When editing is like untangling a Christmas Tree - by Natasha Woodcraft

I often get called Scrooge – by my husband, no less. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas. I do. It’s just that he doesn’t have to organise the entire thing.

I actually love giving gifts, it’s one of my love languages, and I don’t begrudge any of that side. It’s the faff. The fluff. The nonsense that gets me down. I turn on UCB hoping for something more meaningful, only to find they’re also playing “All I want for Christmas is you.” I turn it off again. I know, I know… Scrooge. 

Then there’s the tree. Oh goodness. We have a fairly decent artificial one. This year, having moved house and gained some more space, we considered splurging on a real one, but we have kittens, and I could just imagine them climbing to the top, knocking everything off and catapulting to the nearest piece of tinsel hanging from a picture frame. Crash. 

We’ve come pretty close, even with the artificial tree, and the little tinkers also figured out how to squash down the bottom row of branches so they inelegantly brushed the floor more successfully than my broom. 

On Sunday, we invited the neighbours over for Christmas drinks and nibbles. Cue frantic tidying and trying to locate the wine glasses from one of the boxes we hadn’t got round to unpacking yet. The tree… oh, gosh! What have the kittens done now? It took us an hour or so to dissemble the entire thing, including half an hour untangling the lights. We moved it, hubby did some clever repair work to those lower branches then dressed it back up again. It looked much better the second time round, and, thanks to an expertly placed cardboard box, it’s mercifully still intact two days later. 

Editing can be a bit like redressing a Christmas tree. We know there’s a great book there somewhere, but it’s been beaten around a bit by kittens, purposed into something else entirely, then tangled up in a web of subplots and shiny, distracting rabbit holes of research.

Giraffes on the tree anyone?

Sometimes to get back to the great idea, we need to take all the sparkly extras off. We might even need to move the tree – or several branches (scenes) at least. Then, once we get back to the core of it, we can see the wood again. ‘Aha! That’s what I was trying to say. I remember now.’

Time to redress it, chucking out all the tinsel the kittens have mangled, reluctantly putting away those decorations you're emotionally attached to that have seen better days (ideas you fell in love with but which don’t really add to the beauty) and storing them for another project, another day. Perhaps we can use them for a newsletter freebie, a lead magnet or a social media post? Certainly, they are better placed in the memories box than on the tree. 

It can be a painful process. I love editing other people’s work but my own fills me with… well, more scrooge-like feelings. Yet it’s necessary, and it’s always worth it. Like the right decorations on the Christmas tree, everything sparkles better when it’s meant to be there. 

There’s a final thing I haven’t mentioned. The reason for the season. My Scrooge-like tendencies come from my frustration with the faff, when all I want for Christmas is for Jesus to come back! Perhaps editing can sometimes makes us feel scrooge-like because we’ve forgotten the reason we’re doing it. 

So if you’re struggling now, staring at a mangled tree of manuscript and wondering if you’ll ever make it beautiful, why not try asking our Heavenly Father to help you untangle it? Like my wonderful husband, He’s pretty good at fixing things. I usually find that when I invite Him into the process, the whole thing becomes a lot clearer. And it definitely ends up more beautiful. 

I hope you all have a very Happy Christmas, and (perhaps?) a happier time editing! Until the New Year, farewell one and all.

(Just in case you're a cat person, here's the terrible twosome. Butter wouldn't melt...)

Natasha Woodcraft lives in Lincolnshire with her husband, 4 sons, a spotty dog, 2 kittens, a misunderstood bunny and some much-maligned fish. She believes stories have power to communicate deep truth and transform lives. Her published novels, The Wanderer Scorned & The Wanderer Reborn, explore God’s redemptive purposes for messy people by reimagining the tale of Cain & Abel. Also a songwriter, Natasha peppers her emotional prose with poetry and song. 

Pictures, where not mine, are courtesy of pexels.com