"I can write better than this!"

[redbird]

In fact, I am writing better than this. "This" being the latest editing project, a novel that seems to be part family stuff, part spy thriller. I'm fixing the grammar and spelling--everything from "plague" for "plaque" to Jesse Owens and the Kosciusko River. (I knew he had that wrong because we have a bridge by that name.)

Not only is this confidence-building, but it's different enough from what I'm working on to not contaminate it.

Comments

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

That reaction is one of two reasons I encourage beginning writers to work in publishing in some capacity. (The other, of course, is getting to know how things work.)

Some professional writers like to discourage beginning writers by telling them the awful statistics about how many people try to write, and 99-plus percent of them never succeed. What they don't tell you, and what you find out if you work much on manuscripts (and especially if you work on the slush pile), is that 99 percent of them suck rocks.