T-charts. During the last few years of my enjoyable public education career, charts and graphs were big, the thing, in all subjects, even in creative writing. While editing my novel, Silver Cotton, I developed a chart, a T-chart, to graph the humor and humility in my editing process. Desperate? No, just amazed at my various emotions.
Not being humble, I’ll start there. I would draw it out for you, but I haven’t a clue. Give me a chalk board, or an overhead projector, (remember those?), I’m a master. On WordPress, I’m lost. That’s humbling. Perhaps I’ll sign up for their Bloggin University.
Another humility: commas. My helpful editing pals are using a great deal of red ink on clauses, conjunctions, and parenthetic expressions. Yes, I had a Strunk and White research hour.
Ready for one more listing under the humility side of my T-chart? Try being an author who looses a charcter….yes! Is Dianna still in the barn? Are Trevor and Edward still inside the brothel?
Humor? Under humor I listed wonderfully creative (my evaluation) ideas for the final book, Golden Leaf, in this Gray Lace series. The adopted children, Erin, Burke, and Eton, are lookin forward to new adventures and wise cracks. I gauffaued at returning the meanie from Gray Lace. “Surprise, I’m no longer in a nasty Louisana jail cell,” announces John Pettigrew, reserrected in Golden Leaf.
However, I’ll try to not have She-crap soup. (p or b ?) Ah, the joys of editing. Try explaining that recipie during a book talk.
Enough!
Eleanor Tatum 