The Last Gasps of Editing

It's going to be a quickie today (in the purely PG sense of the word. Please, people. There are children out there! None of whom read this blog, but that's beside the point.) I'm just about done with my FOURTH draft of Cloudland [insert loud clapping and whistling here] and I've set myself a deadline of, well, now, to get it done. Which means that today's bloggery must remain brief. And brevity is a major challenge for me, so this is also a personal growth day. Or something.

On this last, final, ending, all-over, done-with and every other word I can think of that means NO MORE EDITING pass, my editor pointed out two little gems that I'll share today. Because, you know, self-humiliation is super fun. And yes, these quotes are real.

She circled one of my favorite darlings, and wrote in the margin, "If you delete this, will you cry?"

Well, of course the answer is YES BUCKETS AND BUCKETS, but unfortunately, she was right. As she usually is. I had rewritten and significantly trimmed down a scene near the end of the book, and as a result I had a piece of exposition that stuck out like a giant, throbbing, possibly infected sore thumb. But I had kept it there because it was really really cool exposition!!! It was all about the Day of the Dead and how the Michoacán people believe that the monarchs that migrate there are the winged spirits of their ancestors and families, who come once a year to visit and bless them. And that was so, so perfect for Cloudland that I just about jumped out of my chair when I read about it, and I couldn't wait to get it into the book somehow. Which I did. By sounding like Professor Liz Blocker, and lecturing on monarch butterflies, their migratory patterns, and their cultural significance to the people of Mexico.

Right. It got cut. Sigh.

But that wasn't all. My editor  underlined a couple of modifier words in another section and noted that the "hyperbole might not be necessary here."

Hyperbole?

Who, me? Exaggerate in my writing? NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS!

This made me laugh, because really, she should just emblazon that note in giant blinking neon print on the cover page of the book. Or on every page. Otherwise I might forget about it.

Ok, folks, I'm off to finish my rewrites. And this post clocked in at mildly long, instead of really really long, so I must be making progress in the brevity department!

My Name is Liz, and I'm a Hoarder

Last week I joined the Insecure Writers Support Group, and it was a smashing success. I discovered a ton of great blogs (check out 'My Weekly Read' on the left-hand side of the page), electronically met a bunch of other writers, and felt less alone in my nail-biting hair-pulling hand-wringing neurotic-isms - um, I mean, writing insecurity. So, a big heartfelt thank you to Alex J. Cavanaugh and all of the other IWSG participants who stopped by and left me comments. I love comments!

I'm still editing away at my poor manuscript, of course. And still having itty bitty little freak-outs about it. And then laughing at myself, which, by the way, is the single best sanity-saving tactic I've ever discovered.

So, in the spirit of good-natured self-teasing (something I just occasionally indulge in on this blog), I'm going to post a little bit more about editing Cloudland. Also, I still can't think about anything else.

My editor sent me another batch of slaughtered marked-up pages a while ago, and when we were discussing the proposed edits, she pointed out a scene - one entire scene, mind you - and suggested that I might not need it.

Let me just repeat that: she suggested I might not need an entire scene!!!

In order to understand my panicked repetition and over-used italics, you have to understand a little not-so-well-kept secret about writers: we are word-pack-rats. Writers talk about language the way that hoarders talk about piles of boxes. Tell a writer to cut a paragraph, and she'll respond with , "NONONO WAIT! DON'T GET RID OF THAT! There might be something GOOD in there!! Let me just see..." *rifles around in manuscript* "Yeah, yeah, this sentence - this sentence is GENIUS! And this one here -"  *more rifling; words fly through the air* "Oh yeah, this one is the KEY TO THE WHOLE BOOK!!" 

We are language hoarders. I realize I'm over-generalizing here, but show me a writer who never minds cutting anything she's written, and I'll show you a pint-sized hippopotamus who plays the violin and sings Carmen in perfect Italian.

This is what I'm talking about when I mention that I'm murdering my darlings: it's an often-used writing expression that points out how common it is for writers to clutch their favorite paragraphs to their chests with crazed Gollum-like desperation, and how important it is to cut those buggers out of the book because they are WEIGHING IT THE HELL DOWN. I write these sections that I think are lovely and genius and perfect, and then my editor comes along and tells me they're unnecessary. And you know what? She's right. Just because something is well-written doesn't mean that it belongs in the novel.

Here's how OCD we are: many, many writers (myself included) keep files of their cut paragraphs/chapters/scenes for so-called "use in a future book". You know, like your Aunt Bertha keeps massive boxes of junk mail and catalogs just in case she ever wants to order something from Ikea. And who knows? Maybe someday I will really use something I cut, and maybe some day Bertha will buy her seventeenth All-In-One Book Organizer/Vegetable Peeler. It's possible, so all hoarding tendencies aside, I'm going to keep that damn file and hope to use something in there, some day.

Incidentally, I didn't cut the scene. Instead, I took a look at why my editor was suggesting that it was unnecessary, and realized that I hadn't written it the way that I had intended. In fact, I'd written it wrong. It sounds dramatic, but I saw that the metaphors I'd used were almost the opposite of what I was trying to express. This is a scene that takes place towards the end of the book, in the magical land in the clouds, where everything is a metaphor; using the wrong one is a pretty major mistake. It was, I think, the last scene I wrote before I finished the first draft of the book, and I was both stuck for ideas and determined to finish the draft, so you can see how I might have rushed through it just a wee bit.

Anyway, I went back to the drawing board and came up with better metaphors, and re-wrote the scene. I'm going to send it to my editor - along with the rest of the entire draft HALLELUJAH!!!!!! - shortly. We'll see if it makes the final cut.

In the meantime, I'm gritting my teeth, and laughing a lot, and committing a hell of a lot of word-murders.

Insecure Writers: And Now We Edit

NOTE: I'm joining a new group: The Insecure Writers. It's an online group, meaning that no one ever really meets face-to-face, which is so perfectly appropriate for writers (to make a grand over-generalization about us, of course) that I had to join. We 'meet' the first Wednesday of every month, so there will be a nice neurotic post about writing - so different from my other posts, I know - once a month.

I'm going to make an attempt to be brief today. Not one of my strengths, but I'm this close (holds up thumb and forefinger with itty bitty space in between) to finishing the first-pass edit of Cloudland, and I am jonesing to get back to it. Like, leg-shaking hand-tremors gimme-my-fix-NOW jonesing.

And oh yes, I do mean first-pass (or really third-pass), because there's a whole long chain of editing that happens to a novel after a first draft is finished:

1. The writer reads the first draft and alternates between perfect joy and horrified disbelief. She tries to remove the bits that cause the disbelief and does great celebratory dances around the awesome bits.
2. Second draft. The writer enlists one or two very kind, wise close friends with some expertise in writing/reading/editing to read the draft and point out the places where the writer has gone a wee bit overboard, which should really be cut before anyone else is allowed to read it.
3. Third draft. The writer takes a few deep breaths and engages the help of a professional editor. With the help of this editor, she murders paragraphs and slashes and burns all of the "long's" and "slow's" and other problematic and generally over-written sections.
4. Fourth draft. The writer and the editor go through the novel again (with a lighter touch, one would hope) to make sure that now that it's nice and lean, it all still flows and makes sense and that there's story continuity and all of that important stuff. 
5. Fifth (or more) draft. The writer finds an agent (Snap. Just like that! Soooo easy!) That agent likely has one or two or seventy ideas for improving the manuscript.
6. Many more drafts. The agent finds a publisher (also super-duper quick and easy, of course) and the publisher has a just a few tiny little suggestions before agreeing to take a major risk and spend money on this unknown author and her precious manuscript. Just a couple of very small edits. 

Of course, this is my version of the editing process. Some writers probably have very different processes (and if any writers are reading this and do have better processes, please for the love of God share them with me. Kay, thanks.)

All of this, of course, can lead to just the teeniest tiniest sense of insecurity. Y'know, no biggie. Just something along the lines of "OH DEAR GOD WILL ANYTHING BE LEFT OF MY BELOVED MANUSCRIPT WHEN EVERYONE IS DONE KILLING IT???"

Which is ridiculous and dramatic and mildly insane, and also probably entirely normal for anyone who has ever had anything edited. Emails, reports, novels, scripts, letters, grocery lists, whatever. There's always this moment where you think, "Wait, why are you getting rid of that? That was a genius idea! Don't we need seventy-five different adjectives/kinds of spinach/statistics/ways to say "dear"/etc?"

Anyway. I'm almost there on step #3 (does this feel like a 12-step program to anyone else??) Before I sign off for today, I'll share one more tidbit from the annals of editing:

This one is one of the worst offenses of my bad habit #4, pairing actions and body parts. I actually, with no sense of humor or irony at all, wrote the following sentence: "Then she [Sara] has no choice but to squeeze his hand, and nod her own head." 

Yes, folks, that's right, I am now pointing out that my characters only nod their own heads, not anyone else's! Because if I didn't - CHAOS!! WHOSE HEAD IS SARA NODDING?? WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING IN THIS NOVEL??

Needless to say, the image this conjures is priceless: Sara putting her hand on her head, and pushing it up and down in an unmistakable nod.

Too bad I'm not writing farce, or satire, because that's a gem, there.

We Interrupt This Program To EMBARRASS THE HECK OUT OF ME

Hi, folks. I'm sorry about the unannounced radio silence last week. I fully intended to put up a blog post, but my birthday happened, and then my wife and I took off for heretofore unexplored regions of Western Massachusetts, where, it turns out, there are gorgeous views to look at and bountiful waterfalls and rivers to swim in and Bridges of Flowers (which, by the way, was a hell of a lot cooler and more lovely than it sounds) to cross, and very little in the way of cell phone or Internet service. So, I took a week off. Without really meaning to. Whoops.

But I'm back! And I am, as promised going to talk about plot this week - except - well, actually - if you don't mind -

I'm really not going to at all.

Nope. Sorry. Why? Because my editor has been tearing through great gobby sections of my manuscript with  unrestrained glee, and thanks to my unplanned week off, I'm now fighting to come up for air from beneath piles of marked-up pages and poor, dead, murdered paragraphs. Yes, that's right, it's time once again for small children and psychopathic criminals and abandoned puppies (look here for a key to that last sentence).

EDITING! HURRAH!

So, I'm once again wading like a lunatic through the seemingly endless pages of Cloudland, scythe in hand, slashing and burning and generally having a grand old time. Today, because I can't think about anything else at the moment, I'm going to treat you to an inside look at Liz's Bad Writing Habits, a.k.a. Stuff My Editor Is Constantly Cutting, a.k.a. Willing and Conscious Self-Humiliation In Seven Parts:

1. I've already mentioned one of them: a tendency to bash my readers over the head with over-explanation. Repeatedly. Ad nauseum. Just like I'm doing here. Oh boy.

2. I like the words 'long' and 'slow'. A lot. A whole, whole lot. I also really like them together, as in a 'long, slow moment'. There are (or rather, there were, before my editor's pen went hog-wild) a large number of 'long, slow moments' in my manuscript. I also really like it when people do things that are 'long' and/or 'slow': 'a long silence', 'a slow nod', 'a long, slow smile'. This is problematic, because, funny enough, readers seem to get bored with LONG, SLOW BOOKS.

3. One of my main characters, Sara, seems to like to avoid declarative sentences. For an example, see the sentence I just wrote. Does she seem to like to avoid them, or does she, in fact, just like to avoid them? As Shakespeare has Hamlet point out, '"Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems."' 

4. I have a problem with pairing actions and body parts. Before your imagination runs wild, let me explain: I like to point out that characters nod their heads, and cross their arms over their chests. Because, you know, why just say that someone nodded, without saying what they nodded? I mean, that could be chaos! What body part did they nod?? There are so many choices! How will we ever know if I don't say it?!

5. I am a specific word addict. Once I find a word I like, I use it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then I use it some more. My editor and I are compiling a growing list of Words I Am No Longer Allowed To Use in Cloudland. They include: fierce, wild, shift/shifting, murmur, quiver/quivering, long, and slow (see #2 above).

6. Emotions don't just happen; they happen in specific body parts. Or at least, they do when I write about them. I have a whole lot of instances of guilt rising in throats, and anger surging in stomachs, and grief filling lungs. I think at some point, someone told me that emotions should be visceral for the reader, and I, erm, took them rather seriously.

7. I love words. I really do. I love the way they taste, sound, look, smell, and feel (and yes, some words do have smells). This is not a bad thing, actually; it's just part of who I am, and a large part of why I love to read and write. The problem comes when I love them so much that I just keep piling 'em on. Hence, the collections of mass graves for my poor dead paragraphs.

I'm sure there are more Bad Habits I could name, but if you'll excuse me, I really need to get back to excising mine from my manuscript now.

Plot next week!! No, really!