To edit, to edit, to edit - by Jo Wilson-Ridley

There's no doubt one of the hardest tasks in writing, for me, is editing.

The creative ideas can come thick and fast (often too fast to keep up with).

When inspiration strikes, it's a matter of juggling whatever time is available in the day to get pen and ideas to co-incide.  This part is fun and exciting - when endless possibilities are played with - it makes the day fly.

Once the raw material is down, this is when the hard work starts.

I've been given a number of suggestions about editing poetry recently, including:

1. Edit your poem and then put it in a draw for 6 months and then come back to it.
2. Edit a poem at least 30 times
3. Edit, edit, edit - can always improve

In the writing for pleasure course recently we were discussing the experience of revisiting work and the desire to always continually edit work.  When is editing enough? When do you stop and set work free?

I can't give definitive answers to these questions, for me it varies from work to work. 

But, I have recently re-visited work that has been in a draw for 6-12 months.  The space did indeed give me new clarity for the work.

If you can spare the time for work to mature, like a Coonawarra Red, I would recommend it...

So, it is a good idea to not throw work away. Always have work to go back through.  You will often find a phrase or a stanza to salvage. And work written 6-12 months ago, can take on a new meaning down the track that can make all the difference for your poem.

Gone to the Source

Speaking of where things go - here's where a lot of fantastic things are.  www.archive.org is an online archive aiming to collect all online material that exists as far back as 1996; as well as scan texts from donors to provide a free resource.

Volunteer scanners collect, scan and send text and images from their own and others' books to the archive.

I've used the archive to check out the early, primitive days of www.narrandera.com (not owned by Narrandera Shire - held privately).  It's a reminder of how far websites have come since 2000, when these slow-loading, clunky pages were created.
The archive has 730,000 movies, 82,000 plus movies and about 2.5 million texts.

Enjoy T.S Elliot? Read him here. You can click to turn pages as per any e-book.

Here's some Elliot.  Prufrock of course:

"For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with the dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
         So how should I presume?"
                                                          T.S. Elliot

Author:  Julie Briggs

Writing for Author Access

I've just finished reading 'The World Beneath' by Cate Kennedy.  It's the 'book to read' for the upcoming 'Write around the Murray' (WAM) Festival.  The Festival Finale, on Sunday 12^th September, is a giant book club meeting discussing 'The World Beneath' featuring Jason Steger from the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club.  I believe the best feature of the giant book club is that the actual author, Cate Kennedy, will be attending.  How rare is it to have access to the actual author when discussing their book.

A book I read earlier this year and could have done with hot-line to the author was 'Dog Boy' by Eva Hornung.  It was an exceptionally well written book, with a compelling and unique story but it had quite an ambiguous ending that kept my book club debating its meaning well into the night.  The book was successful however, because any of the ending interpretations could have worked.

We were discussing this issue recently at the Writing for Pleasure group.  In particular, we were discussing the difficulty of editing a poem and re-reading a poem as the author, and making our own allowances for rhythm and rhyme.  We've found huge benefits in hearing our own works, particularly poems, read by other group members.  When our work was read by others we often picked up irregular rhythms or different meaning to what had been the intention. 

And if you have a chance, I would recommend 'The World Beneath'.  The highlights of the book were descriptions of a caustic teenager, and the recounting of a rugged walk in Tasmania's wilderness – enough to make you convert to 4-star accommodation for life.

Author: Jo Wilson-Ridley

It goes here

 In my "How to set up a blog" demonstration for the Creative Writers class, I had emphasised that anyone taking up blogging should consider carefully what they put in that blog because once their words or images are out there in wwwland they remain out there - always.  Jo's question, posed in her article below: "Where does it all go?" got me thinking.  

In the TAFE lesson we'd discussed the blush-inducing power of content you might have written if you were blogging during your teenage years:  the Bridget Jones's Diary type musings or  "world peace" naivety expressed in rhyme.

Blogging  is a melding of the words 'web' and 'log' and began as a very personal mode of expression.  The web is replete with journals that express the writer's every thought or opinion on anything at all. Hard to read and I suspect rarely read by web users, other than those who have a very personal connection with the blogger.

These days blogs are used by big business and small, by community groups and networks; and blogs that get read usually do have quality content.  The best of them communicate high levels of expertise in whichever field they represent.

So where would 25 year old Jonti's teenage blog diary go if it was deleted five year's ago?  Part of the answer is here at the www archive.  You can ask to have your site crawled and archived or you can prevent it from being archived.  You can even have it removed from the archive if it's already there.

I'm not sure that this is the whole answer to Jo's query, but it is where you'll find old web content.  You could easily locate our Jonti's site in www.archive.org if you have her site's full URL (address).

So will you stumble upon Jonti's diary-blog accidentally while googling something else, and embarrass her in absentia?  Extremely unlikely.  But that's another story. 

 
Author:  Julie Briggs

Where does it all go?

Julie Briggs visited our Writing for Pleasure Group today, to demonstrate the vast and popular pastime of blogging.  Blogging had been recommended to us on a number of occasions for practicing our writing and publishing skills.  But for most of our class that are knee deep in perfecting poems and competition entries, blogging felt like the upgrade to first class—highly talked about and much sought after but passing us by as we are slogging it out in economy time.

Other than the technical details of how to actually get started, our session on blogging raised many questions – how to maintain security, what to write to be noticed, being aware writing will always remain on the internet and using keywords. 

Throughout the session, I couldn't help but feel the echoes of a talk I recently heard by Kate Jennings, describing blogging as the mosh-pit of unedited writing celebrating me in all my complexity.

Leaving the session, two ideas stayed with me, these being:

1. Write on a blog something you will be happy to still read when you are 80
2. Where does it all go, if it always remains on the internet?

My answers to these ideas are:

1. This is my first post, and I do hope to track it down in 40 odd years time and be so pleased to read it that my false teeth pop out from the laughter
2. I assume, this ever lasting record of my words will follow me through to the next life, and I'm equally assuming, it makes processing at heaven's gate easier when St Peter can pull out the written record that cannot be disputed.

Author: Jo Wilson-Ridley

Bio: 

Jo Wilson-Ridley enjoys writing and performing poetry, but also dabbles in short stories, children's stories and articles.  Her work, described as domestic satire is inspired by a bush change and parenthood.  Based in Coleambally, when not writing, Jo is often spotted at various skate parks (with her sons) around the Riverina.

OK me first.

Your poetry, short stories, articles, essays, or just your, well... your, blog posts are welcome here. Read up on how to go about it via the tab above.  Julie.