As I mentioned yesterday, while I let my manuscript rest from my rounds of cutting and stitching and appending, I’ll be working on a portrait. Many times my artistic talent became my savior in school. Standing in front of my classmates to give an oral report was a guarantee that I would end up pale and sweating, with my heart beating so hard my barely audible voice sounded as choppy as the worst of cell phone connections. So, whenever possible, I opted to fulfill my “report” obligations by using paint, paper, clay, or fabric.
So, you say, thanks for the colorful childhood memory, but how does that relate to writing? Simple: I have more confidence in my editing skills than my draft writing skills.
Faces or figures have always been my favorite subjects. As children do, I began as an impressionist, but being the perfectionist that I am, I developed my talent toward photo-realism. But the hard part is already done in portraiture. I don’t have to create the faces, you see, I just interpret them.
So I sweat and shake, whimper and rant, push and pull to get that draft down, but then when I have the complete story—the face, so to speak—I can rub my hands together in joyful anticipation and start editing. I can sketch and delineate, shade and lift, I can take my Berol Turquoise 9H and polish that skin until it gleams. That’s the easy part.
That’s the fun of editing.
Linda Cassidy Lewis 
How wonderful that you have this talent, on top of your gift for writing. I can’t wait to see your work!
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I’m working on it now. I’m definitely rusty, but I think it will come out all right. I regret that I gave Jalal curly hair, though.
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You’ve become such a prolific blogger! I need to catch up on all your posts here and keep up in the future. 🙂 I think that editing and painting realistically are two talents that many would envy. I think there are a lot of people with interesting stories in their heads, but very few with the patience and skill to turn them into a polished masterpiece.
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Prolific? Oh yeah, once you get me started talking, I don’t know when to shut up! I hope you’ll enjoy My Perfect Day and Sight Unseen, when you get around to them.
I too think everyone has at least one story in them, but it certainly is hard work to write it out.
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I really relate to this. When I was writing fiction, I loved the editing part and had to stop myself so I could get to the end of the story. And many pieces are unfinished because I never got there.
Hey, need a volunteer?
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You may soon get to edit more fiction than you bargained for, Pamela. 🙂
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I’m in.
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I love the metaphor (and I love the editing part, too). You should check out this link, it’s so cool:
http://naldzgraphics.net/tutorials/how-to-create-a-simple-face-text-portrait-in-photoshop/
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Well, shoot, that would have been a perfect graphic for this post. I wish I’d seen that tutorial earlier.
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