Getting it Right

How do you know when you’ve got it right? 

Brenda starting off the week

This is a subjective question because my 'right' might not be the same as yours. Have you ever read a passage and thought, if it were me, I'd change this word, or I never would have written it that way ... Yet the author who penned the words believed they'd nailed it -- or did they?

Authors generally edit their manuscripts right up to the last second, and often lament not being able to make changes afterwards. For my part, I keep on tinkering until immediately before the manuscript is published. Even then, I'll see places the text could be improved if I could just have one more stab ....

I've judged some short story contests alongside two (usually) other judges. A few times, I've been gobsmacked at how differently we rate the stories. To me, the best are obvious, but my obvious is not the same as the others' obvious. We have differing ideas of what constitutes good writing or for what moves us.

It seems that the adage, 'you don't know what you don't know', applies to writing. As authors grow and improve their craft, we see our earlier work through a more critical lens. I had a chance to review a couple of my books in advance of the publisher reissuing them with new covers. I returned the manuscripts with a lot of tracked changes, but the editor only accepted about thirty per cent, not wanting to stray too far from the original text. I was applying my more honed writing skills to earlier work -- a painful exercise in some respects.

Getting it right is partly intuitive. The rhythm of the words, the sentences, the paragraphs; the cadence; the imagery, all come together in way that pleases the senses. I once took a Shakespeare course at university and remember the prof saying that while Shakespeare penned passages of pure brilliance, he also wrote more pedestrian passages to keep the plot moving. Not every word in a book has to be 'perfection'. Sometimes, you're simply keeping the story moving forward. I remember this often, and it keeps me not getting bogged down with self-doubt.

Yet there are those moments when rereading a passage that another author has written that I stop and feel the beauty of the words. This ability to move somebody with a description, image, character or scene never ceases to inspire me. There's a reason some books rise above the rest and become well loved by so many. It's good writing combined with story and that je ne sais crois. -- the intangible something that the writer brings to their work.

I've read moments when I thought an author had achieved perfection and have striven to achieve my own. There have been times I've been satisfied and perhaps even thrilled by the way a piece of my writing has turned out. Then, I send it out into the world and hope it affects readers in the way I intended.  

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