Tag Archives: the editing process

Walking the High Wire of Editing

  Tight rope walker 2 - google images

“Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader. She is always right there when I need her.”

Popular music aside, that would be my editor!

As we plunge ahead with the last chapters of Maelstrom, the high wire we walk sings with tension. I attribute this to a few factors. One is definitely the desire to be done. Another is the fast-paced nature of this novel. We are feeling breathless as we teeter back and forth, placing our feet so carefully on the swinging juggernaut high above the earth. We are racing to the last page in much the same way the characters are.

Line-by-line editing can be tedious, it requires intense concentration and, from an author’s perspective, the whole process is humbling in the extreme. To have the same silly errors called to one’s attention, again and again, certainly serves to put the most egotistical of us in our place. Oh well, maybe that is just me. At the same time, there is joy to this work. An intense focus on the parts that make up the whole can be quite rewarding.

A good edit requires multiple readings. That kind of high-beam look at my own work can make me shiver with delight as layer under layer of the story is revealed. Though it might seem surprising, I am often just as surprised and delighted as my readers when it comes to symbolism and making the deeper connections.

From the stripped bones of my mother’s story to what this book is now becoming, this has been one amazing journey. I came across a line of dialogue the other day that has been there since the first draft. It is a remnant of my mom’s writing and I’ve loved it from the start.

Muttering a string of profanities, Turk searched his pockets for his house key. If he’d lost that damn key, his father was going to beat him. He found it and was about to fit it into the lock when the door swung open.

“Seen you coming up the front,” his mother said, clutching onto the edge of the door. “You took so long … figured you’d lost your key again.”

“Got it right here.” He pushed by his mother to get into the house.

“Where you been?” she asked.

“Around. Where’s Pa?”

“Had to work.” His mother stared at him. “You don’t look so good, Turk.”

He ran his eyes over her thin frame, the dark circles under her eyes and the red-flowered housecoat she was wearing. “Ain’t no picture yourself, Ma. Can I get something to eat?”

Ain’t no picture yourself, Ma. I love it!

Today, my editor complimented me on a descriptive section that I had worked hard to perfect.

The gardens behind the mansion were about as perfect as any gardens Laura had ever seen and she wondered how anything in the front could be fancier. The gardener had chosen well to ensure maximum colour. Late blooming beauty roses in myriad shades of pink chased over the tops of wooden trellises. Banks of feathery spirea stood tall behind the dramatic Apache Plume with its sage green foliage and white flowers floating over pink seed heads. Magenta coloured cranesbill jutted out in patches. There were beds of lavender and bunches of hollyhock blossoms so purple they looked almost black. Rust-red switch grass swayed in the breeze like a mist of colour along the edges of the paths.

Apache Plume - google images

I’m not one to blow my own horn, but I do believe Maelstrom is a book that has the potential for commercial success. In the first place, it is an easier genre to promote than my other work – a suspense/thriller that races along at a clip that will leave readers breathless. It is also wonderfully and painfully (at times) visual. I can almost see the movie version as I read.

I cannot wait to release this novel! I hope readers will be as thrilled with this action-packed, rollercoaster ride of a story as I am. My mother smiles upon me from the beyond as I teeter out on the high wire.

Tight rope walker - google images

The Editing Process

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In today’s post, I’ve decided to share a couple of examples of the editing process for Disappearing in Plain Sight. In the first paragraph below, an editor has very kindly and with great tact pointed out some needed changes. Think about whether you would have noticed the need to make the type of changes she suggested.

On her first evening at the A-Frame, Lisa-Marie grabbed a novel from the coffee-table (remove hyphen) and flopped onto the sofa. She began to read, which (faulty pronoun reference: to which word in the main clause does this “which” refer?) wasn’t so bad (perhaps: and she didn’t mind spending her time that way) since she loved to read (repetitious: books?), but she usually got to pick reading over other options. Here there were no other options – no TV, no internet, and no phone. It was like being captive on an episode of Survivor. The dogs were curled in a ball (faulty image: sleeping? lying?) beside the sofa and Lisa-Marie stretched out a foot every now and then to rub each of their bellies in turn. The inside of the cabin was eerily quiet – in fact the whole area around the cabin was dead quiet and dark. Lisa-Marie had never seen it so dark outside anywhere (redundant: omit) in her life (misplaced phrase: never in her life).

Here is how that paragraph now reads in the completed manuscript.

On her first evening at the A-Frame, Lisa-Marie grabbed a novel from the coffee table and flopped onto the sofa. She didn’t mind spending her time with a good book but she usually got to pick reading over other options. Here there were no other options – no TV, no internet and no phone. It was like being captive on an episode of Survivor. The dogs were lounging comfortably beside the sofa and Lisa-Marie stretched out a foot every now and then to rub each of their bellies in turn. The inside of the cabin was eerily quiet – in fact the whole area around the cabin was dead quiet and dark. Never in her life had Lisa-Marie seen it so dark outside.

Editing is hard work, as anyone who has done some knows.  I really struggled with the final line, but in the end I made the suggested change. In some ways I still think – Lisa-Marie had never seen it so dark outside anywhere in her life – sounds better.

The above example paragraph didn’t appear in earlier drafts. The next one did. Here is how this paragraph read in the March 2012 draft:

Izzy’s dark, twisting curls were piled high on her head and tumbled down over one bare shoulder. A number of small, white roses wove through her hair and a large pair of silver hoop-earrings danced around her face. She wore a softly feminine, off-the-shoulder, white, cotton dress, with a tight-fitting bodice of embroidered shirring attached to a flouncy skirt that fell well above the knee. Her hair and dress combined with her bare feet made her look like a dark, garden Goddess. Though Lisa-Marie sat right beside Justin and he turned to smile at her often, seeming to include her in everything he said, his eyes were on Izzy so often a painful lump lodged in Lisa-Marie’s throat.

Below is the same paragraph, streamlined slightly, as it went to the editor. Lengthy descriptions of what my characters were wearing got weeded out as I rewrote and rewrote. Still work to do, though.

Izzy’s dark, twisting curls were piled high on her head and tumbled down over one bare shoulder. (faulty structure: either: curls were piled high (passive) on her head and they tumbled down (active) or: Although Izzy’s dark, twisting curls were piled high on her head, some of them tumbled…)A large pair of silver hoop-earrings danced around her face. She wore an off-the-shoulder, white dress. Though Lisa-Marie sat right beside Justin and he turned to smile at her often, seeming to include her in everything he said, she saw that his eyes were on Izzy so often it made a painful lump lodge in her throat. (awkward distance between “though” and “she saw”/faulty construction: try two or three sentences here)

And finally, the finished product:

Izzy’s dark, twisting curls were piled high on her head and they tumbled down around her face. A large pair of silver hoop-earrings danced and sparkled whenever she turned. She wore an off-the-shoulder, white dress. Lisa-Marie sat right beside Justin and he often turned to smile at her, seeming to include her in everything he said. Still, she saw that his eyes were at least as often on Izzy. A painful lump lodged in Lisa-Marie’s throat.

What I have learned of editing is that good writing is stripped down to the basics. I needed a multitude of detail to write the story because it helped me know the characters inside and out. As it turned out, the reader didn’t need to experience the characters in the same way that I did. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these examples or your own editing process – the struggles and the things you’ve learned.

First you create – then you craft – or do you do both at once?

Come writers and critics – Who prophesize with your pen – And keep your eyes wide – The chance won’t come again – And don’t speak too soon – For the wheels still in spin – And there’s no tellin’ who – That it’s namin’ – For the loser now – Will be later to win – For the times they are a-changin’    (The Times They are A-Changing – Bob Dylan)

I just want to say a word about the Auto-Instructional Text in Correct Writing – first, second and any other issue that might have come along. It’s about as auto-instructional as a text that might tell you how to do brain surgery on yourself. With the spine barely cracked, there’s a reason this book has sat untouched on my bookshelf for so long.

Having said that – my experience of working with an editor, line by line through my novel, tells me in no uncertain terms that a grasp of correct writing is a must and at long last I am motivated enough to learn. With this motivation, examples from my own writing, and an excellent teacher, I have been able to pull out the auto-instructional text and actually learn something. Though it is slow going and I have a lifetime of bad habits to correct.

We are proceeding with the editing process – my editor is editing and sending detailed notes. I am making the needed corrections and taking copious notes, referring to the text and trying to get this stuff to sink in. Then I work two chapters ahead of the editing, putting what I’ve learned into effect. I have a long way to go, but a faint glimmer of a light has come on.

I’m not sure if it’s my age or this creating and crafting process, but I am constantly humbled at the manner in which I can state something one day, feeling fairly confident, and then with equal confidence, retract that same opinion the next day. For example – when I realized the novel would need such an overhaul in terms of correct language usage I wasn’t all that perturbed. I think I even said, “Well, that’s no big deal. You can always get someone to help you with stuff like that. It’s the ability to imagine the story, to create the characters and the various jams they get themselves into, which really matters to me.”

I’m relieved I didn’t proclaim my thoughts too far and wide (though I realize I am doing that now – but with insight all a writer’s arrogance is cannon fodder) because, I now understand these thoughts to be ridiculous. Creating and crafting are two sides of the same coin. If you can’t adequately express your thoughts, with clarity and an awareness of what the written language can accomplish, then you aren’t releasing your true creative power.

This reminds me of a short story I read some time ago by Timothy Findley called, A Bag of Bones, from a book of short stories entitled, Dust to Dust. Don’t quote me on the exact details – but the story went something like this. There’s a husband and a wife, both of whom are published authors, though their individual styles could not be further apart. She would write frantically in the downstairs den – producing scads of pages per day. Her desk and all the surfaces in the room were littered with overflowing ashtrays and plates of left-over food. Manuscript pages were coffee-stained and scattered about. He, on the other hand, worked in an upstairs space, which was faultlessly neat – not a paper out-of-place and no coffee allowed in the room at all. He produced four or five superbly crafted sentences over the course of the entire day. They would come together in the evening for dinner and over copious amounts of wine, discuss their daily progress. I can’t remember if there was a respect for one another’s distinct style in these discussions – but it seems that these two writers represent the extreme ends of the spectrum that creating and crafting could represent.

The main point of the story, in my opinion, is that they both published. I suspect she had to do some crafting while she created and he obviously was creating as he crafted and they probably both took about the same amount of time to complete a given work of equal length. But don’t quote me on this opinion because I may recant tomorrow!

Buddha & Angel

Inspirational Garden Art