The Joys of Editing

The first time I ever remember showing my dad something I’d written—I was in middle school, I think—he peered at the pages through his tortoise-shell specs, and then, when he got to the end, said, “Great job. Now go back and take out half the words.”

He wasn’t exaggerating for comic effect.

He literally wanted me to take my little story back to my desk, physically count up the words on the pages, and then scratch them out, one-by-one, until I had divided the total in half.

Guess what? I did it. It would never have occurred to me not to do it.

My dad was a lawyer by then, but before he’d become a lawyer, he’d been a newspaperman. He’d worked at the Detroit Free Press during the riots in the ‘60s—and the whole paper had been awarded a Pulitzer for their coverage.

You don’t tell a man with a Pulitzer that you want to keep all the words in your story. You just sit down at your desk with your 4-color Bic pen and get to work.

Nowadays, as a novelist, I sometimes teach creative writing classes.

Sometimes I do this exercise with people, just to see how they’ll respond. I give them a prompt and ten minutes to fill up a page with writing, and then when they’re done I make them scratch out half the words.

Some people don’t take too kindly to it.

Some people really, really don’t want to change anything.

But I always make them, anyway. Because being a writer—really being one—means being a re-writer. I don’t just think you have to be willing to re-write, I think you have to be excited to do it. Eager, even. I think you have to enjoy it.

And whether or not you enjoy it—as with so many things in life—has a lot to do with how you think about it.

My mom is math person. She loves math.

I, in contrast, am math challenged.

I remember as a kid sitting at the kitchen table as she tried to help me figure out algebra. I remember her telling me that one of the things she loved best about math was how finite it was: You work the problem, get to the end, and wah-lah! You’re done.  

With writing, she pointed out, you were never really done. There was always more you could do. It was so . . . unfinished.

But that, right there, was what I liked about writing. Maybe you were never really done—but you were never totally wrong, either.

No matter how much was wrong with something you’d written, there were always things that were right, too. And not just right, but really working. Sometimes even great.

You were never just wrong. It was never just over. You could always go back and re-read, and evaluate what was on the page, and try to whittle away what wasn’t working.

My mom saw going back over and over drafts as a lot of work, but I saw it as an opportunity. There was always hope for that poem or that story or that essay. You could shape it and change it and nudge it closer and closer to the best version of itself.

I think, if you really want to write, you have to enjoy that process. You have to like changing the words. You have to be not just willing, but excited, to play around with the words, and experiment, and try new things. You have to be deeply curious about what the words in your head will look like on the page, and then what they’ll sound like in your mind once you read them back to yourself. You have to love that process of translation. It has to feel a little bit like play to you—trying one word, then another: one set of sounds, or number of syllables, or collection of associations. It has to be fun.

When I was in third grade, my parents gave me a typewriter, and the first thought that went through my head was, “Now I can be a writer.”

I got some paper, threaded it around the roller, and typed up a story. For a minute, I was thrilled. The thrill of creation was really something. Watching the words accumulate on the page was pretty great, too. This was happening!

But after I ceremoniously yanked the page off the roller and re-read it, I realized it really wasn’t very good. I actually remember having that thought: “Oh. This really isn’t very good.” Like, That’s a shame.

Looked like I wasn’t much of a writer, after all.

But I gave up too easily, of course.

It’s taken me a slow lifetime to learn all the things I didn’t know then. That being a writer is much more about not giving up than it is about astonishing yourself with your own genius. It’s much more about the barely-audible voice in your consciousness that keeps stubbornly insisting that what you’re doing matters than it is about moments of glory. And it’s much more about learning to encourage yourself, than it ever will be about winning prizes.

Ultimately, being a writer is about taking joy in words and sentences and paragraphs and stories—and life. It’s about work, but it’s also about play. It’s about enjoying the process. Because if you do it right, learning to be great at writing is a lot like learning to be great at life. You nourish the good stuff, and let the bad fall away—and spend all your precious time in-between just learning to tell the difference.

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Katherine Center is the author of six bittersweet comic novels about love and family, including The Bright Side of Disaster, The Lost Husband, Happiness for Beginners, and the upcoming How to Walk Away (May 15, 2018).  Her work has appeared in Redbook, InStyle, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, Real Simple, Houstonia, the Dallas Morning News, The Houston Press, and the Houston Chronicle, as well as several anthologies. 

Katherine’s novels have been published in translation in Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Hungary, as well as in the UK, with upcoming editions in Sweden, Italy, and Israel.  She has won a number of awards for her work, including the Rose State President’s Distinguished Author Award, the Girls, Inc. Strong, Smart & Bold Award, the Writers In The Schools Founders’ Award, the St. John’s School Maverick Award, and the Vassar College Fiction Prize.

Katherine is also a speaker on writing, and reading, and how the stories we tell impact our lives—and she recently gave a TEDx talk on how stories teach us empathy.  She lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her awesome husband, two sweet children, and their fluffy-but-fierce dog.

Find out more about her on her website http://katherinecenter.com

Follow her on Twitter katherinecenter

About HOW TO WALK AWAY

From the author of Happiness for Beginners comes an unforgettable love story about finding joy even in the darkest of circumstances.

Margaret Jacobsen is just about to step into the bright future she’s worked for so hard and so long: a new dream job, a fiancé she adores, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in a brief, tumultuous moment.

In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Maggie must confront the unthinkable. First there is her fiancé, Chip, who wallows in self-pity while simultaneously expecting to be forgiven. Then, there’s her sister Kit, who shows up after pulling a three-year vanishing act. Finally, there’s Ian, her physical therapist, the one the nurses said was too tough for her. Ian, who won’t let her give in to her pity, and who sees her like no one has seen her before. Sometimes the last thing you want is the one thing you need. Sometimes we all need someone to catch us when we fall. And sometimes love can find us in the least likely place we would ever expect.

How to Walk Away is Katherine Center at her very best―a masterpiece of a novel that is both hopeful and hilarious; truthful and wise; tender and brave.

Praise for How to Walk Away:

“A heartbreak of a novel that celebrates resilience and strength.” ―Jill Santopolo, bestselling author of The Light We Lost

“If you just read one book this year, read How to Walk Away.” ―Nina George, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop

“Warm, witty, and wonderfully observed.” ―Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author of First Comes Love

“Sympathetic and refreshing!” ―Elinor Lipman, bestselling author of The Family Man

“I can’t think of a blurb good enough for this novel…poignant, funny, heartbreaking.” ―Jenny Lawson, bestselling author of Furiously Happy

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Category: On Writing