Love seeing those images of revised pages. You have the courage of the red pen! Props! It is really so satisfying to do that, over and over and over, until the work becomes crystal clear. Print out clean draft: work it and work it and work it and work it, in the margins in on the backs, with circles and arrows and cross-references, until there's no place to work at anymore and it's hard to follow what you've done. Then type it all in, print out a clean copy, and do it again. It's almost meditative sometimes.
You really get it, Erin—thank you!! “Prof. Biondi’s red pen” is legendary at this point, but I always showed my students how I also wield it on my own work. They were both shocked and gladdened at the fact that I submit my own work to the same process I had them go through. One of my students even mentioned my red pen in her speech as college Valedictorian, and there was a lot of laughter of recognition in the audience. :o)
Love that! Your red pen observes the golden rule! There really is something powerful about opening up one's own process to students – it completely dispels the illusion that we live somewhere in an ideal ethereal realm where words simply spool perfectly out of us without effort. And it also makes the point that writing is effort – over and over and over – even and especially for people who write for a living.
Thanks for the reminder! In my excitement of first drafts I am typically blind to my gross errors. The longer I spend on anything without a break, the blinder I become. Like staring at one color too long, its complimentary opposite starts to take over and you may even start to see gray.
Patience is an aspect of the writing process that is overlooked or ignored far too often today, as is the willingness to confront your own mistakes without interpreting them as personal failures. I just wrapped up a writing course, and I think the most helpful thing I said to the students (emotionally/psychologically speaking) was: "The majority of your writing is always going to suck. The majority of my writing sucks. At least half of everything I write ends up in the trash and never gets published. That's a feature of the process, not a bug. You're not filling up the trash can with bad drafts because you're a bad writer but because you're a good one. Trees have to be regularly pruned if you want good fruit; good editing is just pruning, and we do it for the same reason." I had to repeat that a few times throughout the course, but it started to sink in eventually; most of the students relaxed more visibly and seemed to start letting go of perfection paralysis.
Love seeing those images of revised pages. You have the courage of the red pen! Props! It is really so satisfying to do that, over and over and over, until the work becomes crystal clear. Print out clean draft: work it and work it and work it and work it, in the margins in on the backs, with circles and arrows and cross-references, until there's no place to work at anymore and it's hard to follow what you've done. Then type it all in, print out a clean copy, and do it again. It's almost meditative sometimes.
You really get it, Erin—thank you!! “Prof. Biondi’s red pen” is legendary at this point, but I always showed my students how I also wield it on my own work. They were both shocked and gladdened at the fact that I submit my own work to the same process I had them go through. One of my students even mentioned my red pen in her speech as college Valedictorian, and there was a lot of laughter of recognition in the audience. :o)
Love that! Your red pen observes the golden rule! There really is something powerful about opening up one's own process to students – it completely dispels the illusion that we live somewhere in an ideal ethereal realm where words simply spool perfectly out of us without effort. And it also makes the point that writing is effort – over and over and over – even and especially for people who write for a living.
Thanks for the reminder! In my excitement of first drafts I am typically blind to my gross errors. The longer I spend on anything without a break, the blinder I become. Like staring at one color too long, its complimentary opposite starts to take over and you may even start to see gray.
Exactly! Your use of the word "blinder" is perfect here, as stepping back and looking afresh is how one can re-vision.
Patience is an aspect of the writing process that is overlooked or ignored far too often today, as is the willingness to confront your own mistakes without interpreting them as personal failures. I just wrapped up a writing course, and I think the most helpful thing I said to the students (emotionally/psychologically speaking) was: "The majority of your writing is always going to suck. The majority of my writing sucks. At least half of everything I write ends up in the trash and never gets published. That's a feature of the process, not a bug. You're not filling up the trash can with bad drafts because you're a bad writer but because you're a good one. Trees have to be regularly pruned if you want good fruit; good editing is just pruning, and we do it for the same reason." I had to repeat that a few times throughout the course, but it started to sink in eventually; most of the students relaxed more visibly and seemed to start letting go of perfection paralysis.