon.  Landis reveals that metaphor by explaining about the spoon from a tenth grade art assignment. They had to form an egg from wet clay.  After the gray eggs hardened, they polished them with the back of a teaspoon.  By the end of a week her egg looked like polished pewter.  She didn't understand the process until, twenty-five years later, she started writing fiction. Now she's discovered that egg-polishng gets her to character, story and conflict.

Do you have a specific way to revise your work?  List the editing techniques you use.  Do you read the words out loud or turn the pages upside down?  How do you discover areas to enrich or delete? 


Create a metaphor to represent your editing process. See where it leads.