L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 15

Book Review: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld

Jed Rubenfeld is a modern-day Renaissance man. A professor of law at Yale University who has also taught at Stanford and Duke, he is an expert on constitutional law, privacy and the First Amendment. He studied theatre and Shakespeare at Julliard and wrote a thesis on Sigmund Freud during his senior undergraduate year at Princeton. He is also the author of six books, two of which are novels. It seems as though there’s nothing he can’t do. If I didn’t admire him so much, I’d be horribly jealous. (Well, maybe I can do both at the same time.)

The Interpretation of Murder was his first novel. It’s a very intricate weaving of true events and characters with fictional events and characters. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sandor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, Abraham Brill – all real life figures in the early 1900s movement of psychoanalysis, which was new, controversial and in competition with neurology – mingle with the fictional Elizabeth Riverford, Dr Stratham Younger, Nora Acton, George and Clara Banwell, Coroner Hugel and Detective Littlemore. There’s a miniature essay at the end of the book clearly outlining what’s real and what’s not and the artistic licence taken, which is a good thing because the blending of them is seamless.

When Elizabeth Riverford is murdered in an apartment at the exclusive Balmoral building in New York, Coroner Hugel and Detective Littlemore are assigned to investigate the case. On the same night as her death, Dr Stratham Younger meets Dr Sigmund Freud as he steps off the George Washington steamship for what is his first (and turns out to be his last) trip to the US. Dr Freud is there to advance the cause of psychoanalysis through a series of university lectures and Dr Younger is one of his American devotees.

Later the same week, Nora Acton is apparently targeted by Elizabeth Riverford’s killer but survives when the murderer is disturbed. Miss Acton is unable to remember who attacked her and has lost her voice to boot. When Dr Younger hears about the case at a society event, he volunteers Dr Freud’s talents in order to help the debutante recover both her memories and her ability to speak. Knowing he will be in the country a short time and that recovery could take a while, Dr Freud appoints Dr Younger to perform the psychoanalysis.

Coroner Hugel determines conclusively that whoever killed Elizabeth Riverford is the same person who attacked Nora Acton and when, after a few sessions With Dr Younger, she identifies George Banwell as her assailant, it seems like case closed. Except for one thing. George Banwell, a wealthy property developer married to Miss Acton’s best friend, has an airtight alibi for the time of Elizabeth Riverford’s murder. He was dining outside of the city with New York Mayor, George McClellan. It’s a head scratcher. And when Miss Riverford’s body goes missing from the morgue, it becomes difficult to prove there ever was a murder, let alone a murderer.

It’s not a straightforward murder mystery. Jed Rubenfeld, through his main character of Dr Stratham Younger, delves into the real life history of the tumultuous relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the true meaning of “to be or not to be” in Hamlet and alternative theories of what the Oedipus complex actually means. It’s mostly superfluous to the plot and while I found it fascinating, I can understand that some might not.

In the end, the plot turns out to be a little bit convoluted but it almost doesn’t matter. The writing is wonderful and the research impeccable. New York just after the turn of the twentieth century is a character all on its own, beautifully portrayed and perfectly used. Along with society matriarchs, rebellious daughters, immoral fathers, psychotic psychiatrists, corrupt officials, madams and prostitutes with hearts of gold, and determined discoverers of the truth, it all makes for an intriguing set of circumstances. Because even the fictional people feel real.

It took me a while to read this book but unlike some others that seem to drag on and on, I really didn’t mind. I could have happily spent a lot longer engrossed in its pages. And I imagine that it’s the sort of book that you could get more and more out of on second and subsequent readings and also the kind of book that different people could take different things from. I don’t know that it’s destined to become a classic but it sure was enjoyable while it lasted.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 3 June 2017

The Fiction Versus Non-Fiction Debate: Is One Better Than the Other?

I recently spent time with a group of friends I see roughly four or five times a year and one of them asked me how my writing was going, knowing that I was doing it full-time. Well, I told her. Did I have a daily routine? she asked. Just to sit down and start, I replied. And when would my next book be out? In a few months. Non-fiction, I clarified. My next novel would be published in about a year’s time. Oh, she said with a hint of disappointment and then moved onto conversation with someone else.

That “Oh” gave me pause. Everyone else I’ve ever discussed my writing with (which isn’t too many people as I find it a little self-indulgent and difficult to do justice to when I’m the one talking) has had the exact same response, which is admiration – admiration at the fact that I’ve written and published books. After all, so many people talk about it and never get around to doing it but continue talking about it until anyone hearing them talk about it wants to beat them over the head with their non-existent book.

I also found it a little strange because I’ve always thought of non-fiction as a slightly higher, slightly more respectable calling than fiction (not my non-fiction, though, just the non-fiction of others) because it requires knowing what you are writing about (or it should) whereas in fiction you can just make up any old thing. Still, they both require effort and commitment over a reasonably lengthy period of time. Why would one let alone the lesser other (whichever you happen to think it is) elicit an “Oh”?

In preparing to write this blog post, I did a bit of research about the differences in the perception of fiction writing versus non-fiction writing and discovered something that I didn’t know. There is a lot of debate about this. Unsurprisingly, those who write fiction defend it vociferously and those who write non-fiction point to bigger sales and grateful marketing departments at publishing houses who always know how to promote non-fiction but struggle with fiction, particularly literature.

I happily read (and write) both fiction and non-fiction, although I read (and write) more fiction because I like to escape from the horrific realities of the world and even when there are horrific realities in fiction, there tends to be poetic justice or loose ends tied up nicely or something at the end that allows me a sense of closure. Non-fiction can often raise more questions than it answers and I always want to know what happened after the end of the book. I never wonder that about fictional characters because their stories have to be complete (even if sequels are being planned).

I started wondering if because fiction and non-fiction are both forms of writing that they make us think they have more in common than they actually do. We don’t compare fiction with scientific writing so why do we compare it with biographies and histories? Perhaps it has something to do with the rise of creative non-fiction. Helen Garner’s Joe Cinque’s Consolation is a great example of it and will be her most lucrative, if not successful, book as it has now been made into a movie. But eventually I realised this was me just trying to get away with not having to answer the question.

Which, of course, is that no, neither one is better than the other. Perhaps that’s because as EL Doctorow put it, “There is no longer any such thing as fiction or non-fiction; there’s only narrative.” And perhaps it’s also because they so often lead into each other. I didn’t intend to write long-form non-fiction and it was very much a surprise when I realised that was what I had been doing. And I certainly never thought I’d write two non-fiction books. But the truth is that I never would have if it weren’t for the fact that I was already writing fiction. And I’m certainly not the only one. Would Tara Moss have written the terrific books The Fictional Woman and Speaking Out if she hadn’t been funded by the phenomenal success of her nine previous fiction books? Could she have? John Birmingham’s Leviathan: An Unauthorised Biography of Sydney is an accomplishment and he wrote it in order to be taken more seriously as a writer but it’s his Axis of Time and Disappearance series that gave him his worldwide fame. (They had US agents falling “on it like a bit of raw meat, and the next thing I knew I had Americans backing truckloads of greenbacks up to the front door”. This quote is from a terrific interview with John Birmingham in the book Literati: Australian Contemporary Literary Figures Discuss Fear, Frustrations and Fame by James Phelan.)

In the end, I suspect this is another one of those ridiculous debates that people in the writing profession spend way too much time on. Nobody else cares and in the end it really doesn’t make any difference to the quality of whatever writing it is you prefer to indulge in. So in honour of that ridiculousness, I’d like to end with a quote from a movie about baseball but which I seem to be able to endlessly repurpose to make it about writing.

Dottie Hinson: Thanks for the ride, kid.

Dollbody Kid: What’s your rush, dollbody? Whaddya say we slip in the back seat and you make a man out of me?

Dottie Hinson: What do you say I smack you around for a while?

Dollbody Kid: Can’t we do both?

A League of Their Own

Knowing When to Stop: How Much Editing is Too Much?

The idea of writing the first draft of a book – when it’s still in your mind, when you haven’t done it yet – seems like such a large mountain to climb. So when you finally reach the top of that goal, you celebrate. Hard. If it’s your first book, that’s because you don’t realise it’s a false hill, that you aren’t at the top at all. If it’s not your first book, it’s because you know the really tough work is just starting and celebrating each and every achievement is one of the keys to not letting writing drive you insane.

Unless you’re a first draft genius (and nobody is a first draft genius), the amount of time it takes to rewrite and edit your book to publishable standard will be lengthy. For some it will be longer than it took to write the first draft. There’ll be a second draft and a third draft and a fourth draft and on and on it goes.

So how do we know when it’s time to stop editing?

Surely Four Drafts Is Plenty?

Four drafts is plenty. It’s just not a good guide to whether or not your book is finished.

Five Drafts?

No. There are some poor unfortunate souls for whom twenty drafts won’t be enough. Because it’s not about how many times you redraft, it’s about how well you do it and how good your story, your characters, your plot and your writing become with each new version.

When You’ve Acted on the Advice of Your Beta Readers?

This is a reasonable measure but it does depend somewhat on the quality of your beta readers. If any of them are writers themselves, editors, publishers, any kind of professional relevant to writing and reading, then the advice they provide is likely to get you a long way towards having a finished book.

If they’re just everyday people – police, doctors, stay-at-home parents – they’re less likely to pick up the things that professionals would. But they are probably a reasonable cross-section of the general reading public. The problem with the general reading public is that sometimes they enjoy things that aren’t very good. And because these people know you personally, they might be inclined to be kinder than they otherwise would.

Beta readers are important but they’re just one step in the rewriting and editing process and certainly no indication of that process being finished.

When You’ve Acted on the Advice in Your Manuscript Assessment?

Manuscript assessments are great. I credit the manuscript assessment I had done on my first published novel (prior to publishing it, of course) with saving me from having a character shot in the butt (which was a horrible cliché and which I should have been able to see on my own but didn’t until my manuscript assessor pointed it out). The problem is that, even if the manuscript assessment has provided great advice, you won’t know whether the recommendations you’ve now executed equal a publishable book. You manuscript assessor won’t either unless they do another manuscript assessment on the revised version. And you’re unlikely to want to pay for another one.

When You’ve Had It Professionally Copy-Edited?

Having your book professionally copy-edited will mean it is spelled and punctuated correctly and your grammar is as it should be. It will look beautiful to anyone on the lookout for those kinds of things (you know, pedantic types like me). But while publishers will appreciate that the book has great spelling, punctuation and grammar (and that you’ve spent the time and money on getting it that way), they’re more interested in whether it’s a great plot with interesting characters and is well written. Professional copy-editing is the very last thing you should do. Because if the plot, characters and writing need further revision, then you’re likely to introduce new errors into the manuscript when you do it. And you’ll just have to pay to have it professionally copy-edited all over again.

When You’ve Had Enough?

For some this could be a reasonable measure. If you’ve rewritten and edited so much that you just can’t take it anymore, then it’s definitely time to put your book aside and take a break. But that doesn’t mean your book won’t need more rewriting and editing. It just means that you’re not in any frame of mind to be doing it now.

Some books and authors benefit from time apart. So take as much time as you need. When you return, you’ll have renewed enthusiasm and a fresh set of eyes as you undertake yet another review.

When It’s Perfect?

Nope. It will never be perfect. And since it will never be perfect, if you use this as a guide to when you should stop, then you could theoretically edit the same piece of work forever.

So When?

Well, we’ve arrived at the point where you expect an answer. I wish I had a more definitive one. But it’s certainly not a particular number of drafts, a specific length of time or the levels of your frustration that should dictate when to stop editing.

It’s this: if you’re happy with where your book is at, if it flows well, if it’s entertaining, if it’s logical, if it’s original, if it’s easy to read, if it’s a source of pride, if the difference from one draft to the next is just a few words here and there, if no one – not you, not your manuscript assessor, not your beta readers – can come up with anything more than minute changes and if you’re ready to move on to your next project to start the process of writing a different book, then it’s probably time stop editing.

However, it’s entirely up to you. If tinkering away at your novel for the rest of forever is what makes you happy, then you don’t ever have to stop. But if you want to be published, then you have to draw the line somewhere. And there’s no shame in drawing it under a good book. Or even a great book. And who knows? With all the knowledge you’ve acquired from editing this book, the next one might be even better.

Why is “Self-Publishing” Still a Dirty (Hyphenated) Word?

Earlier this year, one of my sisters dragged me along to a game show audition. After filling out a four-page questionnaire that asked such insightful questions as “What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you?”, “Have you ever been caught out in a lie?” and “Do you have an unusual bucket list item?” (presumably so that they could be discussed and laughed at on national television) as well as what we did for a living, we were then grilled by a producer.

“You’re a writer?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I answered.

“What do you write?”

“Books – novels and how-to guides on writing novels.” I could have given him my entire writing résumé – articles, websites, marketing collateral, corporate tenders, ghost-writing, short stories, song lyrics, poems – but I was trying to keep it brief.

“And you’ve published three books?”

“So far.”

“Who with?”

“I’m self-published,” I said.

“Oh,” he replied with a disapproving tone in his voice. “So you just sell to friends and family?”

“No, I sell all over the world.” In fact, I’d been looking at a royalty statement just a couple of days prior that listed a sale in Italy, which surprised me a little because the majority of my sales come from English-speaking countries. But the obviousness of his disapproval made me feel like I needed to defend being a self-published writer. “And my upcoming novel was shortlisted for the 2016 Text Prize. Do you know Text Publishing?”

“Sure,” he said but I’d already lost him and he moved onto the auditioner standing next to me. In just a few moments, an insignificant television producer had managed to reduce my greatest achievements to some sort of inconsequential side note in my career. Worse than that, I stood there and basically took it.

So why is “self-publishing” still a dirty (hyphenated) word?

Amongst writers of all levels and many in the publishing industry, I’d argue it isn’t. After all, it’s how a lot of famous authors got their start. Matthew Reilly (The Contest). Hugh Howey (Wool, Shift and Dust). Lisa Genova (Still Alice). EL James (Fifty Shades of Grey). Andy Weir (The Martian). They’ve all gone on to be published by traditional publishers eager to get on the money train. But to people outside of the industry, who don’t know (or really care) how these and many other writers got their start, it’s still something that people who aren’t good enough for traditional publishing do.

I forget sometimes that ordinary readers almost never know the background, the private jokes, the inside stories that those of us in the industry take for granted. (I was talking to another of my sisters just a couple of weeks ago and she didn’t know that Fifty Shades of Grey was Twilight fan fiction, which I thought everybody knew by now. “Really?” she said. “Of course,” I replied. “And it’s obvious. Take out the vampires and add in all the kinky sex and they’re virtually identical.” I went on to list several examples. “Oh my God, you’re right!” she exclaimed.)

When I finished writing each of my last two books, I didn’t ever consider traditional publishing. I didn’t submit to a single publisher. I didn’t see the need to. Instead, I edited and proofed the manuscripts myself (being a trained editor really helps with this), registered my own ISBNs, engaged a book cover designer, finalised the paperback and ebook templates, sent the first to the printer and the others to online ebook platforms and when they were all ready, I did my own marketing. (Yeah, I mostly suck at marketing but a lot of the time, so do traditional publishers.) And my books are indistinguishable from all those lining the book shelves in stores because I’m nothing if not a perfectionist.

I know not all self-published writers have the same sensibilities as I do. Some publish first draft ebooks full of errors, trite characters and derivative plots, usually for free or for $0.99, which I think is the required minimum price on some platforms. And you don’t need to buy and read them to know they aren’t quite up to scratch. Because the blurbs are badly written with just as many errors as the books themselves. They’re usually reasonably easy to avoid. But to lump us all in together just because we self-publish is like saying Justin Bieber, 5 Seconds of Summer and The Weeknd aren’t musicians because they were discovered on YouTube and Ed Sheeran shouldn’t be taken seriously because for the first six years of his career he recorded and released his songs independently.

I’ve also read plenty of traditionally published books that have boring characters, no plot, terrible writing and so many typos, misspellings, poor punctuation and bad grammar that a high school English teacher would fail the author.

To avoid the unsavoury reputation of self-publishing and its vanity publishing connotations, some writers prefer to call it indie publishing (you know, like indie films, which are cool; Robert Redford founded both the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival to support indie films and filmmakers and he’s cool, too). But would it have made any difference to that television producer if I’d said, “I’m independently published” instead of “I’m self-published”? I think he’d already made up his mind about self-published authors long before I ever came along and no fancy euphemisms were going to change it.

The way we self-published writers change it (his and everybody else’s minds) is to make sure that when we do self-publish, we don’t do it indiscriminately. We follow the same processes that traditional publishers do, which means not publishing first drafts but fourth or fifth drafts that have been through multiple rewrites and assessments and that have then been edited and proofed to be as perfect as it is possible for them to be and have professionally designed covers.

The way we change minds is simply to prove them wrong.

It’s not going to happen quickly, especially because traditional publishers want us to think they are essential and have convinced most readers (AKA the people who buy books) of this. But gradually we will get there. Look how far self-publishing has already come in the past ten years. Imagine how much further we will have gone in the next ten. And how much further again we’ll be in the next twenty.

In the meantime, if you’re a self-published author and someone gives you attitude about it, give it right back. My favoured approach (now that I’ve gotten over the shock of that moment and had some time to think about it) will be to ask how many books they’ve published. None? “Oh,” I will say in a disapproving tone, then walk away with my head held high.

*First published as “A Dirty Word” in The Victorian Writer Oct-Nov 2017 issue

Book Review: Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit

I picked this book up solely on the basis of the title, briefly considered giving it to my sixteen-year-old niece for Christmas, then decided to keep it for myself and buy her some perfume instead. It’s probably for the best. Because while the themes are important to me and I hope important to my niece (although how much time she spends thinking about feminism and marriage equality and domestic violence and rape culture compared with the amount of time she spends thinking about boys and clothes and her potential sporting career is not clear), they are couched in a writing style and language that I think she would have had difficulty deciphering. I had some difficulty deciphering it.

Words like “irreducibility”, “uncircumscribable” and “quotidian” are sprinkled throughout liberally. Even though I know what they mean, her use of them made me want to reach for my dictionary to make absolutely sure. The fluid and operatic way in which she writes almost disguises her meaning at times, detrimental to both the writer’s message and the reader’s understanding.

Still, the book is immensely readable in places and I kept pausing to write down quotes that were relevant to me as a writer such as, “The ways creative work gets done are always unpredictable, demanding room to roam, refusing schedules and systems. They cannot be reduced to replicable formulas.” And, “The effects of your actions may unfold in ways you cannot foresee or even imagine. They may unfold long after your death. That is when the words of so many writers often resonate most.”

In the titular essay, she outlines a social encounter with a Very Important Man who, after finding out she wrote a book on a particular topic, tells her all about a Very Important Book on the same topic. When she realises that he’s talking about her book, she listens politely in silence until she is rescued by a friend who tells him several times, “That’s her book.” He has the grace to be embarrassed – at least for a moment – before he continues talking about something else. This essay is credited as the inspiration for the coining of the word “mansplaining”. Clearly, her words are powerful.

Solnit is at her strongest when she is discussing feminism and female empowerment and to a lesser extent other forms of equality (marriage equality for example). But the chapter on Virginia Woolf was a struggle for me, perhaps because I’m not a fan (and I’m not a fan perhaps only because I haven’t been exposed to Woolf’s work). And this is where the problem with the book lies. So much of it feels like preaching to the choir. That is, if you already agree with what Solnit is saying, then great. If you don’t have an opinion or think the opposite, her writing isn’t nearly persuasive enough to convince the reader.

At times it can also veer into territory that borders on whining – it’s not a complaint, just an observation. Because while she raises important points and supports them with evidence, nowhere does she offer anything even remotely resembling a solution. I know it’s not her job to solve the war (or whatever it is) between the sexes, but we know the problem exists and have known it for a while. We’re aware. So now is probably a good time to start seeing suggestions on how we might fix it.

Because the book is a collection of essays previously written and published elsewhere, it does at times feel disjointed – the Woolf chapter especially – or maybe a better term is book-ended. The beginning and ending parts of the book seem like they go together but there are chapters in the middle that seem misplaced, like they could have or should have been part of a different book.

I’ve read better, more convincing books about feminism than this one (I don’t need to be convinced but I want to be objective in my review for those who do or who want to be) but I suspect that when taken as a whole, Rebecca Solnit’s body of writing work will be important for future generations. It’s important for this generation and generations past. But this book on its own could have been more important if it had a little more clarity.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 23 December 2016

What Type of Editing Should You Ask For? (Yes, There’s More Than One!)

Well, Project October and all the associated intensive writing is over for another year and that means it’s time for Project November and the intensive editing process to take its place. So here’s an appropriately timed blog post on the different types of editing.

*****

Earlier this year, I was asked if I might be interested in proofreading a coffee table book for a corporate company. It was the story of their beginnings all the way up to their current day successes, a glossy thing with lots of pictures, and none of their internal staff had the time to do it. Sure, I replied, providing my hourly rate and the length of time I thought a proofread would take based on the word count I’d been advised of.

But when the first chapter came through, it was clear it was still in its first draft. It hadn’t been through any of the other editing stages that should come before a proofread. It wasn’t even in the form of a proof (formatted as it will look in the final book with headers, footers, page numbers, columns, photographs, captions, etc). It was just a poorly formatted Word document.

No wonder nobody in the company had the time to do a proofread – they didn’t even know what proofreading was. In fact, they thought it was something else entirely. What they should have asked for was a rewrite, a line edit and copyediting, which then could have been sent to a designer or typesetter for preparation of a proof. Because it’s only after preparation of a proof that you can undertake a proofread.

I ended up doing a rewrite, a line edit and copyediting for the cost of a proofread because I’d committed to doing the work without asking to see a sample first (that was my mistake – I assumed incorrectly that because they were a professional organisation I could expect a certain level of understanding from them). It was about four times as much work so they got a real bargain. But not all editors are suckers like me. If a writer asks for a proofread and sends through anything except a proof, an editor will more than likely send it back to the writer with either a revised (much more expensive) quote or a request for the proof after the writing has been through the other stages.

So make sure you know what you’re asking for when you begin the editing process. It will make your writing life so much easier and so much less embarrassing. Here are the different types and what distinguishes them.

Rewriting

Technically, rewriting is not an editor’s job. If you want writing, even if it’s rewriting, then ask a writer. But wait, hang on, you’re a writer. Shouldn’t you be doing it yourself?

Yes, you should. If you want to be credited as the writer of a piece, then you need to be the one doing all the hard writing work. Otherwise, prepare to have another writer’s name nestling uncomfortably next to yours on the cover of the final book.

Once you’ve written a first draft, you might be desperate for feedback from somebody. But all writers have to learn to be their own first port of call for feedback. You’re a writer – you should know the basics of writing – but you’re also a reader. So read your book. Take copious notes. And then have a go at a second draft based on the things that bothered you when you read it. Essentially, you are doing your own first “edit”.

Apart from saving yourself a boatload of money, it’s important to get good at this because writers have to do a lot of rewriting. Nobody anywhere has ever written a perfect first draft. And most editors don’t do rewrites. They might tell you how to make your writing better, how to fix it but they still won’t fix it for you. So being able to get to the second and maybe even third drafts without paying anyone for any kind of edit is in your own best interests.

Substantive Editing/Developmental Editing/Structural Editing/Manuscript Assessment

Substantive editing or developmental editing or structural editing or manuscript assessment, whatever you want to call it, is the big picture review. It’s the evaluation of the story, the plotting, the pacing, the characters, how they all work together and if they can work together better. At this point, nobody cares all that much if the words are spelled correctly and they certainly aren’t going to fix those kinds of mistakes. Suggestions will be made about combining or eliminating minor characters, removing and adding plot points, identifying plot holes, reordering chapters (particularly where flashbacks occur), cutting slow and irrelevant scenes, getting to the exciting scenes more quickly, consistency of each character’s dialogue, alternative endings… hopefully, you get the idea.

Line Editing

Once your book is in pretty good structural shape, it’s time for the line edit. This is about tightening the writing itself – improving the style, removing any instances of poor expression, clichés, redundancies, repetition – and helping it flow. Line editing can be a confronting process because the critique can feel very personal. A plot point that isn’t working or a misspelled word, writers can be philosophical about these things (I said can, not will – some writers really resent any suggested changes but that’s another blog post for another day). But commentary on the style of your writing can be challenging. Try to remember it’s all in aid of a better book. And making you a better writer.

Copyediting

Copyediting takes care of the basics – correct spelling, appropriate punctuation, good grammar, elimination of typos – and a good copyeditor will prepare a style sheet for consistency – their own and the proofreader’s later on.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the very last edit to find the final few errors that none of the other edits have picked up. The text should be formatted on pages the size they will be printed (i.e. not A4) with headings in correct font and size, page numbers, headers, etc. This is a review of exactly what the reader will see, not a review of the working documents that all previous edits have worked on. And it is the last edit. It should never be the first.

A Note on Publishing

If you choose to self-publish, it will be up to you to know the differences between and the appropriate time to work your way through each of these editing stages. A line editing and copyediting can usually be done at the same time by the same editor for roughly the same cost. Most good editors wouldn’t be able to leave something that needs changing alone just because it doesn’t fall within the right category of what it is they are being paid to do anyway.

If you’ve been lucky enough to be signed by a traditional publisher, they will – or at least the trustworthy ones do – guide you on and pay for each of the editing stages. Sometimes, though, you may need the assistance of an editor to get your manuscript to a level of quality that elevates you above the writing pack and gets you noticed. A manuscript assessment and rewrites will usually achieve this, if it’s going to happen. Everything else will be taken care of by the publisher.

A Note on Perfection

About three weeks after I published my latest book, Project January: A Sequel About Writing, I was reading a chapter of it out loud to my nephews, the chapter in which I talked about them. There, as plain as the nose on my face (and it’s a really, plainly, painfully obvious nose), was a straight apostrophe that should have been a curly apostrophe. It was even in my style sheet that there shouldn’t be any straight apostrophes. I thought I’d tracked them all down, but no, there was a rogue one staring me in the face.

It didn’t make any difference to the quality of the writing and it’s likely that most people reading the book wouldn’t even realise that it’s the “wrong” apostrophe but I was mortified. I really shouldn’t have been. Of all the types of mistakes an editor can make, it’s the best kind. If that’s the only thing wrong with my book, then I’m doing pretty well. (I’m sure there are other mistakes, I just haven’t found them yet.)

No matter how many editors you engage, your book will never be perfect. The idea that editors don’t make mistakes or don’t miss mistakes is ridiculous. The job title is “Editor”, not “Perfectionist”. And there has never been a “perfect” book in terms of editing. There will always be at least one mistake. That’s life.

So then why would you need more than one editor? Because you can get close to perfection. If you methodically work your way through each of the editing stages, you’ll get close. You’re increasing the probability of finding most of the errors. And by using a couple of different editors, hopefully the second will pick up the things the first didn’t and vice versa.

Project October 2017: Week Five

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I go on a partial hiatus to do a really intensive month of writing. Normal posts will resume in November but, in the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy an insight into this year’s Project October.

Week Five: Abandonment or Accomplishment

It’s strange to say it but I think this Project October has resulted in both abandonment and accomplishment. No, I didn’t write a single word and ended up abandoning my plans to finish Trine but I’ve got some fairly well-developed plans for another book and a list of women wanting to participate, to have their stories told.

It’s always best to look on the bright side and if there’s one thing I do well, it’s come up with ideas. Okay, execution is a much longer and excruciating process and I didn’t achieve it this time but I have in the past and I will again in the future. Writing is a journey. Sometimes it’s all uphill. Other times you coast down. I just have to keep reminding myself, in the immortal words of Jimmy Dugan, “The hard is what makes it great.”

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Thanks for following my journey this month. Regular blog posts resume on Thursday.

Project October 2017: Week Four

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I go on a partial hiatus to do a really intensive month of writing. Normal posts will resume in November but, in the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy an insight into this year’s Project October.

Week Four: Roadblock

I’ve started discussing the idea of my book on motherhood with the people whose stories I want to include. The three sisters I’ve written about previously are all eager to participate and so are many other relatives, friends and friends of friends. My own mother is hesitant though. She’s a very private woman and judges herself and some of the motherhood choices she made harshly – I think she fears others doing the same.

It’s something I hadn’t considered because I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I understand that judgement achieves very little. Instead I try to understand why people make the choices they do and even if I can’t, I don’t try to make them feel bad about them. The internet (particularly social media), however, proves that a lot of other people act differently. Judgement is how they make themselves feel better about their own deficiencies and they indulge freely. I’d hate for a project I have envisioned as a tool for helping mothers to become instead a tool for making their lives even harder.

Also, somewhere in the back of my mind was the idea that this would be an easy book to write because I wouldn’t be doing most of the writing, just helping others to write their stories. But, of course, most of the women I’ve talked to aren’t confident writing, let alone writing something so personal. They don’t know where to start or finish or what to include or to leave out. So they mostly just want to be interviewed and have me write it up. It’s going to be as much, maybe more work than any other book I’ve attempted to write.

And to top it all off, I still haven’t written a single word during this month of Project October. I think the ease with which I wrote my last three books (Project December, Project January and the upcoming Black Spot) has lulled me into a false sense of it being easy all the time. Ridiculous, right?

But it’s an important lesson for all writers that we can’t be afraid to fail. We can’t stick slavishly to plans when they aren’t working out. We have to go where the ideas and the writing take us.

Project October 2017: Week Three

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I go on a partial hiatus to do a really intensive month of writing. Normal posts will resume in November but, in the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy an insight into this year’s Project October.

Week Three: Continuing

Week Three and I still haven’t written a single word. I can’t stop thinking about my sister and how much I want her to be able to tell her story. It probably wouldn’t support an entire book on its own but it would certainly be a powerful chapter in a book of motherhood stories from multiple women. And I know a lot of women with diverse and important experiences of motherhood.

Another of my sisters fell pregnant at 16 and had her first child at 17 – still she’s worked her whole life and is studying a master’s degree now and she did a lot of it all by herself. My youngest sister, who I’ve written about quite a bit, has already decided at the age of 20 that she won’t have children, not because she has no desire for them – she’s a lot like my sister who is the mother of the twins in that marriage and babies are right at the top of her list – but because she unselfishly doesn’t want to pass on her multitude of genetic conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, clinical depression, scores of allergies and chronic fatigue syndrome. Instead she’s planning to foster and adopt.

My aunt lost her third husband and later her middle-aged son to suicide. Her daughter, my cousin, lost her son to suicide just before his twenty-first birthday. I have friends who weren’t born in Australia but are now raising their children in a culture entirely different to the one they grew up in. I have friends whose children have had more surgery in the first two years of their lives than most people will ever have. I know friends of friends who were told after medical malpractice that they would never have children only to fall pregnant and others who have adopted children born drug addicted and remain developmentally delayed to this day.

I know so many mothers with amazing stories to tell that I could probably fill two books, not just one. And this passion I’m feeling about the subject? It’s the thing that for some reason is completely missing from my attempts to finish writing Trine. It’s little wonder then that I’ve been so easily distracted from what I initially set out to do at the start of this month.

It’s an ongoing problem for me. I come up with so many ideas but complete so few of them. I suppose it’s because the excitement of the idea can be overwhelming but the hard work it takes to bring them to fruition can be offputting. There’s excitement again when it’s done but there’s usually so much time and effort between the excitement of the idea and the excitement of finishing that it isn’t as much of an incentive as I would like it to be.

Project October 2017: Week Two

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I go on a partial hiatus to do a really intensive month of writing. Normal posts will resume in November but, in the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy an insight into this year’s Project October.

Week Two: Beginning

It’s amazing how something small and seemingly unrelated can destroy all of a writer’s good intentions. It’s Week 2 of Project October and I should have written between 3,500 and 4,000 words in the past week, a very attainable writing goal. Instead I’ve haven’t written a single word. And the reason is a phone call with my sister.

She lives on the other side of this very big city so we don’t see each other that much. And she’s a mother of four – including a nine-year-old with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, a rambunctious step-daughter the same age and two-year-old twins, one of whom has a clear walking disability even though the government refuses to acknowledge it because “some kids start walking later than others” – so she doesn’t often have time for long (or even short) phone calls.

So when she called this week, it was something of a rare treat. As with all of my married mother friends and relatives, she talked primarily about her husband and children. I don’t mind – after all, they’re my brother-in-law and nieces. But something she said really stuck with me. “I never thought it would be this hard.”

Marriage and babies were always at the top of the list of the things she wanted in life. But like most people, she was never really prepared for when things didn’t turn out quite how she’d imagined. Two children with disabilities that mean endless doctors’ appointments and few definitive answers. Twins that mean it isn’t financially feasible for her to go back to work.

In 2015, I wrote and published an article recommending that anyone considering motherhood should read Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. I thought that the story of a mother coping with her teenage son becoming a spree killer was a pretty good metaphor for how being a mother (and a father for that matter) is never going to be exactly what anyone imagines.

I thought about that conversation for days afterwards and came to the conclusion that the reason no one thinks motherhood is going to be so hard is because no one tells you except in broad motherhood (pardon the pun) statements. There are so many stories of motherhood, so many tiny and intimate details that should be told but aren’t because mothers don’t have the time. And sometimes they also think that there’s something wrong with them because they aren’t gloriously happy all the time. Getting what you’ve always wanted is supposed to make you feel that way, right?

My sister has a story that deserves to be told – to help others and maybe to help her in some sort of therapeutic way – and maybe that’s something I can help with.