Edit Your Work

Question

I'm in a strange place tonight. Sorry in advance.

I'm not being "mean" or "controversial" or any of that stuff.

But the absolute reason for having thought of thinkwrite in the first place is to force (that's an intentional word there) casual writers into editing their own work.

I've been browsing the various challenges tonight. There are some real gems out there. But the concise word counts and word lists seem to be on the decline and the open-story idea seems to be all the rage.

Yay for you all and bully-for-you and all that rot.

But there is a LOT of real crap in here.

And what is so sad to me is that there are so many germs and and seedlings of great ideas that are lazily thrown out without constraint in the form of senseless stories that are unreadable from the very first line.

People - I get it. I do. It's a love-in.

But stop it.

This casual phoning-it-in and then congratulating each other on the germ is such a waste of good talent.

That germ has to be made into a seed. It has to be grown and nourished and loved and guarded and protected through an actual process. It has to be honed and polished and made to be great. Not okay or good - but great.

We all have this ability.

Make the challenges harder not easier.

Do the work.

I'm not preaching and I don't care at all what any of you have to say about this. This is, in essence, a letter to myself.

Keep it tight.

Comments

I should edit myself huh? Thinkwrites keeps timing me out tonight. So now we have a dupe. Sorry. D'uh. And I guess I could've edited that last but it wasn't a story was it?

Love you all and all your stuff. Just make it better k?

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Ah, ron...good to have you back, man.

I get what you mean about open challenges, and "it's a love-in" and all that.

I'll tell ya, for me, it's so much easier to offer praise than criticism. Find something good about a piece and compliment that. I'm also wary to offer up criticism, because I'm not the greatest myself. My work deserves to be critiqued more harshly, and it's not. Also, I'm not sure any criticism I offer would be constructive. I mean, sure, when I see grammar/punctuation errors and the like, I'll comment on it, but I don't think I have the knack for critiquing beyond that.

And I have more to say, and I'll say it later, but I'm being rushed out the door half an hour early for work. And the day's off to a beautiful start.

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Midnight.... You're the best writer here or on TD or any other "casual" medium I know of. You are uniquley qualified to be critical - but you may "choose" not to. And that's a shame. Don't coddle. Nuf said.

Answer 1

Good points, Ron.  Every time I see someone who doesn't know the difference between "There, their, or they're", it puts me off.  Let me post this before I time out.

Answer 2

Ok Ron, how about a little practice.  You take one of the stories from ThinkWrite and post it here.  It can be any piece...a poem, story, rant, rave etc and it could be from any thread.  You "copy" it into a response and we'll all take a shot at a re-write and see what happens.  I agree with you that editing has taken a back seat to the "love fest" as someone called it.  Lets work on your idealogical problem. k?

Comments

Wow. Doug.

I've been hesitant to come back to this thread tonight because I thought I'd be villified. But dang skippy... Nice challenge.

OMG.

What a really nice challenge. Edit each other.

This might be bigger than you think. Or maybe not. Maybe you do realize what you're starting. It could be the best thing here or there ever.

You edit me and I'll edit you.

Holy paragraph-symbol Batman - I think this could be inspirational.

And it could work. Yay.

Let me give this some thought and look over some stuff.

And let me remind - I'm no "real" editor. I don't know my grammar from my schmitzar. When I "beg" you all to edit I am talking content - not grammar. I am talking about distilling your idea into some white-hot distilate of purity - I don't give a shit bout no grammar.

Hmmm.....

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Ron:  Ok you did "get it".  I'm not talking about just grammar either.  I'm talking bout' rewording, revamping, overhauling content to make stories tighter and more meaningful.  Yes, i think this could be a grand thread.  You start it off like I challenged you to.  So midnight is the best writer huh? :)

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Ron, I think you didn't get villified because the site keeps timing out and nobody was able to actually post a proper reply. xP
I had quite a lot to say and spent a lot of time putting it down and then it didn't go through and I lost it all. (Yes, I did think at some point that I should Ctrl+C before I post, but, as luck would have it, I just forgot.) And I was too upset to write again.
Not that I was going to villify you. I was going to say how I know what you meant but it seemed you were doing it the wrong way and how it made me rethink if I wanted to keep writing here or not... Anyway, let's just say your message had quite an impact on me.
I do support the editing challenge idea, I think it could be fun. Personally, I'd be hesitant to do that, unless I was asked to by the author, but I think Poet can vouch that just because I hesitate, doesn't mean I'm not gonna do it.
One of the things I wanted to say yesterday is that, while criticism is absolutely essential to progress, sometimes you can do more by encouragement. I, for one, will not hesitate to give criticism where it's due. If you ask any of my friends they'd say I'm very hard to please. But, if I like something, I'm also going to say it, because if we'd all just criticise each other, most would give up writing due to a lack of confidence. Also, just being able to read other's stories is an excellent learning experience. I haven't been on here long and I already feel like I've learned a lot. Many people here have a unique and creative way of thinking (yes, you included) and it's really a blessing to be able to see some of it come alive. So, even without any comments, those that really have potential would still gain a lot from this site.
You also mentioned how there aren't enough challenges with word lists. Being new here, maybe I got the wrong idea, but I noticed that you have a sort of "pass the torch" thing going with these challenges. And to me it would seem impolite if I made up a challenge of that sort without being given the torch. I'm assuming I'm not the only one that feels that way, so therein may lay the root of that issue.

Having said all that, I still ask you to critisice the crap out of my responses (and my challenges!), because if there's something I can do better, I'd like to know. I also want you to know that I'm not gonna spare anyone, whether you like it or not, just like I've done so far. I apologise if I offend anyone in the process, it won't be intentional, I deeply respect you all.
I love the site and I'm glad to see you in a better place, Ron. Keep up the good work.

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Yay, it went through!
I also just got an idea, very similar to yours, doug. How about a challenge where you take one of your existing responses from this site and cut it in half? Make the same statement, but use half as many words, or half as many paragraphs, or half as many lines, doesn't really matter, as long as it's considerably shorter.

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Spots...I think that is where we are heading with this thing.  More with less, tighter editing/more meaning.  It wouldn't be a "slam" on anyone's writing just an exercise or a learning experience.  I'll defer to Ron on this one, but if he doesn't start it off I will.  I do have an idea where I'd like to go with this.  In the past we've done the re-write of someone else's story when prompted, but I think it would be nice for everyone to have a crack at editing the same story.  I wouldn't care if it was one of mine.  Most of my stuff as you have already figured out comes blazing out.  I do use "word" etc. to make sure it's semi-clean except in the comment sections where I just type away!  Back to bed for me.  We just had a big storm move through...more tomorrow on this subject, I promise.  I'd like midnight's and giraffe's take on this too.

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I think we should also note that there's a difference between offering constructive criticism and just being mean.  Construstive criticism would be something like offering a different option for sentence structure or suggesting that perhaps someone might give a little more or less information about something in a story.  Telling someone their work sucks or that they have no skill or ability is just plain mean and I think we're all just as happy not to see that sort of thing going on here.  
I'd be interested to see how others would edit any of my pieces so feel free to use anything I've written without fear of repercussions.

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few things...

1. as far as being timed out, which has been mentioned a couple times here...it's happened to me. Hit refresh and it'll post, though.

2. To finish the comment I started earlier and then got interrupted by work...I was saying I have trouble with constructive criticism, and that's very true. I also have horrible trouble editing my own work...it's been an ongoing problem for me. The words come out raw, and I like them raw. One of the hardest lessons I learned in my poetry class in high school was editing my work...it was something I'd never, ever done before. That was one of the reasons I was drawn to the initial ThinkWrite challenge from TD with the exact word count, because it forces editing. It's a huge learning experience to cut my own work like that, and I love it. It's harder with more open challenges because there's nothing forcing me to edit, so I don't.

3. Yes, I can vouch, Spots does offer constructive criticism and doesn't pull punches. And I like that.

4. I love the idea of an editing challenge. Goes back to what I was saying before, if something is forcing me to edit, I'll do it. But otherwise I'm at a loss editing my own work. I like Spot's idea of cutting one of our own stories in half. I also like Doug's idea of editing someone else's work. A fresh set of eyes and a new take on it is a wonderful thing. And I welcome anyone to edit anything I've written. I'd feel honored.

5. I agree with Dragon about a difference between constructive criticism and just being mean. And that's where my problem lies. I can tell someone I don't like something, but I have a harder time being constructive about it and offering fixes.

6. Sorry, I'm rambling now I suppose. Hope you all have a super night!

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Yes. She is. Period.