Writing as a Forest

27th April 2018

Always in the back of my mind looms Emily Bronte standing at her window looking out over the Yorkshire moors. Her only published book "Wuthering Heights" is behind her, panned of course by the critics. She is dying, coughing out her last from consumption, days from delivering her immortal words, "I will see the doctor now." And yet running through her mind are the revisions she would make to her book if only she could go back and tinker.
Tinkering is the habit of choice with writers, like a nervous tick, like an itchy hand reaching for a cigarette or a boozer dreaming of a glass in his hand. I had written over a hundred pages on my current project, when I gave in to the "tinker" call and went back to read my emerging book from the beginning. Oh, and I took the editor parrot with me on my shoulder, not the one who offers sound advice, but the one that tells you you're not up to the job.
I started switching words and phrases. This line over here would have so much more punch if I cut and pasted it over there. The talents of computers to move things around is actually a curse. In the old days, you'd have to get the damned manuscript typed all over again. Now, you just snip and move it down there at the end of the paragraph, and if you don't like the result, you can move it somewhere else. Hey Presto!

After all, writing is re-writing, so away you go with the scissors and the bottle of glue.
But it's too soon. Way too soon. Only about a quarter of the way through the wood, still trying to navigate with my flashlight, here I go running back to count the trees. This is one instance when you really should see the forest and not the trees.
Revisions can wait, and should wait, until you've made that initial raw cut.

It might not, and probably won't look good at this point. Give yourself a break. Michelangelo didn't pull his David out of the rock on the first cut.  Everything is fixable. Don't be insecure - it won't serve you well at this juncture. You have something to say, so hold onto that. The David in your mind can indeed be wrought out of something as unbending as rock. But for now keep that flashlight facing forward. Get to the other side of the forest and then, and only then, turn around and look along the path you have come.