Editing

A couple weeks ago, we had a seminar with Jules Pretty. We were discussing chapters from his forthcoming book, This Luminous Coast. It was one of the best seminars so far in the Wild East, and one of the most relevant for the creative writing they're wanting us to do because it dealt with the ever important issue of editing. We've been considering the layering of information in various texts and Jules let us in on a secret: the layer comes as a result of editing. So how many edits are we talking about? Two or three? No, think more like eight or fifteen. He also talked about taking criticism, the importance of putting a bit of distance between yourself and your writing before coming back to it, and not being too precious with your words. Good lessons in there for me.