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Experience is an Action Word

In Christina Katz’s weekly e-zine, she continues her discussion on the 52 Qualities of Prosperous Writers.

This week’s quality is experience.

*****

Experience is an action word.

It’s a noun, yes. But, the word – and the meaning behind it – comes alive with action.

Last week, I experimented with a short story rewrite, deciding it not only needed a good trim but a rigorous reduction in extraneous verbiage.

I’ve rewritten passages before and added words here and there, but I’ve never attacked a whole story with the goal of cutting the word count in half. I needed help, so I turned to other writers. I posed a question here, and several people commented with great suggestions.

Over a course of several days, and several draft print-outs, I attempted to trim a 3500+ word story to just under 1200 words. Each time I considered a strikethrough, I leaned on the experience and words of those writers:

  • Cut the facts, keep the emotion.
  • Get rid of the passages that are better expressed elsewhere in the story.
  • Cut the beginning and introduce the conflict in the first sentence.
  • Take off the ending.
  • Follow your intuition.

The initial cuts were easy. I crossed out the ending without a problem, and I condensed the beginning two paragraphs into one concise sentence. My pen danced through unnecessary adjectives and random details. But after the third pass through the story, I still had well over 200 words left to cut.

Talk about killing your darlings…It pained me to think of losing even one more word, let alone a few hundred. Then, I read Jordan Rosenfeld’s recent post, at Make a Scene, about deep-cut revising, and trusted her when she said weeks later I wouldn’t even notice what I bumped from the story.

So, I cut whole scenes, gave one character the boot, and said farewell to descriptions that no reader would love as much as I loved them.

As I got closer to 1200 words, the skeleton of a story that remained read so choppy that I wondered if I cut too much. But, I weaved the story back together with careful precision – into a sensible plot – and ended just under the 1200 bar. I then sent the “new” story off to a few writing friends to see if it held together well. Comments were positive, and I was able to work in a few more suggested changes while staying under my word limit.

The experience I gained through this experiment was invaluable. I learned several things about my writing – I write on and on sometimes and plenty of what I say can be cut without losing the premise of a story.

This rewrite experiment also taught me that, while writing is a solitary act, I rarely do it alone. I ask around when I’m not sure how to begin a story or edit a story or end a story. And in listening to other writers’ suggestions – and their experience – I find the courage to attempt new writing challenges myself.

Then, I celebrate my success when the story I just slashed still reads like a story and not like a ticker tape.

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I am my own boss.

Christina Katz, at The Prosperous Writer, sends out a weekly e-zine in which she writes about the 52 Qualities of Prosperous Writers. This week’s topic is Accountability.

I don’t have an agent. No publisher is knocking at my door begging me to sign a contract for a book not yet complete (does that even happen in real life?). I don’t get paid to write –yet. So, what makes me accountable?

Why keep writing?

I spent years dreaming, thinking, saying out loud, “Some day I want to be a writer.” My mother believed in me. Not concerned if I could tackle story structure and character development, or if I could decipher theme and irony, she asked me to pen a story about her. If she were still living today, and reading this blog, she’d make me accountable. It’s hard to say no to your mother.

The day I signed up for my first writing class – no, strike that – the day I sent my first nonfiction piece to a legitimate literary magazine, I named myself a writer. Since then, I’ve had visions of quick success, flashes of failures, and heavy doses of reality. I wondered if I would ever be a serious writer. But, not once did I consider returning to the days of not writing.

Accountability keeps me engaged in what I love.

This blog makes me accountable. Every Wednesday, I write on the Word of the Day. No one pays me, and I happened to choose a day of the week when my time is always scrunched. Still, I post a flash fiction, a short essay, something.

Writing salons keep me accountable, and connected. If I’m too quiet in a group, someone sends an email, because – as writers – we know that silence can be a deadly.

And, oddly enough, Twitter makes me accountable. When I tweet that I #amwriting, I commit myself. I doubt all 109 of my followers are waiting, with bated breath, to read the end result of whatever it is I am #writing. But I’m a people-pleaser, and I can’t bear to think I might leave even one follower hanging.

Accountability.

Christina Katz is right when she says:

You understand that your success is contingent upon this ability to be dedicated to your work and you don’t shirk your deadlines or commitments or take them for granted.

What makes you accountable?
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