Roughly-Hewn Words

Sitting here and thinking about my writing before I get all wrapped up in work. Last night was spent transferring my scenes from various sources into yWriter. I have used yWriter in the past and had dismissed it due to the fact that I might use 3 or 4 different computers in the course of my week and i needed portability. This is why I have been leaning towards Google Docs. I can use GD anywhere I have access to the internet. But recently, my computer choices have been narrowed down. I basically work on one laptop and possibly my home PC. Best of all, yWriter is freeware.

Basically, yWriter works best in the basic unit of the scene. Up until now, I was working chapter by chapter. So, in order to import my writing into yWriter, I had to read my story and break it out into scenes. I worked a lot on that last night. But as I was reading, a painful realization came over me: I really hate about 40% of my words. This isn’t a phishing expedition; I am not looking for people to tell me they like what I write. This is just a sincere assessment of my writing. Don’t get me wrong, I REALLY like many of the scenes (interestingly, those scenes are the ones that have been edited many times especially following the critiques by my Grub Street writer’s group, and therefore I still have hope). But the 40% that I hated, I DESPISED! They were poorly-structured, self-serving and ultimately irrelevant.

Then I began looking for a metaphor in my real life and I thought about my father. Here was a man that could do anything in the house. It was not unusual to come home from school and see him starting a new project that would normally take three or four men to accomplish. He was truly a jack of all trades and master of none, to perpetuate the cliche. Whether he was working on plumbing, electricity, carpentry or the garden, he never doubted his ability to get the job done and it always got done. But the reality was, his handiwork was always less than perfect. He took his resourcefulness to an extreme. Instead of buying a new can of paint, he would mix together near empty cans until everything in the house became various shades of brown. He never bought clean lumber, so the garden shed he built was patched together with wood paneling leftover from refinishing my bedroom, to 4X8′s split to make 2@2X4′s for the wall studs. He unbent rusty nails and painted the basement floor with wall paint. He used coat hangers to hang a drop ceiling and removed one side off an old shopping car to make a grill rack for the BBQ pit.

But, the garden shed has stood there for 40 years without a leak and we have been grilling on the improvised grate for 25 years. To this day, we see his handiwork. Anyone could have done it better, but it would not look like my dad’s. I see him in everything I touch in the house.

He simply got it done. He wasn’t proud or not proud. He just knew that it had to get done. He didn’t beat himself up when corners did not meet at right angles. He worked around it. So, as I became really discouraged last night that “all” I have created are corners that don’t meet, I stopped to think of my dad. He got it done and so can I.

Thanks for listening.

Posted via email from Dan’s posterous