edit

My dream last night, had a professor in it, (good looking). He asked us to give a sentence about pain. I said something like..
"Pain crystallized, broken into shards, inset flatly across the skin, decorating, shielding; shinning." And it took him several minutes to reply with a comment, he said because it was such poor writing. The use so common. It was the ; followed by one word that he didn't like, that he felt so contrived. ( I had worried about the rest, but liked that part.) I have started to use ; to connect sentences, ok well not really, I 've started to use it to break up my run on sentences. But, I do know I've used it several times with just one word after it; I like doing this. I like the significance it gives that word, it both modifies what comes before, and stands alone. Anyway I was really upset in the dream. And today I am going through my books trying to figure out if what he said is true.
Also I was me, but the character wasn't. My being was tethered to her, watching and occasionally able to direct her. (She much younger than me, bit like Kitty from Pride and Prejudice, the year perhaps in the 70's) that very night she was eating sunflower seeds on the roof with a boy, heard her father wake up, and slide down to hide in the bushes (Why didn't she just go back into her room through the window she came out of?). Her dog, a wire hair jack russel, gave her up. She pretended to be sleeping, she pretended to be dead, but of course her father didn't fall for it. While I was watching her I was thinking, 'I've seen this one before. Yes, she ends up having an affair with that teacher.' I found this progression workable, as I had every intention of asking him my writing questions each time I/we saw him. But alas I woke up, before she could get into anymore trouble and before I could get any useful information.

I went through my books this morning with the hope of finding the answer. Nope. I still hope to glean some useful info from reading novels, but as far as my writing books go, I realize I have entered a new area, one I don't yet have a book for. My writing books are more about the emotional side, the having courage to write, and about the process of writing that first novel. But I don't have any on how to edit. I do have some about sentences structure, and spelling, et. cetera, helpful certainly, but not one on how to approach editing, how to apply it. Being me, I need a reference, a manual, a way to enter and navigate through this new territory. So it is off to the library (not open til Monday) or Barnes and Noble for me, as I doubt I shall see the professor again, and anyway I would like a more reliable source. (I mean knowing what he will be doing with that silly girl, how can I trust him?)