OPS

A couple of decades ago I visited a writer friend for the first time. She gave me a quick tour of her house and we wound up--of course--in her study. On the shelf alongside her writing books sprawled a well filled file folder marked "OPS." When I asked about it, the writer said, "Oh, that holds other people's stuff. You know from our writers' group." After each bi-monthly meeting, where we exchanged manuscripts and offered each other criticism and support, she took home other people's poetry, short stories and chapters. Every once in a while, she read through their manuscripts, along with the jotted comments she had made. "It's a great way to remind myself of what another writer did well . . . along with examples of things I might not want to emulate." We laughed together, knowing both of us had provided other group members with the same examples.

Now that the holidays are over, I'm moving back into the other part of my life as a writer. I'm dealing with OPS in a different way. Clients come to me for help with their stories and together, we develop, revise and edit their work. As in the different writers' groups I've belonged to over the years, it is always easier to see where someone else needs to slow down and shift narrative summary into a scene or scenes, to recognize and improve dialogue that conveys vital information but isn't quite natural, or develop a character who needs to speak for him or herself rather than for the writer. Though my focus is always on teaching clients how to develop the skills needed to make those revisions (ultimately) without me, today I recognize that an element of OPS sharpens my own eyes when I return to my own work after the appointment ends.

The give and take in my present writers' group and with my one on one writing partner offers a greater depth of those insights, since the group and partnership are founded on mutual feedback. Still, as my editorial work picks up again now that we're in 2011, I am grateful for more than the income. I'm excited to be in a position to help clients' writing evolve; and I'm grateful for the element of personal insight offered by OPS.