Alright, so I am well aware that I promised to come back with a post revolving around editing, but a thought just struck me as I was editing, and I felt that I had to share.
Now, most seasoned writers know this, and although I've been writing my whole life and steadily writing for over a year now, I still struggle with this concept. I'm getting better, but I have a tendency to revert back into my old ways without even realizing it. I also have a tendency to talk and talk about something without actually saying what it is (see what I mean?)
The thing I'm talking about is overwriting. It's my personal writing demon, and it rears it's ugly head whenever I get into the zone, catching me unawares. Then, my faithful beta will read the chapter I send off to her and be like, "You need to cut this sentence." And, unfortunately for me, it's not just her--I've heard the same thing from many other people as well.
Now, this is not to say that all of my writing is overdone. However, there will be the occasional paragraph that is too dressed up and gaudy with adjective use and commas. And, as I sat here writing tonight, one sentence of my novel hit me hard in particular. Because I have zero shame, I'll share it with you here:
A tiny, miniature pond glittered in the center of a circle of willow trees, their long and spindly branches swaying in the light breeze, slow-dancing with the evening air.
Overwritten, without a doubt. I quickly changed it to this:
A small pond glittered in the center of a circle of willow trees, their spindly branches swaying in the light breeze, slow-dancing with the evening air.
Much better. And, although I already know this, it struck me: Simple is sometimes for the better. For instance, I usually shy away from simple descriptors like 'small' and opt for something like 'diminutive' or 'minuscule' instead. Which may be fine if that's one of the only adjectives in the sentence--but the rest of the example sentence is so full of description that a simple word like, 'small' serves only to compliment the remainder of it.
It seems that often times as fiction writers we feel like the writing has got to be the best thing in the universe in order to make it in the cutthroat world of publishing, and this can lead to making mistakes--trying to write too long of a book or too short of a book; trying to write about something you don't really know because it's the current trend in the market; or overindulging in the writing itself, like I do. If you're like me, you'll occasionally slip into the subconscious mistake of trying to shock and awe with overwriting. Don't do it--it can massacre your goal of a lower word count and take away from your plot and characters.
There are two extremes that I would suggest avoiding. One is obviously overwriting, but the other is also keeping it too simple. There is danger in each of them, and I feel like they're both equally as damaging to a book. People might cite examples of overwriting or over simple writing, like Tolkien and Hemingway, but they were the exception to the rule, and that was also a handful of decades ago. They each have their own style, and they were both brilliant, but for today's market I would say that in most cases the writing should fall somewhere in-between.
This whole post is a little hypocritical because I AM addicted to words, but I'm on the path to recovery. I still relapse from time to time, but I'm getting better about it. So, from one word addict to the rest of the writing population, I'm going to tell you KISS: keep it simple... sometimes.
Happy Monday.
