Are you a little confused by today’s title? To be honest, so was I. So I got to thinking. When we’re writing a book, or a play, or a blog post, or whatever type of writing that needs to be done, our first drafts are anything but pretty. There are grammar mistakes galore (even though in our head it was perfect 🙁 ). We have all the spelling errors that either our auto-correct didn’t change our word automatically or we really messed up the spelling (gotta love spell check, a writer’s best friend). Then all the inevitable “weasel” words we must get rid of (for me it’s passive verbs, ‘just’, ‘ly’ words, my head has drawn a blank for the ones I love to use). We might be missing words all together or we did a whole lot of telling (or maybe just a little if you’ve been at this for a while).
The bottom-line is it isn’t pretty. We must take our time to work at it during edits and make it ‘pretty’ so that when a novel, like Francine Rivers’s book “Redeeming Love,” touched people in a way that it speaks to them, you can say the ugly manuscript is no longer the “ugly duckling,” but instead has transformed into the “beautiful swan” (I know, clique, but it fits) we all desired it would be so that it glorifies the Lord.
I realizes not everyone may believe as I do but I know this is why I write and I love that.
Kristena, my writing is still too cluttered with telling. I’ll show and then I tell. Hmmm, my freelance editor keeps telling me that’s a no, no. 🙂
Jean, that all comes with time. I felt like I was the queen of head hopping and man could I tell my story instead of showing it. I know you will also learn to balance the showing along with the telling to make a great story.