I agree about revising a piece to your own standards and making it better (which is often shorter). I generally don't listen to one single journal telling me to revise a piece to their subjective editorial standards in hope of a future acceptance. From my own and from friends' experience, this rarely works out. A writing workshop leader once said, "Unless a journal or book publisher accepts your work with the provision that you make revisions, ignore them. Otherwise, you make substantial changes to writing that may have been fine as it was for other editors, with no guarantee that it will be accepted by the journal that requested revisions." Submit widely and join a writers group with good writers.
I found this piece very helpful. Struggling right now with constraining word count versus adding emotional depth and certain missing details. Thank you, B. B. Garin!
I found this article really helpful - thank you! I recently read Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" for the first time (I know it's been around for years) and she talked about the importance of writing
"shitty first drafts" in which she's trying to capture in her own mind what a story is about, who the characters really are, and then going back sculpting a coherent story out of that draft. Stephen King, in "On Writing", says he lets his characters interact, almost as if on their own, in early drafts, and then builds from there. I found their advice extremely helpful, and I think they're saying something similar to your point about a story needing the space it needs. Btw, I was also asked by a lit mag recently to change the ending of a story and they were quite prescriptive about what they thought it needed. We went back and forth about their reasoning, but in the end I decided it would change my vision of what the story was about, and it was not a change I was willing to make. I did learn a lot from the exchange though. I still haven't gotten published, but have had a couple of personal rejections, so I'm still feeling like it will eventually see the light of day.
This is good food for thought. Generally I find cutting a helpful exercise, but I definitely have some stories I've totally flattened because I'm trying really hard to make them fit a 2,000-word limit for a competition.
Agree with all that this is good advice and not the typical. I realized lately that I'm tired of my tight little art forms--what I'm calling my stories. I can always revise the language, but I can't always expand the story. One of Becky's interviewees said that maybe the main distinction between the good and the best--or maybe she said it was something she sees often--is that the good do not answer the promise of their beginnings at their endings. To learn to do that, for me, will take learning to do a lot of loose writing to find tensions inside and between characters. Again, a really good piece.
Very helpful, this perspective. I realize I sort of pride myself in being a brave cutter of words. But maybe I do forget to look at the story I'm telling in the meantime. Thanks!
I love the idea of examining the redundant adverbs, extra words, or clunky things that aren't quite right to delve into why you wrote them in the beginning. You may have subconsciously known something about your character that you can perhaps discover with a little luck, time and perseverance. Great example of the woman who 'quietly whispered'. Thanks!
Wow, thank you so much, I feel called out by this piece in the best way possible. After a month of marathon micro and flash writing and submission, I've very much been wanting to turn my attention to creating deeper, broader work with more components, but have found myself reverting to my slap-bang-boom flash revision habits. Gonna try "revise to expand" as a guiding principle for a while and see what happens, word count be damned.
I agree about revising a piece to your own standards and making it better (which is often shorter). I generally don't listen to one single journal telling me to revise a piece to their subjective editorial standards in hope of a future acceptance. From my own and from friends' experience, this rarely works out. A writing workshop leader once said, "Unless a journal or book publisher accepts your work with the provision that you make revisions, ignore them. Otherwise, you make substantial changes to writing that may have been fine as it was for other editors, with no guarantee that it will be accepted by the journal that requested revisions." Submit widely and join a writers group with good writers.
I found this piece very helpful. Struggling right now with constraining word count versus adding emotional depth and certain missing details. Thank you, B. B. Garin!
I found this article really helpful - thank you! I recently read Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" for the first time (I know it's been around for years) and she talked about the importance of writing
"shitty first drafts" in which she's trying to capture in her own mind what a story is about, who the characters really are, and then going back sculpting a coherent story out of that draft. Stephen King, in "On Writing", says he lets his characters interact, almost as if on their own, in early drafts, and then builds from there. I found their advice extremely helpful, and I think they're saying something similar to your point about a story needing the space it needs. Btw, I was also asked by a lit mag recently to change the ending of a story and they were quite prescriptive about what they thought it needed. We went back and forth about their reasoning, but in the end I decided it would change my vision of what the story was about, and it was not a change I was willing to make. I did learn a lot from the exchange though. I still haven't gotten published, but have had a couple of personal rejections, so I'm still feeling like it will eventually see the light of day.
This is good food for thought. Generally I find cutting a helpful exercise, but I definitely have some stories I've totally flattened because I'm trying really hard to make them fit a 2,000-word limit for a competition.
Agree with all that this is good advice and not the typical. I realized lately that I'm tired of my tight little art forms--what I'm calling my stories. I can always revise the language, but I can't always expand the story. One of Becky's interviewees said that maybe the main distinction between the good and the best--or maybe she said it was something she sees often--is that the good do not answer the promise of their beginnings at their endings. To learn to do that, for me, will take learning to do a lot of loose writing to find tensions inside and between characters. Again, a really good piece.
Very helpful, this perspective. I realize I sort of pride myself in being a brave cutter of words. But maybe I do forget to look at the story I'm telling in the meantime. Thanks!
Thanks is for this. I’m in the same place right now with one of my pieces!
I love the idea of examining the redundant adverbs, extra words, or clunky things that aren't quite right to delve into why you wrote them in the beginning. You may have subconsciously known something about your character that you can perhaps discover with a little luck, time and perseverance. Great example of the woman who 'quietly whispered'. Thanks!
Very helpful!!
Wow, thank you so much, I feel called out by this piece in the best way possible. After a month of marathon micro and flash writing and submission, I've very much been wanting to turn my attention to creating deeper, broader work with more components, but have found myself reverting to my slap-bang-boom flash revision habits. Gonna try "revise to expand" as a guiding principle for a while and see what happens, word count be damned.