Little Binder of Joy

Yesterday I wrote a little under six pages. Six pages has become my new "limit" when writing. In high school and middle school I used to be satisfied with three, but as I get more and more crunched for time, as I get older, and as editing becomes a real and immediate threat, I need more wordage to analyze and rewrite and throw out, and, when absolutely necessary, keep.


I'm at about 41 pages now, and six chapters, and I figured that it's time to do some really in-depth editing, especially because my adviser e-mailed me her comments on my first chapter. So last night I printed out all 41 pages right under my father's nose, and put them all nice and neat in a free binder I found at my University.

Here it is! All nice and neat and organized by chapter. I'm so happy. As you can see, it is printed in orange ink, but that s because I am too cheap to spring for the money to print at my University, and because we're out of black ink at home, and because dad's less likely to flip about me printing nearly 50 pages of stuff if it's orange.


I do the best job of editing when I can hold a manuscript in my hands. So once I've edited an on-screen edition several times, and I'm getting cocky, I print and suddenly find all sorts of errors I didn't realize existed. Also, it's nice to carry around and show friends, all of whom are very obliging about finding the one word you misspelled and then not telling you what they thought of your actual writing.


Besides, it'll be nice to show off in class today, if I have the gumption to do it.