Storytellersunplugged

I have an extremely annoying man in my life.

He is extremely valuable, He is my writing consultant and plot bunny wrangler, my first-pass editor, my licenced weaselword hunter (you know, things like “seem” and “apparently” when I am perfectly firm and clear in my meaning and intent…), my line-editor for the final submission draft of the MS. He is, in short, an extremely important part of my writing process… and he happens to be my husband, which is nice because he has to do all these things for free (or at least because he loves me).

But annoying…? Yes, he is that. Tiresomely so.

If there is a scene I’ve shied from writing but which needs to be there, he demands it.

if there is a scene I have written and am in love with but which needs to be cut, he demands that, too.

He will read a rough first-draft of a chapter, and frequently his comment on the margin will be a red line bracketing a paragraph, sometimes several pages, and the word “FIX”. He knows better than to tell me how. He tells me there’s a problem, he tells me to go away and look at it again, to make it BETTER.

And I whine copiously - don’t WANT to write that scene, don’t WANT to cut that one, HOW do I make it better? - but what he does for me is not mollycoddling or spoonfeeding. That “FIX” that drives me demented actually shows something quite different - it shows a deep respect for my work, for me as a writer - an immense vote of confidence in what he sees to be my abilities. What he is telling me is simply that he - as a reader, as an editor - sees a problem in certain passages. He cannot tell me how to make it better because it is my work and my vision. But he is completely confident in his knowledge that I am able to do that, that i CAN make it better, that I have the “better” in me and that I owe myself, my story, my potential readers down the line, nothing less than that “better”. Nothing less than the best that I can deliver.

And that  imperial “FIX” spurs me into action. I will complain bitterly about the nebolsity of that comment - “Fix HOW?!? Do WHAT?!?” - but then I will go away and I will re-read the problematic passage, and i’ll prune, and reshape, and rewrite, and discard or add, and reframe, and deepen, and widen, and focus, and gain insight, and often have my characters trot out ideas that I had no clue that they had before I started to pay attention. And I’ve been in this game long enough, now, to know improvement when I see it, to viscerally feel that I have made something more than what it was once I re-read the finished version - and I have done it all with nothing more than that red-pen “FIX” in the margin driving me on, higher, deeper, into beauty and power and danger and vision. I could not, in the long run, tell you exactly HOW I made it better. But i sank my hands into my words up to my elbows and kneaded and got worf-flour on my nose and in my hair and even choked on some of it as it flew up and accidentally got swallowed or inhaled the wrong way. I worked at it. I worried at it. I melded with it until the stigma of that red “FIX” fades away and I can honestly say that I cannot do any better.

And then I’ll kick it back upstairs and ask for a second opinion.

And yes, there have been times it’s been handed back to me with a shake of the head. Not good enough. There’s BETTER in you. “FIX.”

And I scream, I can’t, I’ve done all I can, this is it… and then I’ll take it away and stare at it some more. ANd I’ll find something that niggles. And I WILL make it better.

And this time he’ll take it and read it and smile and nod.

He knew that I was able to reach that point. He knows that I CAN. He believes in me, that much.

He’s an annoying man. But without him, I would be diminished.

Yes, I CAN. Yes, you can too. Is there a tough passage you’re not sure about? Write a large red “FIX” next to it in the margin. And then read it again. And again. Until the words change phase in your hands and you realise that you’re holding water in your cupped palms instead of trying to paw uselessly at clouds of vapour, or you feel the burn of ice on your skin.

Make it concrete. Make it real, Make it live.

Make it better.

FIX.