Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "editing"

I know not what path others may take, but as for me, it's the same path, over and over. As I write, I leave big holes, but as I edit, again and again, they fill themselves in almost as a matter of course. As big problems are solved, smaller ones come to light and get their turn for my full attention. It's the fourth time through that I see a tiny event that deepens the bad girl's motivation and makes her more realistic. On the sixth time it might be an incident that, added to the main plot, diverts the reader and allows for a bigger surprise at the end. And it's the tenth time through that the phrasing smooths out, making each character sound like himself, different from all the others.

It's how I work, and it's how I know I'm no Mozart, just a writer who has to work really hard to get better.

My mother, an elementary teacher, once had a student hand in homework that stymied her for a few moments. All the true-false, multiple choice, and short answer responses were correct, but all the essay questions were answered with the phrase "Answers will vary." She finally figured out that during recess, while she was on hall duty, the kid had swiped her teacher's edition from the desk, copied what was written there onto his paper, and then put the book back.

What I've been thinking of as I edit my friend MS is that although she doesn't write like I do, she writes very well. I'm sure when she reads my work, she notices differences in things like sentence structure, syntax, and character development. What's nice about our arrangement is we've both got a reader who can acknowledge that different isn't necessarily inferior. I suppose that's the tough part of editing, not trying to turn every author into a clone of what the editor thinks is good writing. It all adds up to style, and when an author's got it, I'm okay with it. "Answers will vary".

...is over. I read the whole darned WIP (the sequel to HER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER), which took days and days, a lot of water, and a lot of stopping to fix what my ears heard that my eyes didn't. (Funny how eyes don't hear a thing!)

It's one of the most valuable things a writer can do, and it's also boring. But how clearly those repetitive phrases pop out. How easily you spot a point where there's not an adequate segue. How plainly you see that a character would not use that vocabulary, that tone, that phrasing at that moment.

Downside: today is go-through-and-fix-all-those-spots day!

Readers are smart people. They pick up on literary convention quite easily, and they understand that those conventions are often vague and eminently breakable. The flashback is my current quibble with my editor. He says they have to be a certain way; I'm not so sure. He'll win, because he's the editor, but I like the quote often attributed to Somerset Maugham: "There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

Readers pick up what an author is doing pretty easily if they're engrossed in the story, so I would like to leave my flashbacks as they are. Still, I know the editor is an intelligent reader. I guess I have to trust that as he goes, so go other intelligent readers. So it's off to rewriting the flashbacks!

Two big assets: distance and business sense.

First, distance. An editor is (or should be) someone who is removed from emotional attachment to a work. The editor acts as an enlightened reader, reacting to what he/she sees and noting places where more, less, or better is needed. Editors are a bit like teachers, who work with a large number of "children" and therefore can better judge your "child's" suitability for society.

Second, business sense. Editors need to keep their fingers on the pulse of the industry. A good editor knows, as well as anyone can in this crazy business, what will sell. Do they get it wrong sometimes? Of course. But they know what sold last month and last year and they know how much of a particular type is out there, how much is coming through their hands. They know that even if they love your current submission, there are twelve like it in the pipeline, and people may well be tired of, oh, say, VAMPIRES, by next year.

They aren't all good at what they choose to do. But there are lots of not-so-good writers out there, too.

No, not weapons of mass destruction. WIP is Work in Progress and for me, that WIP just became a Work Maybe Done. "Maybe" is there because I can always find things I want to fix.

My WIP became a WMD last night, but already I'm thinking that I could tweak a couple of characters a bit so they're more understandable. And the part where the bad guy chases them through the house...maybe a bit more action? I'd better read it again.

Maybe for me there's no such thing as Done. Maybe I always need that Maybe.

I'm not talking to anyone today. I'm so deep into an edit that nothing else registers. So read an earlier post. Read someone else's post. Write your own post.
But don't expect any more than this.

I planned to submit an older book to a publisher this week. It was one that several publishers showed interest in just before the Big Drop when everyone stopped buying everything.
Anyway, I thought I'd read through it and clear it up: move the dates up a year, freshen the clothing styles, whatever.
Ha!
I can't just skim through. I have to read, and then I find things that could be said better, things that should be clarified, things that need paring down. In other words, I'm in the middle of a full edit.
And it's going to take a while.

It's Wrong, So Make It Right--Rewrite
A writer who is paying attention knows when something's wrong with a project. That knowledge does not come early on, and often not easily. For me, when the writing is ongoing, it is important to get the main story down, and details almost have to be left fuzzy. I am an insistent advocate of "rest time" for a first-draft manuscript, time (like a month) in a drawer or on a CD so I see it with fresh eyes. Any MS needs multiple rereadings by the author before anyone else ever sees it. Like your child, you should want your writing to be as beautiful as possible when the world sees it.

Multiple re-reads allow a commited author to notice the things that aren't logical, places that need rewriting. There are times when I'd rather not. (Why can't I stretch credibility a little? Even great writers have done it. For example, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. How many times can two people accidentally stumble into each other in one lifetime?)So I may be tempted to gloss over why the protag goes to a particular spot. Or how she happens to leave her cell phone at home. Or when she chooses to go there, it is where the murderer is, too, by some odd chance. But as I go back over the piece, each time looking for different types of errors, those places feel weak. They need fixing. They need rewriting.

I just finished the edit of my January release, THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY. The editor found more things that needed rewriting, and that's to be expected. No author I know is capable of judging her own work alone. It takes an educated and committed editor to finish the job, acting as objective reader and polisher. So even after I'd read the piece and rewritten the weak spots I found, I was in for more work. However, I know the book gets stronger each time I read again, write again, examine again.

Rewriting is not a lot of fun, and the mark of an amateur is unwillingness to do it. Many would rather stagger onward and write more junk than go back and make that first draft into something worthwhile. For me, the term "writer" might be more correctly termed "rewriter". It is the people who are willing to reread and rewrite, many times, who produce excellent books.

Trick question. They're not, or at least they don't have to be. Some people I know have self-published, AFTER they thought about it for a long time. They paid an editor to find the errors they missed. They paid an artist to do a classy cover. They even paid a computer geek to make sure the formatting is clean, correct, and friendly to whatever e-reader would be used. Then and only then did they self-publish. Yay for them.
On the other hand, there are people who are too anxious, too egotistical, or too clueless to make their books the best they can be. I heard a (supposed) author say not too long ago, "I never edit. I just put it out there." Yeah, I'll bet that's what it is: out there.
The industry is changing--has changed. Authors can make their work available for sale to the public without waiting for an agent, an editor, or a publisher to deem it suitable. But that's a double-edged sword. Yes, it makes for variety, avoiding the "this is what sold well last time" mentality that many publishers exhibit. But unless a person is open to help and advice, quality suffers. Somebody has to tell an author when it isn't working. Somebody has to correct his or her mistakes in plotting, in syntax, and in spelling.
If you're going to be a self-published author, the responsibility falls on you. You have to do what a "real" publisher would do and submit your work to lots of people for criticism and suggestions. Don't want to put out a bad book? Then don't let your love affair with your own creative genius blind you to the possibility that without help from others, your book might be, indeed, really bad.