Hello again,
This is one of my very occasional pieces about writing, both the process itself and what to do with those words once they’re on the page. If that’s not your kind of thing, feel free to hop back to this month’s listings — several are still open for submissions.
Otherwise, read on.
Instagram keeps suggesting these videos to me. Perhaps if you have a similar combination of advertising key words associated with your profile, you’ll have seen similar ones.
In the reels, one or two women appear on the screen. They are wearing an outfit that, per the framing of the video, is hopelessly outdated and basic. Skinny jeans, cardigans, big scarves. In short, she looks *shudder* millennial.
With the help of some deft editing, the woman is then quickly re-dressed. Her jeans are changed to a more fashionable cut. Her bag is swapped. Hems are tucked or untucked, rolled or unrolled.
By the end, her outfit is roughly the same, but made more acceptable to current tastes. This usually means looser fits, dressier jewellery, and a ban on distressed denim.
I have a mixed response to these snippets. My initial reaction is annoyance. Let people wear what they’re comfortable with, I think, rather than making them feel like they’re being judged for their favourite skinny jeans.
And yet. I have to say that the ‘after’ looks always appeal to me. They do look more appropriate and up-to-date, without indulging in the excesses of short-lived fashion trends. In many cases, they are encouraging moving on from a narrow way of thinking about style, reminding us that we do not have to adhere to old rules about what’s flattering.
Sometimes, we can get stuck in a particular way of doing things and not know how to change them until someone makes a concrete suggestion: tuck in your shirt, switch your shoes, part your hair in the middle.
In case you’re wondering, yes, I am trying to suggest a parallel with writing here.
The endless edit
Like most of us, I have a good amount of work that hasn’t been published. The largest part of that is the draft of my novel, which I’m still trying to beat into shape. Others are completed short stories, and still more are scraps and ideas.
Sometimes I’ll be looking back over a piece of work that I wrote a long time ago, maybe three or four years in some cases, and I’ll start to edit it.
Maybe these are sense or grammar edits, fresh eyes always seeming to find something to correct no matter how much I’ve combed through it before.
But often I find myself updating the sentence structure or the dialogue to be more in line with what I now think is good writing. This process might happen several times, for as long as the piece remains unpublished: each time I open it up, I tweak it again. Whatever I’ve read or written in the interceding period takes its effect and shapes how I change the old work.
Arguably, this is good practice. Ira Glass says that each of us has a gap between our abilities and our taste that can take years to bridge. My edits should theoretically be getting my work closer to where I want it.
And yet I can’t help but feel that the exercise might be flawed. First and most importantly, because I think I should just be creating new work in order to develop properly. Editing old pieces is for when I feel too tired or uninspired to try something new.
But there’s also the issue of extinguishing the original spark. Sometimes, especially when I’m not in a particularly creative mood, I’m amazed by what my former self was able to write. And I begin to worry that the current me, the older me, is only removing what made it any good to begin with.
To return to the millennial makeovers for a second, my fear is that I’m just updating the work to be more in line with current fashions.
I actually disagree with Ira Glass a bit because he talks about good taste like it’s a set point that remains the same your whole life, rather than fluctuating and elevating with every new thing you consume. Mostly, this should be giving you more inspiration and more ideas to make your own work better. But it can also definitely risk making your work a Sisyphean task to keep up with whatever you most recently thought was good.
Maybe sometimes the new look really is better, but that doesn’t mean some of the charm of the original isn’t lost.
That’s where the title of this dispatch comes in. The tyranny of my own changing taste can lead me to fiddle endlessly with old stories. And in the case of longer work like my novel, it can make it harder to get a handle on the bigger picture, or to have the confidence in the whole project.
Just write
I know very well that the solution to this problem — as with many problems — is to stop thinking so much about it and to write. As Ira Glass says in that clip, you just have to work consistently if you want to get better at something.
That’s not to say there’s no space for editing. It is a vital part of the process, and for me often the most enjoyable. But I suspect I need to think more clearly about what the purpose is each time I go back into a document. If I’m making part of my novel more cohesive with the rest, that’s a good reason. If I’m changing my mind for the eighth time on whether to keep an adjective in a short story, that probably isn’t so productive.
And I think there are a few pieces I need to let be. They may be the equivalent of skinny jeans and Uggs, but they were what I could produce at the time, and I’m proud of them. I don’t need to keep retrofitting them to be less embarrassing.
What do you think? Do you think your taste changes a lot, and if so does it help or hinder your writing projects? Let me know in the comments or by replying to this email.
Another set of listings will be available next week. Until then, happy writing.
You described my editing habits so well, lol!
Made me think about my reasons too, thank you. There are older pieces I've edited because they're outdated in terms of technical details or language, but no, I can't be sure there's times it's more to do with how I've shifted perspectives. I'll also edit older pieces for clarity, tightening up, or recognising a better way of phrasing. But recently I've been driving myself nuts editing and re-editing pieces til I can't think--even short stories deemed finalised, or ones that have placed in a writing competition.
Time to have a talk with myself ;)