Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash I loved fairy tales. I knew what I’d do if offered three wishes. I was sure I’d be nice to the king’s youngest son – even in disguise. I wanted to be a writer because you could tell stories all day. Live in a house by the beach. Never work in an office. Best of all – you’d have an editor who understood exactly what you wanted to say and fixed everything you wrote and made it better. But. Becoming a writer means not only learning how to accept criticism, it also means killing your darlings, and letting go of the fantasies. No matter how many novels or stories I wrote or tried to write, no matter how many jobs I had working as a writer, the magical editor never appeared. I’d always be faced with marked-up copy that left me with days of revising. So when someone sends me a manuscript that’s a bit of a mess and I know they’re hoping I’ll send it back all polished and perfect. I try to break it to them gently. Comments are closed.
|
Let's talk about drafts
|