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Sunday, July 4, 2010

Writing Tips for the Practical-Minded #10: We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Edited...

I read a tidbit in my friend Bev Browning's blog, onemoretimebev.blogspot.com/, that could not be more perfect for a writer's blog on Independence Day:  Modern technology has revealed to us that Thomas Jefferson edited the Declaration of Independence down to the last individual word, even as the ink was drying. 
 
Who among us is really surprised to hear that?  Still, seeing a photo of the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, complete with Jefferson's edits and the comments of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, is enough to give this history buff cold chills.  Check out this quote and link:  "In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote the word "subjects," when he referred to the American public. He then erased that word and replaced it with "citizens," a term he used frequently throughout the final draft." (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38068227/ns/us_news-life/)
 
If Thomas Jefferson didn't get it right the first time, why should we be hard on ourselves when our first drafts aren't everything we'd hoped they'd be?  Editing is an important part of our art form.  In fact, it could even be viewed as an entirely separate art form, requiring the use of an entirely separate set of skills.  To edit one's own work requires clarity of thought and the ability to take an unbiased look at a piece of work that was created directly from the heart and soul.  Editing requires an unwavering belief that a story can made better, and it requires the judgment to recognize when a story has reached in its final form.

When Jefferson asked John Adams why Jefferson should be chosen, between the two of them, for the job of writing the Declaration of Independence, Adams said, "'Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can."
(http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/jefferson.htm The italics are mine.)

When you doubt the importance of typing letters onto your computer screen, day in and day out, remember what words can do.  They can influence.  They can convince.  They can deceive.  They can flatter.  They can wound.  They can heal.  They can foment war.  They can wage peace.  And when an uncommonly brilliant writer finds himself standing at a turning point in history, pen in hand, words can change the world.

Let's revisit Jefferson's genius on this, the 234th anniversary of America's birth:

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
(http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/freedom/doi/text.html)

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Happy Independence Day!
Mary Anna

2 comments:

  1. Did you know that I'm in the Jefferson family? This explains why I am "ten times the writer" that anyone in the John Adams family will ever be. But it doesn't explain why I didn't inherit the gene that keeps a girl from being "obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular" ... hhhhhmmmmm ...

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  2. Now, Bev...I know you to be popular, so you're dead wrong on that one. I suspect you of many things, so perhaps that's apt. As for whether you're obnoxious...I'm taking the Fifth. (And thank you, Founding Fathers, for the Fifth Amendment and the other amendments keeping it company on the Bill of Rights.)

    I'd love to be related to Thomas Jefferson! Family lore, unproven, says that I am a distant cousin to that other famous Jefferson. You know...Jefferson Davis. I guess it's kinda cool to claim someone who was a senator and a cabinet member of the US, as well as the president of a foundling nation, but I can't get past the slavery part. So I'd rather be related to your Jefferson.

    I'm listening to the fireworks now. Happy Independence Day!

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