by: Joelle Charbonneau
I have a major personality flaw. (Okay, technically I have dozens of astonishingly
large personality flaws. However, for
the purpose of this blog post and to keep my therapy and chocolate bill down to
a minimum, I’m going to just pretend I have just the one.) I like to tinker. Okay – now you’re probably rolling your eyes
at me. Lots of people like to tinker,
right? But, for me, tinkering is a major
problem. I feel the need to tinker with
everything.
If I’m making Cambell’s soup out of a can, I add garlic,
pepper or sometimes even cream to it.
And if I make dinner from scratch (which more often is the case) I never
make a recipe the same way twice. I have
to add a bit of this and a bit of that to see how it tastes. (This drives
everyone who knows me nuts because I never have a recipe to hand them if they
like what I make. I can make a good
guess, but I’m never totally sure I remember exactly what tinkering I did.)
I’m also a tinkerer around the house. If my husband cleans the house (kind of a big
“if” but it does happen), I always have to go around and fix what didn’t get
cleaned exactly right. Books in
bookshelves get rearranged frequently. Knickknacks
and picture frames are moved from place to place. I’m no the best housekeeper in the world, but
when I get into the spirit, I find myself fiddling with just about everything.
And don’t get my students talking about the tinkering I do
in voice lessons. I’m a huge
perfectionist with their tone and their dynamics. During a lesson, I might stop them a dozen
times during the course of just one musical phrase adjusting this and that
until it sounds just the way I think it should.
And then I do the same thing with the next phrase. And once the music sounds great I start to
fiddle with their acting choices. There
are days I think my students are ready to deck me. Thankfully, they haven’t succumbed to the
temptation – yet.
Yes. When it comes to
tinkering I am an “A” type personality.
Which is probably why it comes as no surprise that I tinker A LOT when I
write. There is always a word (or
hundreds) that I can change and adjust and make better no matter what stage of
the process I’m in. This means I tend to
fret and worry when a new book comes out that I didn’t do enough
tinkering. Yes, I need professional
help.
As I approach THE END of this current book, I am already
getting the urge to tweak and change and alter things, which is good, because
no matter how much we pay attention to our craft when writing a book, there are
always things that need to be fixed. In
this case, I know that I have to play with the opening to make sure it starts
with the biggest bang I can. After that –
well, I’m guessing just about every sentence will be analyzed, adjusted and
maybe even deleted.
Yep…fun times. Of
course, for the tweaking to start, I have to first hit THE END. Wish me luck, because by this time next week
I should be reporting that this manuscript is done. Here’s hoping I’m right.
How about you? What
things do you like to tinker with? And if
you are a writer, what is your goal for the week?
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