Sculpting a Masterpiece

The beautiful prose that came to mind in the shower somehow transformed into clunky sentences by the time I got to the computer. The more I wrestled with the words, the more unwieldy they became.

I have often read that true writing is in the rewriting. Most of us are not satisfied with a first draft. We know it takes several passes before writing is shaped into something acceptable to show others

Yet I get frustrated going over and over sentences trying to make them both clear and winsome. Why is my thinking so muddled? Why do I take so many words to say what I mean?

Wordy written in red by my teacher often adorned my school compositions.

The person who performed my first paid critique mentioned my “long, convoluted sentences.”

My husband told me after we had dated for a while that he used to wonder when I’d get to the point when I told a story. (After being married for 40 years, I’ve learned to jump to the main point first, especially when talking about the car or an appliance. Otherwise, he spends my whole narrative wondering what he’s going to have to fix.)

Yet, I’ve received enough encouraging feedback from my writing that I am not totally without hope. And now that I am aware of my writing mistakes, I can battle them with determination and knowledge.

I’m encouraged by a legend concerning Michelangelo. Supposedly, someone asked him how he got the statue of David out of a hunk of marble. The artist is rumored to have said, “I just cut away everything that’s not David.”

Before we can create a work of art, we’ve got to drag out our hunk of marble. As many have said, we can edit a bad page, but we can’t edit a blank one. The marble that Michelangelo used had previously been considered and rejected by two other sculptors. He saw the potential in it that others missed.

So we dump the words in our head onto paper. We study the craft of writing and learn ways to “write tight.” We carve away unnecessary words and cumbersome descriptions. We chisel adverbs and polish with stronger verbs.  We sand away passive verbs in favor of active ones. We brush away clutter. We chip off  multitudes of facts and illustrations and keep only the most poignant ones. And we can pray with the Apostle Paul, “that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak” (Colossians 4:4).

Visualizing excess verbiage as clumps of rough stone adorning the statue of David helps encourage me to get rid of clutter-words in my writing.

A statue as detailed as David takes time to sculpt, and so does editing. Blaise Pascal once wrote in a letter, “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” But the time is well worth it.

We might not become the Michelangelo of words. But we can sculpt our manuscripts as close to a masterpiece as possible.

Barbara Harper lives with her husband of 40 years in Knoxville, TN. They raised three sons, one of whom added a lovely daughter-in-law and an adorable grandson to the family. Barbara loves reading, writing, and card-making. She has blogged for almost 14 years at https://barbaraleeharper.com/. She wrote a newsletter for women at her church for 15 years as well as magazine articles, newspaper columns, and guest blog posts. One of her passions is encouraging women to get into the Word of God for themselves. She’s currently working on her first book-length project.