Protected: Writers Workshop: First Reading

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  • http://www.thefiftyfactor.com Joanna Jenkins

    Hi Jane, Your comment “…this is a letter to someone who doesn’t know you or your life…” made a lot of sense to me and helped refocus my thoughts/questions/comments as I read the original draft and the second draft/questions. It also helps greatly with my writing since I tend to wonder when points seem obvious to me (but not my readers).

    The second to the last paragraph is especially important to this story. It could turn into a few paragraphs and get to the root of the writer’s issues on aging.

  • Mary

    The questions you asked have made a difference in how I am looking at my own work. I sometimes get lost the “creative” concept when I start a rewrite, when my first direction should really be….did I make my point in a clear, concise, linear fashion. Only then can “style” come into play.

  • http://midlifebloggers.com byjane

    Let’s talk about revision, editing, macro, micro and all of them there edits. Forget all those words. What you want to be looking at this first stage of revision with this or your own work is this: What is the writer trying to communicate? Is the writer succeeding at communicating that? If not, why not?

    It’s difficult to do that with your own work because, after all, you know exactly what you meant to say. That is why this exercise, looking at someone else’s work, is so valuable. I can tell that some of you are a little impatient with this exercise, but trust me, it’s one of the most important you’ll get.

    Macro means looking at the big picture. Micro means sentence level work. Needlepoint this on a pillow: Revision=Re-vision. You’ll be hearing that a lot from me.

    When everyone finishes the exercise, I’ll weigh in.

    • cherirae

      I like the suggestion of “re-vision.” Clarity and specificity are a continual challenge for me. Often, when I finish a writing, I challenge myself to reduce the finished piece by 50% I’ve found this exercise to be extremely helpful in producing a piece that communicates in a clear, concise manner.

  • Lia

    Jane, I see how your comments are addressed to clarify specific sentences and ideas in the piece. You mentioned this is a first revision. How many macro edits does a piece need before you go to micro editing and is there anything in between? For example, here you addressed that the theme or focus has to first be developed and clarified and I get that that is macro editing. One of my comments was that words needed to be changed and you said that that was micro editing (as well as punctuation and spelling) and I get that. But, I know somel of us focused in on the title needing to be changed and that the Pandora’s box metaphor is out of place with the bright, happy future the 20 year old envisions. Would addressing these issues be “midi-editing” or wouldn’t that be part of macro editing – leading to further clarification of the theme or focus?

    I would then say that my agenda would/was not only to help the writer reach focus, but to immediately change those things, including the title, words and phrases that are contributing to the ambiguity. Am I jumping the gun?

  • http://inventingliz.blogspot.com Liz

    I think we had similar thoughts about the last two sentences, that they were the main point of the essay but the rest of the essay didn’t really lead the reader there. The writer needs to do more work up front to help the reader understand what those last two sentences are trying to get at.

    My take on it is that the future is more relvant now than when the writer was in her (?) twenties, not because it is so much closer, but because there is so much less of it! Or maybe those are really the same, the future is closer now because there is not as much of it. I am nowhere close to 64 yet, but I am becoming more and more aware that my future is finite (something I didn’t really grasp when I was younger), so I had better make the most of it!

  • cherirae

    I think our comments were similar in many ways. However, mine broadly addressed the piece as a whole while yours were much more focused and specific and referenced the exact line(s) you were addressing. Your specificity would better aid in assisting the author to write with more clarity.

    I really wasn’t sure what my agenda was in this last assignment. I was not familiar with the term “macro-editing” and, even when explained, for some reason I didn’t think of it as editing someone else’s piece but rather I thought of it as an exercise in macro-editing my own works. As I write this, I realize my original perception of the assignment really doesn’t make a lot of sense.

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