Reading Your Work Like It’s Someone Else’s Garbage

I was just editing a 1st person re-write of a 3rd person chapter in a book with a ridiculously sarcastic and bitter main character who is frequently funny, without actually making any jokes. So, you can imagine the shit-show that I’m starting with. It amuses me that I once thought this would be a simpler book to write because it only has a handful of characters and the plot is totally linear.

Important side-lesson: All writing is evil.

Anyway, when I first read through this chapter, I was like “Oh, wait. This chapter seems kind of alright. I may not have to totally re-write it after all. I mean there’s a couple quirks I should probably work on, but I should be able to fix those no problem.  Oh… and maybe this one bit here… it’s a little out of order with this other bit… actually, this part here seems a little cliché. Maybe I should just…”

And the next thing you know, you’re involved in full-body reconstructive surgery using a chainsaw and a crate of dynamite. Body parts flying, blood caked on the walls, screams inconveniencing passers-by, and only a few people complaining about hacked-up Monty Python references.

But this seems to be kind of the deal. It’s far too easy to read your own work and think “Oh hey, this is good” because you are absolutely the worst judge of your own work. You’re great at criticizing other’s work, of course, but your own work is like your very own child, beautiful to the core, even while he’s busy setting mailboxes on fire and stealing from the ice cream truck.

The most important lesson I’ve learned somewhat recently is that my child- my writing- is actually the spawn of the devil. And no matter how cute he looks with those smears of ash on his face and pockets full of melting fudgsicles, I must sit and stare at him until I can see the evil. Because it’s there. I know it is. And, really, only I can get rid of it.

So my advice to everyone here is to read your work as if it was someone else’s garbage. I literally do the following these days when editing my own work…

• Say aloud “Ok, now I have to read this shit-sandwich this person calls writing.”
• Furrow my brow. (yes, I seriously do this)
• Squint in disgust at the writing. (yes, I seriously do this)
• Read every single sentence as if I’m the meanest and most vile English teacher I have ever had in my life (Loraine Lewis, thank you very much) and I experience joy when I find failure of any kind. (yes, Loraine Lewis is really the name of my high school English teacher, and yes she seriously was a vile human who gleefully induced suffering in her students)

Basically, this process amounts to not letting you get away with anything.  You know all those bits in your work that you read… but then you pause for just a moment because maybe it wasn’t quite right… but then you say “Naw! I’m sure that’s good enough!” and kept going? Nope. None of that crap. You let that kid run free and before you know it, he’ll be torching someone’s garage and snapping some girl’s bra strap.

It’s simultaneously amusing and extraordinarily painful (I’m referring to the process, not snapping bras… you sicko), but it seems to get the job done. I’ve brought chapters in to writing groups after this kind of exhaustive reconstructive surgery, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. More about small adjustments than “oh my god I have to throw this entire shit sandwich out and try again.”

That, to me, is progress. And writing, really, is all about progress. Try it out.

And stick with it. In the immortal and endlessly-pithy words of Howard Tayler, “Hands on keyboard, butt in chair.”