And I'm Back! Changing the Writer's Perception

I have a whopping 6 1/2 minutes before my lunch hour is finished.  I recently paired up with (hired) a professional editor who works in the Publishing Industry.  (Since I haven't checked with him on blogging about him, I won't say much except that it has been awesome so far.)

Early on in our back-and-forth email fest, he said something that sparked my writing fire. 

To preface, it is said over and over, and over again, across nearly all writing resources, that less is more and it is better to show than tell.  But when writing, at least as a new writer, it can be difficult to tell when one is showing versus telling.  And one can grow attached to one's writing and not want to let it go.

He gave a quick critique of my opening sequence, something I've been nervous about for a variety of reasons.  To paraphrase, he said that I did well at narrating, but gave too much information, which  can be overwhelming to the reader.  Events within the story can show this playing out later.

Really cool information that widened and changed my perception.  I was so close to the material that I wasn't seeing the bigger picture like a reader would.  So, I've read the first MS again and made mental notes of where I saw this happening and where it plays out (and caught some errors, yikes, that I didn't know were there from when I fixed the auto-tabs, along with some typos - I swear, it doesn't matter how many times I read it...just when I think I've caught everything, I haven't.).

However, this truly helped with my writer's block because once I found that sweet spot in MS #3, I looked at the writing differently and saw exactly why I wasn't happy with it.  In my attempts to get notes down about the story, I was telling and then showing what had just been told - redundant as hell.  In what spans about eight pages now, I cut more than a thousand words, blended scenes together, and cut whole paragraphs that were unnecessary.

I look forward to working on it and getting it into a place where I can start making progress again.  My brain is no longer stuck on that last line, no longer able to plan ahead.  I know how this thing ends...and now I'm much better prepared to take it there.

This has been enlightening.

And just because I'm presently emailing a judge who agrees with me on the word...SHENANIGAN!

Yes, that was totally unrelated, and as always, please forgive any typos or whatnot!  In a hurry!  ^_^