Trapezoid I (Detail). 2010.
.75×1.5m graphite/ink/charcoal
Defty K. Menglesis | menglef.org
I’m going off-script now. I’m going to need you. Now we get up to our elbows in blood and bone, together.
In a few days, I’m going to start a series of professionally relevant, deeply difficult edits. Publishing, so I gather, is a business that keeps its cards close to its chest; I don’t want to tell you why I’m editing, or what, or for whom.
I’ll be blogging about the process as it happens: what type of changes I’m going to make, the various approaches I use to solve problems. I imagine most of the work I do will be content edits: lopping off enormous chunks of text, grafting new ones on, stitching the manuscript back together afterwards.
How convenient — just as I was beginning to cover content editing. Perhaps this process will be of some use to you. Perhaps my mistakes will serve as lessons about which techniques to avoid. I’ll try to report happenings as faithfully as I can, but I’ll use newly-created text as examples rather than the genuine article. I love you but I won’t ruin my career for you, so at times you’ll have to be content with vagueness and summary.
I’m a nervous wreck. Am I good enough? Can I make these cuts; can I make them cleanly enough? I want to be good — a really good writer — and I don’t know, honestly I don’t, whether or not I’ll be able to write these edits up to my own standard. I hope you’ll join me; I hope you’ll help me.
not very alice 
guyospeaks
March 17, 2012
You’re an amazing writer Alice. Your use of the language is beautiful and I believe I’m falling in love with your prose. Based on what I’ve read so far, you will meet this challenge and deftly orchestrate what will no doubt be a literary model for us all. Although there is always the chance of failure, that’s the thrill of living life. The uncertainty. The notion that we are guaranteed nothing. The certainty that we can’t know what our next step will bring into our lives.
Move forward with the confidence that you have prepared yourself for this very moment. I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe in Providence.
Guy-o
Caroline Webster
March 23, 2012
I’m inspired by your work as well and trust that you will have the patience, confidence, inspiration, and craft necessary to reVISION your manuscript.
Gail Carson Levine writes in her book on Writing Magic, “There is no such thing as a perfect book or a perfect story. . . No matter how hard we writers try, we will never achieve perfection.
Perfection doesn’t matter . . . Besides, readers care less about perfection and more about connection, getting caught up in a story, caring about the characters . . . Writing is a skill, and the more we do it, the better we get at it. I expect to be learning to write till I die. There’s always more to learn, and that may be the best thing about being a writer.”
You have already soared past “good enough” and a “really good writer.” Don’t let a quest for perfection stall you.
Trust, breathe, write, connect.
Thinking of you!!!
Alice M.
March 23, 2012
Thank you both. I’m grateful for the support and I hope my completed work doesn’t dash the expectations of such generous praise.