To Write and Refine, Your Sound, the Moment

I am editing the next in a series I am working on, and this is getting me thinking about a workshop related to 'refinement.' The more passes I make, the better it gets. The more I read my work, the more ideas I have, and the more I can go back and foreshadow and do all sorts of fun things with leading and hints. There are parts which I don't want to give too much away, and there are others where I do.

There is a process of refinement I am working through, and I find it highly relaxing and enjoyable. This is the boiling down of the soup stock, the heightening of the flavor, and the focusing the experience part that I love. Raw writing is just that, raw. There are times when you want that freshness of raw emotion, and there are times where you want a section of writing to have a smooth finish and intense flavor.

I accidentally went back over a section I had already edited and marked 'done' and found many things to improve. I made those changes, refined again, and I am happy I did. There weren't grammatical or structural errors more than they were, 'things I wanted to see said.' There are important points to drop to setup things which will come, and also other ones to take out as not to ruin the surprise.

There are always ways to show instead of tell, and with every pass it gets better and better. There are times when showing is extraneous, and once you read something enough and get a feel for how it 'should' read, you will develop that ear for your words. You are discovering what your words should say. You are improving the way in which your writing reads.

You are developing a sound.

Think of this as your sound. Every musical band has one, instantly recognizable in slow songs and fast, jazzy and soft, you know a band when you hear them. As a writer, you need to become in tune with your sound, how your words should sound, and focus on that aspect of your creative talents.

When you write for the sound of your words, you will find certain things don't make as much sense any more. Strange twists of phrase alien to how you want your book to read will stand out. Long boring parts shall be just that. Clumsy words will stumble, fall, and you will replace them with elegance. The sticky sap of purple prose shall be washed away. Telling will reveal itself as disrespectful of the reader's intelligence, and you shall paint your strokes to show and lead eyes and minds to where you want them to go.

When I think of editing this way, it takes on a new meaning to me. I am creating an experience, and not just checking for missed notes. You correct, and then you craft. You shape, and then you highlight. You hammer out large shapes, and then take pass after pass as your details get finer and finer.

Refinement.

Boiling down, making an experience pure, and removing distractions and impurities. Delivering something to a discerning reader which is free from blemish, yet has a sense of design from the largest sweep of the statue's form, down to the finest hair of an eyelash. With refinement, you make multiple passes to shape and fine-tune your creation's form and structure, and you get better with each pass.

Refinement is also a metaphor for life. We don't get older, what we care about becomes more important to us, and we get better at seeing it. We refine our tastes and interests to that which we really love. We focus down on the most enjoyable parts. We develop our sense of macro and micro. We can place important on pieces of the form, and where eyes should be drawn. We become more aware, and less random.

It is a heightened state of awareness that I love being in, and I look forward to experiencing every time I sit down to review my work. It's not just the current scene, but it is seeing the big picture and the individual moment all at the same time, like a freeze frame photograph of a touchdown score in football that boils the entire game down to that moment, yet still is a part of the larger event. It is the small and the large in one point of time, with small event after small event building together to create a whole.