Before I get in trouble with wives everywhere, let me begin by saying that God has blessed me with the gift of a very intelligent, talented, insightful, beautiful and wonderful woman for a wife.
My wife has an English degree in English as a Second Language, so she is competent to look over my collection for punctuation and stuff. I was reluctant to ask her to edit my poetry because I was afraid that she may be biased, or lack objectivity in some particular thing or other. I thought maybe she would not give hard criticism of my work or go to the other extreme and see it as only a favor and not a serious project.
There is a danger that I would pester her about it and keep asking for an update on her progress, which would cause her to become anxious or feel like she is being used. So, I gave it to her and not ask about it until she was done. This would be the same as if I had sent the work away to an editor; I would not call every day and ask about it. I thought it was important to treat her service in the same professional manner, and I feel that is the correct approach on a serious project.
She has finished editing my collection. As I read her comments and discuss it with her I am glad and grateful that we are doing this together. I think she gave me some excellent positive criticism and sincere observations. I will easily go through the collection of poems and make the grammar changes, and over the next few weeks work on some style changes regarding the tone of some the poems to give them a more upbeat feel.
She made several suggestions about organizing the work into chapters with different themes and since I was thinking along those same lines I will be working on that idea for a few weeks.
I am excited about my partnership with her, sometimes spouses do not work well together in business or areas of creativity, and there are times when we have disagreements, just like anybody else, but her help is going to make this into a much more meaningful book for many people.
It may not be everybody's experience that asking a spouse to edit your writing works out well, but in this case, I feel it has.
My wife has an English degree in English as a Second Language, so she is competent to look over my collection for punctuation and stuff. I was reluctant to ask her to edit my poetry because I was afraid that she may be biased, or lack objectivity in some particular thing or other. I thought maybe she would not give hard criticism of my work or go to the other extreme and see it as only a favor and not a serious project.
There is a danger that I would pester her about it and keep asking for an update on her progress, which would cause her to become anxious or feel like she is being used. So, I gave it to her and not ask about it until she was done. This would be the same as if I had sent the work away to an editor; I would not call every day and ask about it. I thought it was important to treat her service in the same professional manner, and I feel that is the correct approach on a serious project.
She has finished editing my collection. As I read her comments and discuss it with her I am glad and grateful that we are doing this together. I think she gave me some excellent positive criticism and sincere observations. I will easily go through the collection of poems and make the grammar changes, and over the next few weeks work on some style changes regarding the tone of some the poems to give them a more upbeat feel.
She made several suggestions about organizing the work into chapters with different themes and since I was thinking along those same lines I will be working on that idea for a few weeks.
I am excited about my partnership with her, sometimes spouses do not work well together in business or areas of creativity, and there are times when we have disagreements, just like anybody else, but her help is going to make this into a much more meaningful book for many people.
It may not be everybody's experience that asking a spouse to edit your writing works out well, but in this case, I feel it has.
