Sleeping With My Editor

Aside from being the one who made the offhand suggestion that I "should write some sort of burlesque-steampunk story," my wife has been a priceless asset during this entire wonderful, painful process.

This trilogy literally never would have existed had it not been for that casual remark — see this post for the full account of how the Victoria da Vinci series was born at that moment and evolved from there — but beyond that, I never would have finished and published the first book without her constant support, encouragement, assistance, validation, occasional prodding and abundance of helpful input. She has a strong grasp of promotion, branding and marketing, whereas I do not. She has a willingness to explore fruitful new avenues of exposure and outreach, whereas I am more likely to get lost in a volume about political upheavals in the Balkans between 1821 and 1912. I can be introspective to the point of absolute uselessness, but my wife can be eminently practical.

Aside from being my most zealous advocate, my biggest fan, my most honest critic and my tireless publicist, however, she is also my primary front-line editor. She has suffered bravely and uncomplainingly through multiple drafts of each manuscript and always gives me excellent notes. She notices things that I miss because she's reading without assumptions. She scribbles comments in the margins such as, "when did she get there?" (I knew she was there, but I forgot to say so.) or "would she really say something like that?" (of course not; what was I thinking?).

Trish is an excellent proofreader, but she has an undefeatable opponent: me. I never cease to massively re-write entire passages, so I generate new errors faster than she can catch and correct them. Where you see a goof, it's mine, not hers. Unlike me, she has a real job, and cannot be expected to proofread the entirety of draft 8.24 as well as drafts 8.25, 8.26 and 8.27.

Since I write my stories out of chronological order (as I explained in this post ), there are often amusing little continuity errors that I fail to catch, such as a character drinking Chardonnay in one paragraph but Pinot Noir in the next. Trish does an excellent job of catching these embarrassing incongruities before they get into print.

Ever since I was in sixth grade, I have often joked that for me, writing was a spectator sport. I just sort of sit there and watch as it happens. Don't you hate it when writers get all pretentious and start to pontificate about life, as if they are qualified to talk about anything other than writing? Because I'm about to do that. Not to get overly philosophical, except that I totally am overly philosophical so never mind what I just said, but the individual human experience is kind of a spectator sport, isn't it? We don't know what we're going to do. We believe we do, sure, but how often do we really make the decisions we expected or hoped to make when confronted with the actual situations about which we had speculated?

Daniel Wegner wrote a book called The Illusion of Conscious Will, which (aside from winning the Austin Scott Collins award for the most perfectly descriptive title ever) poses the dangerously destabilizing question, "do we really decide what to do, or do things just happen to us?" A mounting body of evidence strongly suggests that we convince ourselves later that we had carefully evaluated all options and then deliberately chose a course of action, but in reality we do what we do because of our culture, our upbringing, our genetic predisposition, the chemicals in our bloodstream at the time etc.

When I sit down at my desk to write, I have a fairly solid story outline already built and a relatively firm grasp of who these characters are. But I never know exactly what I'm going to say until I start typing. Although the big elements are scripted out in advance, the details are more improvisational. Thus, when I write the second half of a particular scene in February and then go back and write the first half of the same scene in August (and then go back and add something important to the middle in October), there are inevitable bumpy tonal shifts that must be polished out. This is where Trish's assistance is most valuable.

The single most difficult and important thing than a writer must do as part of the revision process is cutting out material that has to go. (I blogged about that here .) Coming in at a very close second, however, is getting solid and meaningful feedback about the story from smart people who read a lot. The opinions of random strangers are frequently unhelpful, but it is highly advisable to solicit the insights and impressions of those who have strong literary backgrounds. Chances are, someone who reads a lot of books will have at least a few constructive observations. It isn't easy, but it's essential. All it takes is one foul grain within the text, one mildly askew item, to break the spell and send the story off the rails.

In this blog I gave some advice to people who want to become writers. I would add one more bullet point: find a great publicist/editor/business manager and marry that person. (Move fast, because you don't want him or her to find out what it's like to be married to a writer until it's too late.)

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www.AustinScottCollins.com