Guilty As Charged
Karl "Doc" Bradford -- February 17, 2009
Ten years ago, a completed novel rested in Karl (Doc) Bradford's desk drawer and he was hard at work on his second. After reading his latest chapter, someone noted what a great hobby writing must be for him. Hobby? A year later, the wake-up call had been ruminated, digested, and the paradigm shift had occurred. The idea wasn't to write for money and fame--the idea was to write for pleasure, discovery, and self-expression. He figured that if something of quality came from his passion and commitment, it would transcend the hobby world.
We all know that writing is rewriting, but there comes a time when we need to admit that we're no longer improving the piece. But how do we know for sure?
Okay, fess up. I know you're out there--hundreds of you, thousands even and, like me, you all believe the old saw, "Writing is rewriting." Of course, so do all the terrific writers who don't share our affliction. The difference is they've learned to clean and polish their work while we hack and chop, altering the good and replacing the bad with so-so, ad infinitum. Personally, I can always spot something that improves the piece I'm working on. It's as if the editor I am at the present moment knows something I as the writer, or as a past editor, did not. Maybe my friend Roc's right when he says, "It's not over-editing, it's anal-editing."
No doubt this shortcoming is the product of insecurity, but that's no excuse according to Janet. I've argued with her on many occasions about savvy self-editing, but she insists my exuberance only makes things worse, and at best, wastes time. Janet is my muse, and although we've never been formally introduced, she's never complained about the label I tagged her with. I think she enjoys the name-association with the Roman god Janus who, with two faces looking in either direction, oversees entrances and exits. She certainly comes and goes as she pleases.
Our debate over editing resurfaced last weekend as I perused a batch of poems I'd written as a young man. I sat in my overstuffed blue chair and sipped the last of a fine Pinot Noir, certain that with a little refinement these old friends would sparkle anew. I'd worked my red pen through a few lines when Janet cried out:
"Stop! What are you doing?"
"I'm making it better," I assured her. "Tightening it up."
"You're ruining it."
"I hardly think so," I retorted with a smirk, confident that my writing prowess had improved immensely since I'd penned these poems.
"This is blasphemy," Janet continued. "You're exhuming the dead, creating a zombie...a Frankenstein."
With the speed of thought muses are famous for, she informed me that even if these words of anger, love, and awe had been written by my younger hackier self, they were holy. She feared that in my effort to tighten and clarify, I'd edit the passion right out. And what is poetry if not passion?
"Editing is editing," I told her.
An anecdote involving Isaac Asimov flashed in my mind. Isaac had been attending a writing retreat, and during the lunch break one of the participants asked him how it was going. He responded, "Fine. I placed a comma."
At dinner they met again, and the same fellow asked Asimov what he'd done that afternoon. Isaac said, "I removed the comma."
"Now that's editing," I said.
Janet then materialized and stood on the sheets of paper resting on my lap. I've never questioned how or why she does this, but invariably she pops to life when she's pissed. Once she appeared as a regularly sized woman--which is a whole other story--but most of the time she reveals herself like now, eight inches tall, a brunette Barbie doll dressed in a white tunic with golden sandals.
"It's infuriating how you always bring up this same example," she said, glaring at me with her bare arms folded in front of her. "Isaac Asimov was a left brain writer, so matter-of-fact, so non-fiction like. Critics said his stories resembled a diagram on a blackboard. He was a born editor, whereas you... you overcompensate in your editing because you're so right brain."
"Right brain? Left brain? I never can keep them straight."
"More proof that you're dominated by right brain thinking. I doubt that left brain writers like Isaac Asimov ever have discussions with their muse, much less visualize them."
When I first saw Janet I'd credited her appearance on too many experimental drugs, and I did everything I could to ignore her. Over time, however, I've come to appreciate her counsel. So what if others can't see her? She's great company and not a bad looker either.
"Okay," I said. "So I'm right brain. What's the problem with that? That gives me a marvelous imagination, right?"
I grinned, finished my wine, and glanced at Janet, who'd now taken residence on my folded knee. She stared at me, her head shaking in disbelief. "That lousy pun is exactly what I'm talking about--anything stimulates your imagination. One little word triggers a thought of something else, then off you go on another tangent, and pretty soon you're lost like Alice down the rabbit hole."
She rose gracefully and strolled down my leg toward my boot. "You've got to realize that every time you edit you're coming from a different perspective," she said. "Poems are a special animal." She turned and faced me. "Every poem represents a private sojourn into your psyche, and the finished product a passport into a gestalt revelation of that inner world. When you go tromping in with your editor's hat on, you completely distort these worlds."
I contemplated her words, then nodded. Janet gave me a thumbs up. "Now," she said, "close your eyes and remember the last day of the conference."
At the closing ceremonies of this year's Santa Barbara Writers Conference, a woman named Betty Lou (not her real name) won a poetry award. Her winning poem brought tears to my eyes--not only because of its content, but also due to the remarkable literary road she has traveled. Betty Lou had been coming to the conference for over twenty years, and each year she brought her same book-in-progress along with the changes she'd made during the previous year. And every year she'd cry in frustration because she hadn't gotten it right yet. Every year she'd failed to put the story of her daughter's plight into a polished narrative. Perhaps out of this frustration or because of someone's suggestion, this year Betty Lou put the synopsis of her book into the form of a short poem that not only said everything she'd wanted to say in her book, but said it in a way that touched us all.
"Now that's editing," Janet said.