Why Should I Edit?

[RiverNotch]

Fits of madness are definitely very good -- many of the more celebrated works of poetry seem to have been written under the influence of sex, drugs, music, schizophrenia, spiritual ecstasy -- but ultimately the percentage of what ends up being either not-cliche or not-unintelligible are determined by prior knowledge. Ultimately, the mad self can only work with what the sane self has gathered: if the sane self didn't bother to learn French, the mad self's attempts to make French poetry would suck dicks like a Midnight Cowboy, for example, unless the entire self really tempted God for poetry (in which case, this being an age requiring a different set of spiritual gifts, there's a high chance it's the devil who granted glossolalia -- but that's for another time). I've been using madness as a tool for writing since a few months before I joined this site, and I'm pretty sure the ratio of crap versus good stuff has been decreasing steadily the more I learned from this site and beyond -- the more I learned the rules, or rather the more rules I learned, the more ways I found of expressing myself, of talking like a right, honorable Asshole (xD). Which is of course what makes my earlier, deleted comment a compliment -- I find that the better the artist, the more of an asshole he is, at least until his dick has withered enough ---

and which I think is what Boccaccio meant, at least in part. Critiquing -- analyzing your and more importantly others' works -- ultimately plays a part in the above; editing, well I think other people can do it just as good as you, and if your poem needs a lot of editing either you're working on a really long piece, you're working on a properly metered piece, or, again, you're not as good yet (and, of course, to edit is to critique); and struggling to compose, well, again unless the piece is really long or is metered (or is really, really intricate, although I don't think you can make an Iliad with just three short lines), you're not as good yet. On that third point, ultimately the stuff I posted here that I properly, aesthetically like are, barring the one or two pieces that actually follow rules I didn't myself construct, stuff I just shat out in one sitting, barely any editing before or after posting, whereas the stuff I actually struggled to compose ended up being cliched, overworked, or at least forgettable -- although perhaps it's a matter of personality, too. And on that second point, again, to edit is to critique, and with the right sanctioning, to critique is to edit -- that is to say, if you properly considered a piece once it's been constructed and thought, "hey, this is great!", and so didn't edit, then you're not being lazy, everything just went right for you beforehand.