Monday, July 11, 2016

Editing and Re-Doing: Crafts and Writing

It's really one and the same thing, right?

As a writer, I, at least, never seem to catch the mistakes or odd phrases or stuff at first. Oh, no. Even after the book is sent on to the publisher a thought comes to mind at night and keeps me up. I realize this should be changed. It's minor, but yeah, annoying.

Crafting is the same. You make something and it nags at you that something isn't right... You keep thinking about it, it bugs you... and then you realize what it is. Maybe it's the color, or an empty space, or the shape, or... the list goes on.

Maybe it's being creative that does this. You're never happy with the first few attempts or rewrites (or the first 1o...) You keep changing, manipulating, rereading, rewriting, re-doing...

But then it works. 

I did that recently with a miniature market stall I had made a long time ago. It was well, okay... but in my way of thinking it was way too plain.  It wasn't "me." I like color and lots of "stuff" and Halloween... so it's in the process of being remade. And it's much, much better! It's full of color and I have to say I'm liking the changes.. a lot.



Here's a photo of the "before" colors with some changes in the process. Pretty boring, right? Stay tuned. I'll show a photo of the "after" soon...

And that manuscript? It's with the publisher. And both the publisher and editor will probably hate me for sending one more change.. But I just had to do it. I had to. 




3 comments:

Joanna Campbell Slan said...

Oh, golly. I totally get this. I stay up to all hours going through images on my iPad, trying to find the right color combinations or proportions. I feel your pain, Chris.

Linda O. Johnston said...

Oh, that sounds familiar regarding writing, at least. I always try to do things perfectly from the first, "try" being the operative word, and there are always things I wind up wanting to change!

CA Verstraete said...

I hear ya both! Ugh I forgot this was runnning today. Maybe that's the next post - forgetfullness... :)