Too Much Editing, Not Enough Writing

Distractions on the Blogfront

Welcome to the second edition of Ramona’s News from the Blogfront.

We’re having our roofs replaced at the old homefront (which is where the Blogfront originates), or we thought we were. It’s the house, the garage, and what used to be a fish house. The fish house, built by the former owners to clean fish a distance away from the living quarters, was going to be my She-Shed when we first bought the place. Any scent of fish was long gone and it seemed the perfect place to set up my desk and files and a comfy reading chair and lamp.

It didn’t happen. Turns out I’m way too sociable to be shut up in a little hut away from everybody. I thought I would love it, but I didn’t. Every time I heard noises coming from the house I wanted to know what was going on. I moved back into the little alcove off the bedroom and it’s been my ‘office’ for more than 20 years.

But about those roofers: They were supposed to start on Monday but rain was forecast for Tuesday night and Wednesday and it seems they need three clear days for the tear-off. Of course they didn’t call me on Monday morning to tell me that. I had to find out by calling from the ferry to let them know we were leaving for a few days so we wouldn’t have to live with the pounding and the chaos. Uh huh. That’s right.

We had a great visit with our daughter and two grandsons and got back last night, but now we’ll have to be at home when the roofers finally get around to making a racket here. We can’t keep running away. It’ll be fine. I think.

I did get some work done in the lovely loft at my grandson’s cottage. Turns out it’s kind of magical up there. It was as if a faucet had turned on and ideas gushed out faster than I could write them down. So I have a few draft-stage pieces that will have to wait a while. My fight these days is in having to explain what the heck the term ‘Creative Non-fiction’ means.

Here’s what happened: As the editor of a Medium publication called Indelible Ink, I’m in charge of accepting or rejecting any writing that appears there. Just me. I’m it. It’s a publication designed solely for creative non-fiction works, which I thought I had explained pretty well in my Submission Guidelines. Turns out I didn’t. So I’ve revised them for the umpteenth time, knowing I’ll probably be revising them again.

For some reason, along with a few other potential Indy Ink writers who just don’t get it, I’ve been getting a slew of submissions from foreign-born technical writers who seem to think it’s an easy jump from there to CNF. (I have a feeling they’re all friends of a technical writer whose CNF pieces did work well. I’ve published her work several times.) They think all they have to do is switch their pieces to first-person and they’re done. I’ve tried every which way but the right one (apparently) to explain to them how CNF differs from straight non-fiction, and nothing seems to work. They revise their drafts to add more first-person lines and send them back, hoping this is what I’m looking for. It isn’t.

So I wrote a piece about CNF and consulted with a private CNF group on Facebook to see if they agreed with what I wrote. Well, we got so wound up in it, I barely got anything else done. I love those people! They get me!

This is the piece I wrote. And, by the way, if you want some terrific examples of CNF, slide down to the end where I link to an article describing 100 major Creative Non-fiction works. I’ve read at least a couple dozen of them and now I plan to read even more!

I had a major rejection this week, too, but it’s okay because the editors asked me to join a discussion on editing later on, so I’m trying not to take it personally. Life goes on.

So until next time, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. If you have some ideas of what you want to see here, let me know. I’m just flailing around here, trying to get my bearings, trying not to ramble on.