Thursday, March 29, 2012

SWIFFER EDITING

I’m not a mop snob, I swear!
But I am Swedish…
And Swedes are known for cleaning…
(at least my Nana was)
So there I was yesterday in the gym….
And a cleaning lady was moping.
But this lady’s mopping bothered me.
All that mopping just seemed useless…
Because all it was doing was pushing around…
The same old wet grunge on the floor.
And that’s why I like Swiffers…
They trap the dirt on the cloth…
And then the dirty filthy cloth is thrown away.
As I cycled watching this lady push around the wet grunge….
I thought about the edits I’m making on my manuscript when...
HOLY FILTHY WET MOP!
I was editing the same way...
Just pushing and rearranging the same old words…
If I wanted to Swiffer edit…
I’d have to get rid of what wasn’t working.
Once I got home from the gym…
I sat down at my laptop, opened up my manuscript…
Gathered up some phrases, sentences and paragraphs and…
GULP! 
Tossed them.
I then took a shower.
When I came back I looked at what I had edited…
The chapter was better! Cleaner!
So?
Are you good at deep Swiffer editing?
How do you know what’s working and what’s not?

Always, Em-Musing

7 comments:

Barbara S. Andrews said...

I'm trying to do it the Swiffer way, but it's HARD! I can push around the words, but to destroy entire scenes that I worked so hard to create. . . that tears my heart out.

And yet, it's all part of the process. I had to create that scene just to get to the point of realizing it didn't work. It all seems a bit backwards, but hey, if it took Hemingway 39 times with A Farewell to Arms, I guess he had to do some serious gut-wrenching too.

farawayeyes said...

Kill those darlings. Some good advice that I needed today. Thanks.

The Blogger Formerly Known As said...

Oooh, a nice observation.

And, I’m glad to see gyms do have some purpose (the way I keep fit is to keep walking backwards and forwards to and from my fridge).

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Swiffer editing! I'll have to remember that analogy next time I hit the editing stage.

Gossip_Grl said...

I am still researching for my story, but from the looks of my pencil eraser wearing down, I guess you could say that is a form of swiffer or buffering maybe : )

Jennifer Shirk said...

Ha! I love my Swiffer too!

Ususally I can sense or I have a niggle of doubt when I give a chapter to my crit partner--thinking maybe it's just me. It's not. She'll usually call me out on it and I have to fix it. LOL
I should trust my instincts more.

Talli Roland said...

Ugh, nothing worse than a sour wet map smell.

I usually push around the dirt for a bit before I figure out what works!