Writers could be crazy?

Posted on by Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching Consultant

Writers are never satisfied. Put it down for a while, pick it up again. Read it aloud to someone, and you are back in process, revising forever. It’s like a disease! And there is no cure.
Bake says there comes a time when you have to stick a fork in it and call it done. Well, I don’t know when that time might be.
Well, maybe after it’s a published piece. However, I’ve seen a lot of second, third, fourth, etc. editions. Isn’t that the writer back in process?
Of course, if you have to have a disease, revision is a pretty good one to pick. It doesn’t give you a fever, spots on your tongue, or immobilize you in any way. It lets you drink copious amounts of coffee, blurt astonishing comments whenever you want, and jump out of your chair, ranting, “I just can’t sit here another minute!”
OK, I’m rereading this to see whether it needs to be revised. Lord help me! I have to go garden now, it balances me. After that I’ll come back and revise the thriteenth chapter of Nellie for the umptiumpth time!

Published by Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching Consultant

Jane has loved writing from the time she learned to hold a pencil. Her writing journey moved from that pencil to personal computers through the seventies, she edited for a hospital public relations department. The eighties found her owning a public relations business, publishing newspaper and magazine articles, and directing communications for a large church. In the nineties she published her first book and led critique groups and writers' workshops. In the twenty-first century she became a teaching consultant for the National Writing Project, published several more books, and began an editing business. Jane also loves raising chickens, dogs and alpacas, gardening, oil painting, swimming and hanging out with her family.

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