Word After Word

I’ve been talking a lot about how revising a manuscript is like dating, like relationship. How I have to go to the work in a good mood, in a friendly supportive mode. Just like I’d go to lunch with friends. I have to wait for the writing to ask me for advice, I can’t just roar in and force all these changes and focus on everything that is awful in the writing–the manuscript will fold under that pressure. It will run screaming in the other direction.

So my friend Elle,  who is also working on a book, said she read all this stuff I wrote about the relationship with revision and she has decided she is in a very dysfunctional marriage and she wants a divorce from her book. She says they are awful together. They are making each other miserable.  She says they do not enjoy each other’s company.

She’s funny. And she’s just carrying on.

I have friends who complain about their real human marriages too, but they love their spouses, very much, it’s just talk.

I told Elle how I read through my manuscript and wrote only praise to myself, made notes just on everything I liked. She thought this was the weirdest strangest thing she’d ever heard.

 It was very weird to do! I felt goofy and fake. It was hard!!

But I know having done this was the right way back into the revising. I know I am making better decisions (and having way more fun) staying focused on the strong parts. I’m working hard to trust this process of dating my book. I want to stay in love with it.

What I know so far is it’s important to ignore the flaws, just like in real relationship life. To work on it every day.  To surprise it with gifts (I have a new star chart!! I get prizes for ten days of writing. I can choose from an array!)  .  To listen to it. Really listen. Without judging. Without my own agenda.

Hemingway says: write the next true sentence. The next true thing. I’m off.