Well, I got some interesting comments from readers about rewriting. Kim said she prefers working on a first draft, and that sometimes, during rewrites, she feels like trashing whatever she's working on. Rosa wrote about how she enjoys the crafting involved in rewriting. I'm somewhere between you two, though perhaps I lean a little more towards Kim's point of view -- and yes occasionally I feel tempted to scrap my efforts!! The first draft can be scary, but there are so many possibilities, which always feels exciting to me. And the rewrite, well, it's just plain hard work. But it is true that once you've had a break from a project, you can see it with clearer eyes. Another thing I've found is that thinking about the rewrite is always worse than doing it. Maybe a lot of difficult tasks in life are like that. It's the thinking about them beforehand that gets us down.
So I'm about 18 pages into the rewrite. Did I tell you I have until Valentine's Day to get it done? If possible, I'd like to finish ahead of schedule. Does mean I'll have to guard my writing time like a mother bear looking after her cubs!
School starts on Monday and so I'll be shifting gears. Tomorrow, I am going to meet students at St. Willibrod Elementary School in Chateauguay together with my photographer friend Monique Dykstra. We're going to be helping the students write a little book about their community. This is part of a project called Quebec Roots, sponsored by the Blue Metropolis literary foundation. I'll be out for a good part of the day working on that, but I'll do my best to check in on this blog when I get home. Talk to you then! Hope you're having a good day wherever you are!!
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Comments
That project of writing a book on the community sounds cool! I'm guessing we'll get to read about it in your next blog entry.
Speaking of thinking about difficult tasks, I still haven't begun the robotics week 2 report, which should be completed by Friday. Last week, I had to work on it from Tuesday to Friday, and I kept editing what I'd written -- it never sounded good enough! Tomorrow I'm visiting a pharmaceutical company in the morning and registering as soon as I get back to school, and then I guess I'll get started on the dreadful task of writing the report on what we did this week!
I find editing a pain in the butt... I often like to take a day or two off from writing it (if i have the time)so that when i go back I'm not frutstrated with the piece. As for school on monday... that thought is making me bitter
I remember we wrote a book in sixth grade, about the different systems of the human body and, later, the book became part of the local library (TMR). Do you get to keep the books you review? Or do you have to give them back to the newspaper?