When I start out a book, it never seems like I’ll have a chance of finishing it. Although I’ve written several, it’s like standing at the foot of a mountain and wondering how I’ll ever top it. Doing it over and over again gives me a semblance of confidence, but since each book is its own challenge, it’s like climbing a different mountain in the range each time. I know I should be able to make it to the top, but I have to find a different route every time.
Like most climbers, I enjoy the challenge, and part of what keeps me going is the lure of new peaks to top. A perverse part of me wants to look for bigger, steeper pinnacles to reach, and for some reason I keep giving in to that.
Once I’m done with the book, I get that same exhilarating sense of accomplishment. And—I don’t know if climbers feel this way, but I sure do—I never want to see that book again. I’m done, it’s behind me. Reading it only reminds me of the many unsure choices I made some of which I might have made differently had I known how it was all going to end up. I just can’t bring myself to do it.
A few months after that, though, I have to. The edits come back from the publisher, and it’s my job to go through and make sure that the suggested corrections are in fact correct. That means slogging through the manuscript one more time, watching someone else point out where I went flat wrong and second-guessing some of my other choices.
Once I get through that, the book can sometimes come back to me yet again for a last-second galley check. Changes at this point are expensive to implement, and I’m often tempted to just report back that the book is fine as is without even bothering to open the package in which it arrived. Instead, though, I always go through it once more, making sure that it’s as good as the editorial team and I can make it. It’s my name on the cover, after all, and I owe that much to anyone who pays for it.
It’s not until months or years later that I can go back and enjoy the book. This most often happens when I have to write a sequel and can’t recall what happened in the first book in the necessary exacting detail such a project requires. It’s then, after I’ve forgotten the contents of the book, that I can come back at it fresh.
It’s at these times that I’m least critical of my work and I can finally read it with new eyes. It’s almost like I’m reading someone else’s book, written by an author who knows exactly how to push all my buttons—in the best way. Having put that particular mountain so far behind me, I can now marvel at it along with (hopefully) everyone else.
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Alma Alexander
For my YA books I got it back THREE TIMES.
The first time after the editor read it and went through it with a fine tooth comb (and MAN was it a fine tooth comb) and produced an “Editorial letter” of the things she thought I needed to address in the manuscript before it worked cohesively as a better book. I take, oh, 80% of these on board - maybe only 75% - but it’s still a bit of a slog to go through the thing and fix and tweak and rewrite. But it’s necessary because only when these things are done to both my and the editor’s satisfaction do I get an official MS acceptance and thus the acceptance part of my advance. Money = good. Yes sir.
The MS then gets handed to the copy editors. This particular set-up has three - my own main editor (who goes through the MS again), an in-house copy editor and a freelance outside copy editor. THREE PEOPLE’S MARKS AND COMMENTS AND QUERIES are on this dog’s-breakfast of a manuscript when it comes back to me - and I add person #4, me, and send it back to the publisher with yet another set of scribbled notes, yet more post-its to join the veritable algal bloom of the stuff that’s oozing out of every side of the copy edit MS, and I have the greatest respect for the person who GETS this tossed at them and is expected to make sense of it all.
Then I get sent the proofs, and at this point, yeah, stuff really shouldn’t get changed any more - but I’ll often find a missed word or sentence or even a paragraph or two once (which REALLY screwed the pooch because it necessitated repaginating all the way down the line…) but the last set of proofs I did were really clean, mostly I picked up the odd typo or a punctuation snafu, once or twice something missed that needed to be added back in but nothing to blow the typesetting arrangements out of the water this time.
Only now am I done. I WROTE the book, I REWROTE it according to the editor’s fiat, I CHECKED AND RECHECKED the copy edit, i CHECKED AND PROOFREAD the galleys.
And now it’s finally gone.
Whew.
Back to working on the next big thing, now.
May 21st, 2008
Robert Jones
The sport of editing exposes a strange phenomenon. When one is writing, one can skip a word and, since the word is there in memory, it can go unnoticed during a subsequent reading, especially if the reading occurs shortly after something was written. The message that teachers tried to pound into our heads about letting writing sit for a few weeks before editing it is good advice. I would have heeded it but, usually writing assignments in the wee hours before they were due, I never seemed to have the time.
Thank you for sharing your editing experiences in a fine essay.
RCJ
May 21st, 2008
Dave Wilson
It’s like pulling teeth to go back over a manuscript I’ve finished AND edited recently, but you have to do it…otherwise you end up with either pissed off editors/publishers OR you have that line that everyone for the next ten years is going to ask you about that - had you done your work - would have come out…it is NOT a favorite part of the process for me, but I’ve come to terms with it.
D
May 21st, 2008
Brian Hodge
Maybe it’s a masochistic streak, but I’ve come to really like the stages of the editorial process, however maddening individual moments of it may be.
It’s like a series of safety nets, just in case that perfect 10-point landing you think you’ve pulled off is actually a 7.6. Evidence of which you’re almost sure to see, with or without the editor’s help, given enough of that necessary distance.
May 21st, 2008
Thomas Sullivan
Was going to let this thread of commentary pass, rather than break up the party, but Brian introduced the opposing reaction and that’s much closer to mine. I love trying to make a thing perfect. It’s a thrill and a source of satisfaction to me to layer in the touches and imagination in that direction. I can never give up on something that has that potential. Not that you ever get there. But the journey is just so much more interesting when you bring Oz in sight.
– Sully
May 22nd, 2008
Matt Forbeck
I can understand that urge, Sully and Brian, but perhaps I’ve spent too long in publishing–and as an editor–to enjoy the polishing of my own material. As an editor, I ran into many writers who would play with the text/game until someone forced them to give it up.
This mostly happens in games, with which most designers are never done, even after the game is in print. There’s always something to change. Eventually, though, you (or at least I) have to declare a project as ready as it can be at the moment–and then move on to the next thing.
May 22nd, 2008
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