Red Pen
Blue Pen
White Pen
New Pen!
I sit safely hiding behind my little Blue Pen, on the verge of stepping it up. I am slowly preparing myself for the screams of the Red Ink that are about to come my way. I have even considered purchasing a Red Pen of my own. Although I must admit, maybe green or pink would do the job just as well.
I’m in the editing phase of my project right now. And if I have not properly “Shown” you how I feel about editing with this blog, I am telling you right now….”It’s stressful!” All I want to do is send out my queries and be done with it all ready. Maybe tomorrow I should focus my blog on “patience”? Just a thought.
Dr. Seuss is surely an inspiration to us all. I wonder if he had a difficult time editing Green Eggs and Ham? Did he originally call the book Orange Eggs and Beef? Maybe Sam I Am was initially named Buzz I Was…..it’s possible!
I’m in the editing phase of my project right now. Some days I think I have finally gotten to the exciting part of writing, and others I wonder if the never ending crossing out of words and rewriting of sentences will EVER be over. So far…I’ve concluded that it is unlikely!
I’ve began editing with a Blue Pen. I’m not sure what it is about Blue Pens that I love so dearly. It could possibly date back to the good ol’ Shoe Carnival days where we would prank call each other inquiring “Do you have any Bluuuuue Shoes?” Then once we all transferred over to Office Max (It is not necessary to understand the tie between Shoe Carnival and Office Max to comprehend the meaning behind the story kids…so stop wondering) it quickly became the question of “Do you sell any Bluuuuue Pens?” Was this the beginning of the Blue Pen preference? It is very possible.
Or possibly I am afraid of the Red Pen. Just the words Red Pen sound so striking and evil! When I hear Blue Pen, I become calm and relaxed. A Blue Pen looks like perfect little tennis shoe prints covering the snowy white paper, making a suggestion here and a comment there. But the Red Pen, the evil distracting Red Pen, shoots off the smooth crisp paper like giant stilettos stomping over each word they do not like and curving into words of their own. The Red Pen SCREAMS “You’ve done something wrong you idiot!” while the sweet little Blue Pen whispers “Oh honey, you’ve made a mistake. Let’s fix that shall we!”
Here I sit,
(Originally posted on March 18, 2009 at Desperately Searching for My Inner Mary Poppins)
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Cindy Wilson
This post made me laugh. When I was in high school I wrote for the newspaper and we’d always tell the teacher who edited our articles that red ink looked too harsh, like everything we were doing was wrong, so we got her a purple pen instead. She used it, too!
Then about a month ago (way after high school :D) I was editing one of my manuscripts and I started off with blue ink. But it just wasn’t working. So I switched to red. Ugh…I know! But I realized that I really wanted things to stand out so I know where I really need to make changes.
Thanks for the post!
Marybeth
Yeah I’m glad I’m through the first couple rounds of editing. It was hard to stay focused while doing it. I think I am going to take a second look at it come July if I haven’t had any bites. Maybe I will get some fresh ideas after spending so much time away from it.
Danyelle
I feel your pain! But sadly, have never thought of using the sweet blue pen over the evil red. Something I shall have to remedy. 😉
I hate editing. I mean, I’m always glad when I’ve done it, the story sparkles and shines. But it’s easy to get a headache from all the pre-shine spackle. :$