Well, Well, What Have We Here?

Yesterday I looked over and edited a short story I wrote a few months ago. Did it need editing?  Oh yes it did. I had way too many grammatical mistakes. I started with one read/edit where I only looked for my typos only with a pen and a highlighter.

Originally, I presented this story to others in my writing seminar as was our assignment. We read each other's stories and gave feedback. For my part, I should have placed far more effort into this project to eliminate the typos. One or two typos would be a mistake.  Several typos and tense mixing looks completely haphazard and is the hallmark of the complete novice. In other words, a hot mess.  For the record I have graduate classes under my belt. There are high and reasonable expectations placed upon graduate students and their materials. I don't find my typos a simple mistake, but rather me not getting my writing up to par with my graduate studies skills.

Did I think I wrote a good story? Yes I did, but it went no further than me getting feedback about it. I thought I worked on a story that was a bit stronger than my usual writing, and more direct using the various exercises I learned in my writing seminar. What I should have done is put a little more effort into the final presented product. This would have made for a more polished presentation in regards to the story.  I think the idea,  the mood, and the energy that my short story conveyed, however I fumbled the delivery.

Initially I thought, while editing,  "I'm too close to the material to see it as something I could work towards improving." This was an odd statement, as I've written papers and edited them within the same week. What did was capitalize on my procrastinating skills, which is to say I didn't think it was important enough to do the revisions immediately. Yes a couple of months gives me fresh eyes to revise, but had I corrected the story, say a week from time of the feedback, the story could have been shelved, then tweaked once again. I wasted time.

I did work on other projects, but not at a frequency I think I'm capable of.  Other stories need writing and other stories need attention.  My blog needs postings.  I can say this is the topic of today, which means I'm writing once more. Needless to say, you can take someone out of graduate classes, but you can't take the graduate studies out of the person. It's time to honor those skills with a fresh revisions, and  continued writing. That would make me a lapsed hot mess.  This has been good writing today.