Dorothy Parker on Writing

"I can't write five words but that I change seven." Dorothy Parker.

The theme of this day is editing, revising, rewriting...but what caught my eye the most was Amy Peters' comment on perhaps why people dislike editing so much. She said: "Perhaps, they flash back to childhood days when having to rewrite a paper at school was taken as bad news. ...As Parker describes it rewriting and editing is an opportunity to improve and express your ideas." [Emphasis mine.]

So much in life is, shall we say, "renewing your mind." (God/Paul gets credit for that one: Romans 12:2) Part of the endless forgiveness we find through Christ is the washing away of old failures, both ours and others toward us. It means taking away the negative connotations we have from previous bad experiences, and letting us continue to experience life as if it were still new and wonderful.

In microcosm, we have writing: a process whereby we attempt to convey a story. After we've put it away for a moment we can revisit it, see where we have gone wrong. As Parker and Peters mention, the revision and rewriting process should not be a drudgery, but an opportunity to make a story more excellent, more like what we envision in our heads. Ask almost any writer, they will tell you that often the story that ends up on paper (or on screen) is not what they imagined when they sat down to write. Often our vision is far grander than our ability to communicate it is capable of.

As writers, it is important to renew your mind as today's devotional suggests; to get rid of the idea that editing and revising is an indication of failure, but is rather an opportunity to create something even better, to shape it into something far more wonderful and lovely than the first attempt.

It may not be as exciting as conceiving, incepting, or creating; but it is every bit as important if the goal is to arrive at something beautiful. I think we can all embrace that?

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