Dear Journal:

I’ve been editing my new novel, which is rough, but it’s supposed to be. It’s called a rough draft for a reason. And I realize again, part of the reason I like to write is that I get to edit my words.

When I say or do something dumb in real life, there are no do-overs. The best I can do is apologize if necessary and move on. But in writing, or movies, characters get polished. They say all the right things and make all the right moves because they are figments of some author’s imagination, and not first draft figments either. Real life is messy and complicated and doesn’t always make sense. Stories are entertaining and compelling; they make logical sense of an illogical world — because they’re heavily edited.

I’m lucky to have a critique group and they let me know that in chapter five, my main character Jak had the double-whammy of death: she was mean and made too many stupid actions in a row to be forgiven. Hey, she’s a scrapper who’s never been in space before. Stuff’s bound to go wrong. But I took the note. The chapter needed what we call the “not stupid” edit.

This is the kind of thing we don’t get to do in real life. And I think this is why people like social media so much. We get to edit our lives to seem cooler, funnier, less idiotic. In essence, we are presenting the “good parts” version of ourselves, of our story. If we don’t want to share that we were so spaced out mentally writing a scene that we went through the DQ drive-thru and forgot to order, we don’t have to. No one needs to know that we had to continue waiting in line while the cars ahead of us paid and got their food, so we could finally turn around and go back through all over again, because well, dinner. If we don’t want to share things like that with the world, we don’t have to. On the other hand, sometimes people need a laugh.

Song of the day: “The Middle” | Jimmy Eat World

Karen Harris Tully is a novelist living in Raymond with her husband and two small children. She writes sci-fi/fantasy for teens and adults and can be found at www.karenharristully.com.