The very best -and bravest - way to edit your work
Welcome back to THE WRITING CAFÉ for more inspiration, motivation, recommendations and a fun writing prompt.
Hello friends. I hope you’re sitting somewhere cosy with a mug of something comforting and your notebook at your side. Let’s chat about writing - and do some writing too.
I’ve been taking workshops with the poet, yogi, meditation writer and teacher, Nadia Colburn for a couple of years now, often when I need a reset or to get back to my authentic writing self. Her combination of meditation, breathwork, movement, poetry and writing prompts is the perfect alchemy for me. Feeling a bit unmoored at the start of this new year, I jumped at the chance of spending an hour with her and fellow writers, setting writing intentions for the year ahead.
She started the session by dispelling four myths about creativity:
◻️ That creativity is only for the anointed few (it’s for everyone - creativity is an essential part of being human).
◻️ That creativity is a luxury (it’s a necessity - our ancestors understood this).
◻️ That creativity is like a lightning bolt and only arrives spontaneously (it is most alive when woven into the fabric of our daily lives).
◻️ That creativity happens from the head up (it’s a whole body experience).
I was reminded how a small meditation and a little breathwork, before beginning to write, can calm your nervous system, chase out the inner critic and open you up to write from a deeper and more truthful place.
Nadia is running a Seven Day Writing and Meditation Challenge next week, to kick off the New Year, which I think I’ll sign up for. It’s a good antidote to the striving and pushing that the beginning of the year sometimes requires of us. It’s also in line with my word of the year, which is to STRENGTHEN myself from the inside out.
Writing Tip: The very best - and bravest - way to edit your work
You’ll have heard the advice: “read your work aloud”. This is good advice, but it will only give you half the information you need. When you read your work aloud to yourself, you’ll see some of the things that need changing. The true edit comes when you read it aloud, to someone.
I’ve been writing some short stories lately and, after a few rounds of edits, I’ve been sharing them with my husband. Although I believe the stories are pretty polished, the moment I sit in front of him, open my computer and take a breath, something shifts. Before I’ve read even a single word, it’s like I’m experiencing the work for the first time and I know, right away, what I need to change.
When I begin to read aloud, the shift is even greater. My brain skitters forward and before I finish a sentence, I know which bits drag, which bits are self-indulgent or repetitive or don’t make sense.
My husband doesn’t even need to say a word, just the act of reading it aloud to him - to anyone (sorry, Hugh) - tells me everything I need to know about what has to be edited. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps it’s because we suddenly receive the work as a reader rather than as the writer, a kind of de-familiarisation process, which is essential if we are to see our writing fully.
The novelist, V.S. Naipaul, wrote about editing:
“Another person’s presence can make certain writers climb father outside themselves to see their work from a distance, from where it always appears clearer.”
V.S. Naipaul (1932-2018)
So this week, take a page of something you’ve been working on, a short story, a poem, a novel, an article, choose a human being, sit them in a chair in front of you, and start reading.
Writing Prompt
In my twenties, I met Jane Cooper on an Arvon Foundation Writing Retreat in the UK and she became a dear friend. She’s written a great little book called 365 Ways to Get You Writing: Daily Inspiration and Advice for Creative Writers. Here’s one exercise I particularly like:
Using Lists to Make You See Things Differently
Spend 2-3 minutes on each one. Let your imagination and your love of language, lead you. Try to write something nobody else would think of. Be delightfully oblique.
For example:
What have I lost? My courage.
What gets kissed? It better.
What was I given by age ten? A good few tellings off.
What doesn’t have corners? Scrambled eggs.
Now it’s your turn:
Make a list of things you have lost.
Make a list of things that do not have corners.
Make a list of things you were given by the age of ten.
Make a list of things that get kissed.
Now spend another 10 minutes doing something with one of these lists or even just one item. You could write a poem or give some of the ideas and experiences in them to a character you’re writing about or turn one item of the list into the start of a story.
Adapting the prompt to your WIP: Work In Progress
Re-do the exercise from the point of view of a character in your novel. What have they lost? What things without corners would they think of? What were they given by the age of ten? What comes to mind for them when they think of things being kissed? This is great way to get to know your character better and to generate new story ideas.
Recommendations to inspire, motivate and comfort for…
Writing: The Artful Edit by Susan Bell
On the subject of editing, this is a fabulous book on the process of self-editing on micro and macro levels. Lots of great, practical advice.
Reading: One, Two, Three by Laurie Frankel
I’m loving this novel - it’s hitting all the right notes for me: a strong narrative voice, real energy in the writing, suspense, gorgeous, real, quirky, loveable characters and a fantastic reflection of contemporary life. Her new novel, Family, Family, is coming out at the end of the month.
Heart, body and soul: American Symphony on Netflix
A beautiful, heart-wrenching, heart-warming and inspiring documentary about the musician and composer, Jon Batiste and his wife, the writer and artist Suleika Jaouad. As Jon Batiste scales the pinnacle of his career and prepares to put on the concert of his lifetime, at home, his beloved Suleika is battling cancer.
The portrayal of their relationship and commitment to each other is one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve seen documented. How they live together as humans and as artists is deeply moving, inspiring and honest. The scene where they play Simon Says, in the hospital, brought me to tears.
Alongside this documentary, I’d recommend reading Suleika Jaouad’s beautiful memoir, Between Two Kingdoms.
also runs a lovely Substack here called The Isolation Journals, which is a real source of inspiration for us writers.A quotation to chew over this week…
Many of the artists I most admire believe that creativity comes, not just from the head but from every part of us: our bones and sinews, our blood and our muscles, our flesh and organs, as well as our thoughts and our spirit and our imagination. I’m going to be diving deeper into this in future newsletters, but here are some thoughts on the subject from Natalie Goldberg:
“Come to it, not with your mind and ideas, but with your whole body - your heart and gut and arms. Begin to write in the dumb, awkward way an animal cries out in pain, and there you will find your intelligence, your words, your voice.”
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones, P37
Thanks so much for reading and writing along. Do let me know what you found helpful in the comments below. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider sharing it with a friend or re-stacking it.
With love & happy writing,
Virginia🤍
Join Me Next Week…
When I’ll be looking at what goes into writing a brilliant opening page, more on embodiment and some thoughts on how our obsessions can inform our creativity. Hope to see you there: same place, same time with your favourite mug and notebook.
Reading aloud, and reading aloud to an audience, helps because it not only forces a shift in perspective that is no longer a shift from an imagined audience to an actual audience, but also shifts brain function.
Per cognitive science, thinking is deeply rooted in the physical environment including the position of the body. An accessible primer on this is Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By.
So, if we treat the change as if it were magic, we're not wrong in thinking that something very different is happening.
When I'm working the second pass of a line edit, and on a final copy edit or proofread, I read the entire piece aloud to myself while I'm standing at my upright desk. It's a way to act out my client's story, to really see if what they're saying translates, and you catch so many things your brain slides right over in the first pass. It's one of my favorite parts of being an editor.