editing & embroidery
I think that part of my problems with editing stems from the language used. It’s “edit” and “cut” and “rewrite” and whatnot. It’s violent.
On almost every other thing I’ve done in my life, I haven’t been so violent if the thing I’ve made hasn’t turned out the way it was meant to be.
For example, embroidery. If you mess up the pattern, you don’t tear the piece apart, you don’t cut the fabric, you don’t start from the blank again. Instead, you figure out where you went wrong, you tug at the thread, you pull it out (very gently). You act with care because if you don’t, you might damage the fabric or fray the thread. If you mess up badly, you might have to cut a single thread you’ve been working with and gently undo it, then get a new thread in your needle and work over the piece again. Holes? Holes are natural. Holes are the essence of embroidery, it’s what you work with. You fill them when you decide to, to make them blend in or create an effect.
You never tear anything apart. Correcting a piece of embroidery is much gentler, much more careful and loving than the first time you’re working on it. You don’t ever do it frowning, you never do it while still feeling down about making such a newbie mistake, you never do it when you’re certain you won’t do it right, or when you are stressed. You meditate, if only for a moment or two, before corrections. You treat the faulty threads gently, you never unravel more than you have to, and never unravel less than you have to. You pull the threads in. You hide the mistakes you weren’t able to correct.
You never say that your piece is “crap”. No matter how simple it is, no matter how harshly you feel all the places you went wrong and damaged the fabric, you finish it, you wash it gently in warm water with baby soap, you stretch it, you let it dry, and then you frame it.
It might end up in your kids’ bedroom or your own bedroom. If it isn’t good enough to sell or to give it as a gift to your boss, you keep it as a souvenir of the time, of the feelings, of the state of mind you were in.
It might be amateurish, it might be laughable in the eyes of masters. You might have done a stupid newbie mistake that clearly states you’re painfully new at this.
But it’s never crap, and you never tear it up.
It’s a part of your life.
That’s beautiful – the sentiment and the writing. It helps to be mindful of the language we use. I don’t know if I’ve ever said (out loud) anything particularly harsh about my writing/editing, but I know there’s always the severe critic in the back of my mind who says I can’t write worth a damn.
Why is it that we don’t send our embroidery (or for me, crochet or knitting) out to be judged by others? What is it about the writing process that makes it so muddied that we can’t trust our initial design and craft but have to put it through a process that feels like mangling our hearts?
Anyway, well done for finishing Vega. You’ve worked steadily and well and though I’ve dropped way, way back and am finding it a huge struggle, your example still spurs me on.
Bravo!
@neighbor
I thought about that. I think the reason why we send things out (not all of us! I wrote for a long time without giving anything to anybody) is that a finished story is so often a major discovery for us, and naturally, we want to share that insight.