Author profile: Mur Lafferty
Mur Lafferty has written for over 15 role-playing games, several magazines and a book on podcasting. She hosts two podcasts Geek Fu Action Grip and I Should Be Writing.
Mur has had four fiction short stories published and just recently finished editing her first novel.
Mur has had four fiction short stories published and just recently finished editing her first novel.
It is well-known (or heck, at least I know it, and I figure if something is strong enough to make it into my muddled brain, everyone should know it by now) that some writers love writing and some love editing.
Some push the words out as if the process were labor: straining, panting, screaming, and weeping with relief and exhaustion when it’s over, looking at their baby and the potential of years ahead of it.
This is not how I do it.
I am in love with the creative process, when the artist inside me flings her arms out and runs down a hill, yelling with glee. She doesn’t care where she ends up; she is just enjoying the trip. Writing for me is sometimes a drug, when I stop I feel like I’m coming off a high. I love that part. I love the idea part. I love the writing part. And when I’m done, that artist begs me to consider that the first draft is golden and spotless (never mind that Henry’s name changes to Mike in the middle of page 12, or that unfortunate misuse of “their” on page 21) and we don’t have to edit. Do we? Please? Can’t we just write something new?
But luckily the artist inside doesn’t rule my life. If she did, I’d be wearing pajamas all the time. The editor, a small, fussy, fun-hating woman, speaks up then and demands that we comb over the piece with a critical eye. It is at this point when the artist runs away crying at the mere mention off the word “critical” and I want to run after her and comfort her, but the editor taps me on the shoulder, says the artist is being melodramatic and that while the artist wastes time listening to The Cure, the editor and I have work to do.
As someone who is damn near addicted to the high of writing, editing is such a bore. When you’re done writing, you can convince yourself that you’re brilliant – being high does that to a person. Editing drags you back down to earth and says, in fact, that you aren’t. You can be brilliant, but it will take work. It’s real work, the kind that keeps you thinking in detail about the intricacies of plot, character development, level of detail, setting, show-don’t-tell, and structural word usage.
In early 2006 I finished my first novel. I promised myself I’d have it edited by May. It wasn’t. Then it was July. It wasn’t. After an October writer’s workshop, I came home with a strong sense of where I wanted to take the novel. I promised myself I’d have it edited by the end of the year. I worked on it on and off, mostly off, hating the feeling of it hanging like an albatross around my neck, but hating more the thought of sitting down with 100,000 words to clean them up. I had significant plot details to rework. A character to re-design. And my artist kept stamping her foot and saying that she didn’t want to do this. While I was wasting all this time editing, she could be running down more hills.
It took nearly three months to do the first half of the novel. I finally realized that I did want to hit one deadline, so I did the latter half of the novel in the last week of December. Do I wish I’d done it differently? Hell yes. But the point is that I finally got it done. The editor did her job and retreated gracefully to the shadows so the artist could run around again.
They don’t get along very well. They’re not supposed to. Some of us love the wild inhibition-less artist, others love the strict orderly editor. I haven’t met anyone who loves them both, but all writers have both. And you have to treat both equally or your work will either sit there, unpublished and wild, or you’ll never produce work that your editor can polish.
So this month, good luck with the editing. I sincerely hope that all of you reading this are lovers of the editor, and have been looking forward to editing your NaNoWriMo novels with glee. She’s in your head, getting out her label maker and her folders and adjusting her glasses. She’s probably brewing tea. And if you let her go wild in her own way, then you’ll probably come out of the other end of March with something wonderful.
Some push the words out as if the process were labor: straining, panting, screaming, and weeping with relief and exhaustion when it’s over, looking at their baby and the potential of years ahead of it.
This is not how I do it.
I am in love with the creative process, when the artist inside me flings her arms out and runs down a hill, yelling with glee. She doesn’t care where she ends up; she is just enjoying the trip. Writing for me is sometimes a drug, when I stop I feel like I’m coming off a high. I love that part. I love the idea part. I love the writing part. And when I’m done, that artist begs me to consider that the first draft is golden and spotless (never mind that Henry’s name changes to Mike in the middle of page 12, or that unfortunate misuse of “their” on page 21) and we don’t have to edit. Do we? Please? Can’t we just write something new?
But luckily the artist inside doesn’t rule my life. If she did, I’d be wearing pajamas all the time. The editor, a small, fussy, fun-hating woman, speaks up then and demands that we comb over the piece with a critical eye. It is at this point when the artist runs away crying at the mere mention off the word “critical” and I want to run after her and comfort her, but the editor taps me on the shoulder, says the artist is being melodramatic and that while the artist wastes time listening to The Cure, the editor and I have work to do.
As someone who is damn near addicted to the high of writing, editing is such a bore. When you’re done writing, you can convince yourself that you’re brilliant – being high does that to a person. Editing drags you back down to earth and says, in fact, that you aren’t. You can be brilliant, but it will take work. It’s real work, the kind that keeps you thinking in detail about the intricacies of plot, character development, level of detail, setting, show-don’t-tell, and structural word usage.
In early 2006 I finished my first novel. I promised myself I’d have it edited by May. It wasn’t. Then it was July. It wasn’t. After an October writer’s workshop, I came home with a strong sense of where I wanted to take the novel. I promised myself I’d have it edited by the end of the year. I worked on it on and off, mostly off, hating the feeling of it hanging like an albatross around my neck, but hating more the thought of sitting down with 100,000 words to clean them up. I had significant plot details to rework. A character to re-design. And my artist kept stamping her foot and saying that she didn’t want to do this. While I was wasting all this time editing, she could be running down more hills.
It took nearly three months to do the first half of the novel. I finally realized that I did want to hit one deadline, so I did the latter half of the novel in the last week of December. Do I wish I’d done it differently? Hell yes. But the point is that I finally got it done. The editor did her job and retreated gracefully to the shadows so the artist could run around again.
They don’t get along very well. They’re not supposed to. Some of us love the wild inhibition-less artist, others love the strict orderly editor. I haven’t met anyone who loves them both, but all writers have both. And you have to treat both equally or your work will either sit there, unpublished and wild, or you’ll never produce work that your editor can polish.
So this month, good luck with the editing. I sincerely hope that all of you reading this are lovers of the editor, and have been looking forward to editing your NaNoWriMo novels with glee. She’s in your head, getting out her label maker and her folders and adjusting her glasses. She’s probably brewing tea. And if you let her go wild in her own way, then you’ll probably come out of the other end of March with something wonderful.
Re: My Albatross
