Editing for Life

Write without reserve, edit rigorously.  This is the process innumerable “how to” books and writing workshops espouse – a logical, necessary and valid process.  But it somehow still feels wrong, illicit.  I feel trepidation, that I’m doing something appalling, when I try write with the censor unplugged.  
The process can induce PTSD flashbacks of that horrid English teacher with her red pen eerily glowing in the dank classroom as she graded our essays in front of us, while we squirmed with every stab of her pen, captive in our seats.  No wonder ‘writer’s block’ is a phenomenon. 

We’re really not taught the complete process of writing, at least I wasn’t, and that set up this hard-wired precept that somehow I’m supposed to be able to put together a perfectly formatted and edited piece the first go-round.  I was only taught the rules, and graded / critiqued on just the final draft.  There were no instructions of how to get from the rules to the final piece, or even acknowledgement that that process was important.  So it left this gaping hole that guilt and insecurity are only too happy to rush in to fill.  We have to unlearn so many things from childhood.  Growing up really is just healing.  Understanding what happened, relearning, getting over it, acceptance, and learning how to really do it right.  We have to purge damaging constructs and start from scratch, seeking out what we only intuitively sense and find like-minded individuals to collude with us that we’re on the right track. 

To “edit” means to:  ‘prepare a text for publication by correcting errors and ensuring clarity and accuracy; to remove material from something … because it is lengthy or offensive’.  It is to:  ‘prepare for public, correct, tidy up, check over, revise, amend, change, alter, rework, rewrite, rearrange, rehash, improve, oversee, run, manage, be in charge of’.

Replace “edit” with “life” … we’re not really given the handbook to the process of life either, are we?  You have to actually write something first in order to edit it; you have to engage life and make mistakes in order to learn how to live.  But we live in a society that only reinforces, or even acknowledges, the final piece – the outcome.  We’re only taught the rules, and given the expectation that we should achieve x, y or z in life.  Sound familiar?  Straight from the rules to the result with no allowance for trying, experimenting, failing and refining.  But how the hell do you get there?  How do you learn how to navigate all the infinite processes involved in that transition?  We’re taught to focus on only one component that should be just a piece of the process.  

There’s an emphasis on results that belies everything it takes to get there.  We worry about life being accomplished and perfect, instead of jumping in and making a million mistakes to be able to ‘edit’ those and find that perfect combination that fits just right for us. 

The best we usually can get is snippets of advice – from family if we’re lucky, from friends, co-workers, roommates, relationships, specialized workshops – from therapy if we can take that plunge and afford it.  We’re pretty much left to figure out this complicated thing by ourselves, so we tend to make decisions in a panic just to have something – we have to know what it is we want to be and do pretty much out of the womb after all.  In my romanticized conceptualization of ‘days of yore’, young people went abroad out of school, to see the world first, then come back and engage in life choices, to actually see what there is to choose from first.  Hitchhiking across Europe, road trips – something, anything, to learn how to live before deciding what to do to live.  Now it seems the ‘process’ is all about getting to the goal, with no experimenting, no trying it on, about getting a perfect product the first time out instead of the essential trial and error that make that decision an informed one.  These unrealistic expectations may literally be driving young unprepared minds mad and relegating mid-life epiphanies to a stereotype joke instead of acknowledging what they really are – consciousness kicking in at last.

For my mid-life crisis, I’m finally figuring out what “writing” actually is – and by its example, life.  Experimentation and completely uncensored cavorting is what it’s all about.  My hard-wiring still flares up though with that nagging voice in my head, admonishing me that the ‘process’ is frivolous; I should only be following the rules and somehow coming out beautifully rendered, perfectly formatted and flawless.  This is the thing that writer’s block is made of and must be overcome, hit head on with the truth time and again.  I remind myself that I can only get “to” by going “through” and that can’t happen without the necessary process of just writing freely without restraint and with that voice securely gagged.  

Digging into great depths where the good stuff lurks, coaxing it out onto the page in the early morning dawn, is writing, that exciting journey of exploration 

into unknown territory.  No guide,no rules, just pure unadulterated immersion, grabbing everything in sight, stuffing it into the rucksack, stealing it back to camp to pour over that night, a joyous search into the cache to see what treasures were scavenged, deciding which are worth keeping, which aren’t. 

Piecing them together, rearranging the pieces, adding, deleting, polishing, is only the final stage – it is not the whole process, it is not “writing” all by itself.  When the words do come together, appear to magically fit, it’s really a culmination of so much work  - a whole journey full of trials, falls and despair; and utter ecstasy of hard-won accomplishment.