I’ve just been looking at a recent haibun, which I had thought I might reprint it in the blog. When I looked at it I found that, despite it being accepted and published, and despite my various edits and improvements before submission, it still has faults. It’s strange how that happens. There are at least two corrections needed in the space of 200 words. I suppose this will always be the problem with written work. It seemed finished when I submitted it, but the faults are clear and jarring.
Looking at it with fresh eyes shows more clearly what an editor may see when looking at my work. They aren’t even complicated faults – one being a fault with rhythm and one being a repeated word.
The piece I have used, could be better, and I have had a couple of thoughts for improvement, but nothing leaps out at me immediately. I’m now wondering about the idea of leaving everything for an extra three months before submitting it.
Quiet Corner
As a child, I attended a village school where the playground shared a wall with the churchyard. On one side of the wall we played and shouted. On the other, a line of small mossy memorials marked the graves of babies. Having grown up knowing that I had a sister who had died before I was born, I accepted, as did most people, that babies died. Years later, staring in wonder at my firstborn, I would think about those stones again, the tiny bodies that they covered, and from a new perspective, the parents.
snail shells
the song thrush uses gravestones
for an anvil
First Published Blithe Spirit February 2022
I’m sorry about the sister you never knew. My dad also had a sister who died before he was born.
She was one of three in that generation. In some ways it was kinder. A friend of mine had a seriously premature baby, who needed a lot of medical care before her eventual, and inevitable, death just over a year later. That must be a lot harder.
I enjoyed your haibun as well, and also agree with Tootlepedal about the self-criticism. Don’t let it cramp your style.
Self criticism is good but I hope that you don’t allow it to cramp your style. I thoroughly enjoyed your haibun.
Thank you. I think I’m generally over the internal editor that cramps my style and hope I’m now in a position where I’m managing to improve rather than kill things. 🙂 Time, as they say, will tell.
I like this too. It’s very evocative–visual.
Thank you. 🙂
This is really very good – but I am no editor
You were a reader, that will do for me. 🙂