I went to the hairdresser today and I walked out of there feeling bad ass. I got my hair darkened and purple streaks put in (not the teenage rebellion purple, grown-up I have to work in a conservative office purple). I don’t go to these places because I have a righteous indignation against my natural hair color or inability to use a hair dryer (okay, that last one might be closer to the truth than I’d care to admit).
I go because walking out of there makes me feel like a confident woman who can conquer the world. Look at me go take Target by storm! Watch the compliments roll in! Pay attention to my badassery as I live my life! It’s kind of like editing – hair dye helps me realize the awesomeness of me.
As I sit here finishing up the last few chapters of my novel and preparing to send the words off for editing, I’m like a mother watching her baby get on the school bus for the first time. Will they be liked? Will they be ridiculed? Have I prepared them well enough for this big step? What shape am I going to find them in later?
But editing isn’t the adversary. We aren’t sparring with an enemy when we get critiques back, simply (hopefully) impartial advice. They only want to help us shine. Help the words and characters convey their own confident badassery. That’s always the goal – to help the words go out into the world and speak for themselves. When it’s all over, we can’t speak for them.
And maybe they might trim your ends, untangle your modifiers, straighten out your verbs. Shampoo away the extraneous characters and condition those plot holes. Take some scissors to that purple prose. You may worry about it and disagree over it (you should have heard what my mother said when I told her my hair was now partially purple – even though it’s her favorite color, hair is not where it belongs). But just remember, a trip to the stylist is not a judgement on you.
Sometimes professionals can help us be strong, teach us how to be confident.
In books, as in life, some people just demand purple hair.