In The Artful Edit, Susan Bell recommends a variety of ways to see a story with fresh eyes, by editing pages stuck to a wall, spread across the floor, or hung on a clothes line. Something about hanging a story on a line like laundry appealed to me, so I hung a string across my bedroom (the only room with enough space to walk around it.) Then I pinned short stories to the line with wooden clothespins.
I have a collection of picture book stories, and I pulled out my favorites to take a look at. I worked on them one by one, editing them as they hung on the line, reading them and stepping back and pacing, seeing how the story flowed across the pages. There’s something organic and tactile about this, that makes me long for a large studio where I could always have a story line, instead of needing to tuck it away every night so we don’t get tangled in it in the dark. Caught in a story line. That would be a story.
Maureen
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