Sometimes, ya just gotta. Sometimes, eight hundred words can depend on a few. Tonight in our Creative Writing class we picked them out of stories, tossed them about and saw them fall back into place. The right word, whether it does the job of ten, or if it has impact that would be lost without it, is sometimes the hardest part of editing.
This is becoming known to me as the good professor pronounced it, the “hair exercise” because for two days I have been hung up on describing a character’s hair. It is important to the story–I think–because it is the character’s image in a mirror, her reflection of self, and because despite the character revelations in her choice of home decor and in the preparation of a special dinner, she is very pleased with herself at this moment, and what she sees, what she has put a lot of effort into achieving.
I can’t tell you the grief this is giving me, and there’s another word within this story that’s been bothering me even more. Maybe another one, to a lesser degree. But I’ll search for that right word, the phrase that produces the right picture, because it’s all got to feel right, or it’s not the best it can be.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology