“Hard Writing Makes Easy Reading” Wallace Stegner
I recently completed Jericho Writers Self-Editing course with Debi Alper and Emma Darwin. I discovered Jericho a year ago and planned to attend their summer writer’s festival in person. However, that speck of RNA floating around the world, aka COVID, changed all that.
Instead, I attended Jericho’s Summer Festival of Writers, #SFoW, delivered in an innovative online forum over three months. There, I was introduced to Debi Alper in her seminar on self-editing. It was apparent this woman knew her stuff, and she scared the hell out of me.
But when do we ever grow if we take the easy way out? I enrolled in Debi and Emma Darwin’s six-week Self-editing course. I knew the bar would be high––and it was.
This may have been the most unique and valuable writing/editing course I’ve experienced. I say, experienced as it went beyond taking a course. The value of the material was rich, the contribution of my classmates generous, and Debi’s hands-on involvement embodied “show don’t tell.”
As humans we all strive to be needed, wanted, valued. Perhaps I'm using too many words to say the same thing, as I am wont to do, but I like the balance of a triad. Allow me some license.
We’ve been taught that publication is the brass ring, the thing we long for, giving validation to our writing––to ourselves. I think it’s something deeper. We want to be seen and heard, recognized. And, we want to belong. To be part of a team, part of tribe.
It's always struck me that publication as a goal, in and of itself, is a slippery slope leading to a constant craving for approval from a myriad of unidentifiable beings. As much as the next guy or gal, I don’t want to put the assessment of my self-worth in the hands of others, but we've been conditioned by external measurements. It's easy to get addicted to likes and follows.
Do I write this as a pre-emptive excuse to give up on getting my project to publication? Absolutely, not, but it’s important to know our individual goals and recognize what "breaking the tape" looks like. We can’t be afraid, even though we are.
When I was participating in triathlon, every training day or non-A race event had a specific goal. I might add that for the A-races, the big events, the goal was to just to finish the damn things––alive. On training days, even if the goal was just to make a minor adjustment in my swim stroke or shave a second off my run split, there was always a purpose. Did I do all this so I could make the podium at the world championships in Hawaii? No way––I wasn't the least bit close to being that level of an athlete, but I knew my why.
During the process of writing The Nature of Forgiveness I had a trusted friend as my go-to for reading early drafts and calling out my sh&t. In addition to challenging me to do better, we talked about "my why." She knew I was writing to figure stuff out. I knew I was writing to figure stuff out. This is a book I had to write. I had to get this out of my system, but I wanted to produce the best writing I possibly could, and this course will help me cross my personal finish line.
What makes racing different from writing a book, if you’re not under contract to publish, is that there was always a race date on the calendar, always a hard stop, ready or not. The danger in writing at this level is knowing when to freeze the smoke. There will always be a comma that needs unsplicing. You can always find a better word than the one you used, but if we analyze until we sterilize, there would never be a finish line.
Seeking evaluations from my peers and editorial advice, such as this course provided, moved me along the path to the finish line.
It gave me the markers of whether or not I was heading in the right direction. Just like the goals on training days, it gave me focus and provided small victories on the way. In the words of Wallace Stegner in Crossing to Safety: "Hard writing makes easy reading."
My book is a quiet book for a small market, and I'm fine with that.
Thank you Jericho, Debi, Emma, and the rest of my courseniks: I will get this across my finish line