Writing Is Also About Erasing (On Editors)

Writing Is Also About Erasing (On Editors)

Writing Is Also About Erasing (On Editors)

Before I became a published author, I didn’t like editors. I couldn’t bear the thought of them, with their red pens and their pursed lips, their eyes like crabs across the page, just looking to pinch at my text with their editorial pincers. I used to be terrified of having my words taken away from me as if each one was a precious child. I also had this ego-thing going on – that this was my art, my work, my creativity, and how dare some editor make decisions about something so lofty, so magical and mystical? Looking back now at my inexperienced self, I can understand this fear, and even feel compassion at my editaphobia. See, editing brings up our deepest anxieties about being good enough and having to let go.

Here are five things I’ve learned about editing, which may change how you feel about the process:

Editorial feedback is not a comment on our self-worth

Our words often make us feel vulnerable and exposed – we all feel a little naked when our writing is handed over to someone else to look at. But as writers, there comes a point where we have to get over ourselves. Writers who become successful authors have to learn to differentiate between feedback on our writing and on who we are. If a piece of writing is rejected, we are not worthless. If our writing needs work, we are still worthy of love. Over-identification with our writing is a mismanagement of the boundaries between our work and ourselves. At some point we just have to understand that though we are fabulous, lovable and wonderful people, our writing may need some work.

Editors are our allies – they are our ‘good’ readers

A good editor is your ally – she is there to help you make the text the very best it can be. An editor has an advantage of not being so close to the text that she cannot see what ‘works’ and what ‘doesn’t work.’ An editor is looking through the eyes of the reader – sometimes as writers, we lose sight of the reader, and believe that everything we’ve written is relevant and interesting. The editor will look at what we’ve written in terms of whether it serves the story. Not everything that is important to the writer is necessarily serving the story. We need the editor’s eye because it is objective.

 

The 7 Day Writing Challenge

WINGS: Words Inspire, Nourish and Grow the Spirit

Editors help the text to breathe by making spaces for the readers’ interpretation

Many of us overwrite. We use too many words and clutter the text. This is not because we are bad people. All writers lapse into word litter. Sometimes, if we are able to exit the right writing brain and enter the left, analytical brain, we are able to do this kind of editing on our own writing. But it’s much easier to have someone do it for us.

Editorial feedback helps us prepare for horrible reviews

We all get them – on Amazon and Goodreads and peoples’ blogs. Reviews that are downright nasty, ratings that are mean and comments that are hurtful. Writers need to be tough. We will never please everyone out there. We have to find our market and write for that market. We have to find our tribe of readers and as long as they enjoy what we do. We cannot worry about what the trolls are saying.

Editing helps us to learn to let go

We are naturally attached to our writing, given how deep and hard we have had to work to produce it. But we cannot get precious about our writing – it’s just writing. What gets cut can be re-used. Our brilliance will return. Beautiful sentences will re-appear. Nothing is ‘lost’ when we let something go. Creativity is an endless self-generating fountain. We need to learn to trust that.

May all your erasures make space for what is still to come.

Joanne Fedler

Joanne Fedler

Author, writing mentor, retreat leader. I’m an internationally bestselling author of nine books, inspirational speaker and writing mentor. I’ve had books published in just about every genre- fiction, non-fiction, self-help, memoir – by some of the top publishing houses in the world. My books have sold over 650 000 copies and have been translated in a range of languages. Two of my books have been #1 Amazon bestsellers, and at one point the German edition of Secret Mothers’ Business outsold Harry Potter- crazy, right?

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I Am Well if You Are Well

I Am Well if You Are Well

I Am Well if You Are Well

I was a week away from my due date. I was enormous and uncomfortable as I stood barefoot on the deserted beach. I had survived the past year. Barely. Grief and sadness swirled in me like aurora borealis. Birth demands hope. You have to be an optimist to bring new life into the world.

As I scanned the horizon, my heart heavier than the heft of my unborn son, a whale leapt out of the water, twisted in an air-dance before it disappeared again. I gasped. I have seen many whales breach, but none so completely.

It launched again. And again. Each time, my gasps turned to whoops, and then to laughter. I looked around as people do in the presence of large sea creatures, to say, ‘Check out that crazy backflipping whale!’ but I was alone on that beach, the only witness.

Eighteen years have passed, but the magic of that moment remains unabbreviated in my psyche.

When that whale soared in defiance of gravity, I swear, I felt chosen: to be the eye that sees the tree fall in the forest, so that it can be said, ‘it made a sound.’

Sometimes when we’re unravelling, all it takes is an instant like this to rewire us and bring us back. It’s not every day that we’ll find ourselves the only onlooker to an uncommon sighting in Nature such as this. But there is an equivalent witnessing process we can each draw on whenever we need it. And it happens through writing.

When we put words on the page, two mystical processes are activated. Firstly, we take up our position, no longer as a victim of our lives, but as an attentive survivor. It requires of us new and brave eyes because if no-one else has seen our grief we may have begun to ‘unsee’ it too. When asked ‘how are you?” we may have taught ourselves to say, ‘I’m fine, really,’ and ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ We may have become sanitation experts of our experiences, with easy, manicured responses to some of our most profound suffering.

There is danger in this wilful un-witnessing. In his beautiful book The Smell of Rain on Dust, Martin Prechtel writes, ‘It is a terrible source of grief not to be able to grieve.’ When we do not tend to ourselves in this deeply present manner, we tolerate illness, loneliness and invisibility. It’s exhausting not to feel the truth of our experiences.

Writing reverses all that. When we write, we volunteer to be the eye that sees. Heartache and loss – which perhaps has felt unshareable – is reshaped. And I would go so far as to say that even if no-one ever reads our words, we have by our own action declared, ‘My life is worth bearing witness to.’ That alone, is deeply healing.

 

Joanne Fedler

Joanne Fedler

Author, writing mentor, retreat leader. I’m an internationally bestselling author of nine books, inspirational speaker and writing mentor. I’ve had books published in just about every genre- fiction, non-fiction, self-help, memoir – by some of the top publishing houses in the world. My books have sold over 650 000 copies and have been translated in a range of languages. Two of my books have been #1 Amazon bestsellers, and at one point the German edition of Secret Mothers’ Business outsold Harry Potter- crazy, right?

Secondly, in writing, we summon our own hidden wildlife – it’s always there, just beneath the surface, the way the whales exist in the ocean long before we catch them playing in full sight. As we stitch language to emotion, we invite meaningful, creative conversations with ourselves about what it means to be alive. I believe this is what Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist meant when he said, ‘You have to learn to recognize your own depth.’

We may even fall back in love with ourselves when we receive – as we always do – a sign (the emotional equivalent of a breaching whale) that something powerful and beyond imagination survives within us. I have seen many people come back from the dead through their writing.

So how do we create an environment for this witnessing to flourish?

Martin Prechtel suggests we go down to the ocean to grieve, but never alone. Always with a ‘designated non-griever.’ Someone who ‘knows how to listen’ and who will not try to ‘cure you.’ The role of this person is to witness your grief, and to make sure you don’t drown. Someone to keep you safe, but not restrained.

As a writing mentor, I have started to think of myself as the equivalent of a ‘designated non-griever,’ someone who can remain compassionate and unflinching as people explore the desolations and wounds that have made them who they are.

The Shona tribe of Zimbabwe respond to the greeting ‘Are you well?’ with, ‘I am well if you are well.’

These words are  my invitation to anyone who wants to awaken through their writing. It’s been my dream to create an online community where people who have until now, felt alone in their suffering, can feel like they belong.

We have a shared responsibility to bear witness to one another’s grief, lest, as Cheryl Strayed reminds us, ‘the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live – well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.’

Storytelling is how we share this load with others and as a culture, carry one another forward. In telling our stories we put a call out in the universe, ‘Is anyone there?’ When our story touches another, who calls back, ‘I am here, if you are here,’ it’s as if for a brief moment a whale dances and hope leaps back at us, wildly and unjustifiably.

And we remember who we are and why we are here.

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Sometimes, People Don’t Trust Me

Sometimes, People Don’t Trust Me

Sometimes, People Don’t Trust Me

Sometimes, people don’t trust me. Here’s why:

When someone comes to me with a burning desire to write, or a story that’s wormed its way into their core, I am a cheerleader. Like the craziest, wildest, noisiest fan: ‘Go!’ ‘Keep going!’ ‘You can do this! You’re almost there!’

And this makes some people uncomfortable.

People mistrust enthusiasm. They think it’s insincere.

So sometimes, people think I’m bullshitting when I encourage them. As if perhaps I have some hidden agenda.

I get cornered with these questions a lot:
‘Joanne, do you really believe everyone can write? What happens if you read someone’s writing and you think, “This is shit. This person can’t write. Why would you still encourage that person to write?”‘

And here’s what I think:

Do I believe everyone can write?
Actually, I do. More than that, I believe in everyone’s right to write. If you can talk, you can write.

To decode this a bit more:

  • I do not judge whether someone’s writing is shit. I don’t use words like ‘shit’ or ‘crap’ to describe anyone’s writing – including my own clumsy clichéd words.
  • I prefer terms like ‘this works’ or ‘this needs work’ or ‘this doesn’t work.’
  • What I mean by ‘this doesn’t work’ is that the writing is not ready to be shared with others.
  • Writing is ready to be shared with others when the writer has done more than just hack out some words on a page.
  • It is ready when a writer has gone back – many times, and shaped, sheared and shorn the writing.
  • Writing that is clichéd, sentimental, sloppy and lacks structure or discipline is not ready to be shared.

But guess what? Everyone’s writing is like that – not only beginners, but first drafts of even the most accomplished writers.

Do I believe everyone should write?
No, but if you feel like writing, if you want to write, then why wouldn’t you?

Joanne Fedler

Joanne Fedler

Author, writing mentor, retreat leader. I’m an internationally bestselling author of nine books, inspirational speaker and writing mentor. I’ve had books published in just about every genre- fiction, non-fiction, self-help, memoir – by some of the top publishing houses in the world. My books have sold over 650 000 copies and have been translated in a range of languages. Two of my books have been #1 Amazon bestsellers, and at one point the German edition of Secret Mothers’ Business outsold Harry Potter- crazy, right?

Do I believe everyone can write a book?
Hell, no. That takes a certain kind of discipline. If you are a start-a-new-thing-every-week kinda person, or are born under the star sign of ‘this-is-too-hard-I’m-giving-up,’ or your Myers Briggs profile is ‘I-don’t-care-if-this-is-sloppy-maybe-no-one-will-notice,’ you are not going to write a book. If you struggle to finish anything (reading books, tidying up, getting out of relationships) you will never write a book. A book is for finishers. And if you never invest in getting support, help or input about how to write well, it is highly unlikely that you’ll ever finish.

Do I believe everyone can get published?
That’s a nope. Getting published is a whole new territory of torture – at least in the traditional sense. Because brilliant books are rejected by publishers. Because publishers publish slop. Badly written books. Poorly conceived books. And because a lot of inexperienced writers submit books before they are ready. But, anyone who can finish a book can get it self-published.

I have done 25 years of Buddhist work to curb my tendency to judge other people. And though I fail in many respects (thinking now of Trump supporters and smokers who get a thumbs-down in the quiet chamber of my internal jurisdiction), I have stopped judging other peoples’ writing. I come with a compassionate eye. I hold them to the highest vision I have for them. And I teach others to do the same.

When we judge others, we compare ourselves to them. And this is a plague to one’s own quiet conviction about the value of what we’re doing (we sorta all know this, right?).

What I do believe is that everyone can improve. Everyone can write something worthy of a reader’s attention . . . provided that:

  • you do the work,
  • you hold yourself to the discipline of self-discovery and mastering the craft.

So I will continue to cheerlead those who are passionate about writing. Even if their grammar is abysmal and their cliché’s a little nauseating. Even in the face of sloppy execution and incoherent structure. Because inexperience can be remedied by tutoring and those willing to work hard.

Not very glamorous in the end, but literally nothing can stop a hard-working writer who has mastered the 6 strengths I teach in my upcoming Author Awakening Adventure from bringing a book into the world.

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How to Salvage Your Writing from the Crematorium of Cliche

How to Salvage Your Writing from the Crematorium of Cliche

Aspiring writers sometimes ask me, ‘How can I write like you?’

The answer is, ‘You don’t want to write like me, you want to write like you. You want to find your writing voice, and that will be nothing like mine.’

But I get what people are really asking me. They’re asking me, ‘How can I write better than I write now?’

Here’s a littletrick: don’t write in cliché. Writing is limp and flavourless when it’s unoriginal. We have to consciously undermine our tendencies to write boring, wilting sentences. How? By feeling into paradox.

As soon as we feel ourselves slumping into easy stereotypes of ‘happy marriages’ and ‘broken hearts,’ that’s when we need to turn an experience over on its belly and investigate where it gets more interesting.

The engine of story is conflict. The meaning of things is revealed at the edges, not the soft centre.

Write about how love co-exists alongside grief; how envy creeps into friendship. Explore the revulsion that emerges in lust or the boredom that shows up in intimacy. Feel into the ambivalence in motherhood and the relief in death.

As writers it’s our job to work with these beautiful unruly tendrils that show up in experience. To write what is true and hard and real, we have to examine what we feel, remember, see and touch without judgement, to find out what it is like for us, and what meaning we make from it. Without the texture we bring to that exploration, our writing will just be same-old, same-old.

 

The 7 Day Writing Challenge

WINGS: Words Inspire, Nourish and Grow the Spirit

 

Don’t be afraid to invert. Writers must be brave in facing what is hidden. Our work is to bring light into shadow and shadow into light, to unsettle the obvious and startle the story.

Here’s a little table for you to practice exploring paradox. Have fun writing into the strangeness of these opposites:

BITTER                             SWEET
QUIET                               ROAR
ELEGANT                         WRECK
SAINTLY                           PERVERT
CREEPY                           GENTLEMAN
SINKING                           HOPE
ENLIGHTENED                GRIEF
GUTLESS                         WARRIOR
NEUROTIC                       MINDFULNESS
SELFISH                           GENEROSITY
PRECIOUS                       DUST
DELICATE                         STRENGTH
WISHFUL                          SPITE
EAGER                              INDOLENCE
PERFECT                          MISTAKE
REVERED                         CRIMINAL
SPECTACULAR                ORDINARINESS
SURPRISING                    DULLNESS
UNKNOWN                       CELEBRITY
PRECISE                           ELUSIVENESS
BROKEN                            BEAUTY
COMPOSED                      WILDNESS
WICKED                             BENEVOLENCE
INDIFFERENT                    CURIOSITY

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In Search of Words about Writing

In Search of Words about Writing

In Search of Words about Writing

What is it like to write?

When I first discovered Dylan Thomas in my early teens, it unbolted a mayhem of yearning inside me. I knew only that I wanted to do that with language, to cause a rousing inside another, simply by the laying down of words in a particular order so that they pierce and prod, stir and surprise.

But it was only when I started writing in my twenties that I learned my own way into the writing process. Until then, I had never heard of how in writing you might come across your own strangeness and feel yourself grow large and curious as words trickle from somewhere (inside? outside?) like soft rainfall, and make their way onto a page. And then how you might stand back on the crest of a day’s work and appraise the shape of the world you have formed from nothing – a blank page.

When I’m in the density of writing a book, Zed notices. He says I disappear. A part of me slips away. My personality changes. I talk less. I recoil from noise. I cannot watch TV. I prefer my own company. But in this fading out, I am filling up. I’m surging, closing in on something that feels just within and just beyond my grasp. I close my eyes and let myself sink. I tumble like Alice down the rabbit hole, and any disruption, no matter how small breaks the reverie, like an alarm clock on a deep and powerful dream. It’s a radical act of surrender to an energy carrying me, a tiny surfer on a massive wave, sourced beyond the confines of my body and my ego.

I love to write when I’m half asleep, sometimes with eyes barely shut, and see what seeps out.

 

The 7 Day Writing Challenge

WINGS: Words Inspire, Nourish and Grow the Spirit

Writing is searching for a vein, the best vein, piercing the surface and letting the blood flow.

It’s an affair without the guilt. Knowing something others don’t – being in on a secret entirely your own.

It excites me in a way that nothing else does, a blind date with yourself, replete with eager anticipation – will this work out or won’t it? Will you leave with a flutter in your heart or disappointment? You never know until it’s done.

In my day-to-day life, I’m foolish and mundane; but in writing, I can be wise and profound, to the point of utter unfamiliarity, of self-startling, the way we might gawk at ourselves in the mirror, after a professional makeup artist and hairdresser have done their jobs. Who is that person? Consequently, I like much better the person I am when I write. I’m more interesting, fascinating, deep and thoughtful. When our writing is carefully edited and rewritten, not the blurt of a first draft, every single weighed up word is a musical note in a perfect melody. Writing is architectural, structured, the ‘mathematics’ in Jorge Luis Borges’ equation ‘art is fire plus algebra.’ It is a true marriage of the wild, mysterious and untamable, and the careful construction of engineering and craft.

You sometimes hear of people living double lives – I know a woman whose husband pulled this off before he left her for his second family. I can see the appeal – especially for those of us who find the idea of choosing one set of circumstances annihilating of freedom and choice. When I write, I am living this double life, without the commute or the deception. I am a self, larger than my choices and more beguiling than my personality. I can opt for the predictable and unimaginative (heterosexuality, monogamy, parenting, mortgage) because when I write, I breathe fire. I can force language do to things I cannot force anyone or anything else to do. I can pair words that do not belong together: heart-sweep. A bonfire of the groin. A huddle of psychoses. I don’t loathe myself for sitting in my sweatpants all day as long as I dance in stilettos and castanets on the page.

I do not know if I want to be myself if I cannot write. It is, like all terrible loves, filled with both longing and terror of how I would cope if I lost it.

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