Construction site revision

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Years ago, I came upon a slender little book titled My Editor, by M.B. Goffstein. It's a poem of few lines, with simple, geometric illustrations, describing the process of working with an editor on revision.

I loved it so much I bought three, thinking of people I knew who might love it too. Now I only have one.

I've been thinking of it a lot, of late, going though the revision of The Next Novel, working with The Taskmaster (editor). The poem evokes the rewriting process as a construction site:

I begin to dig again, and lose myself in the excavation. 

Of course the new creation isn't quite right at first, and his editor sends him back to revise.

... my building worries me. It's stone cold, and I cry, "Why not have left it wobbly?"

There is a feeling of integrity in the early drafts that is initially lost in revising, until, with time, a new integrity emerges.

Take it apart, and suddenly see how it goes. 

This book is a treasure, and greatly heartening.



*****
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First reader and other fears

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The second draft of The Next Novel is being read right now by Dan Smetanka, a wonderful free lance editor in L.A. Am I nervous? You bet! This is its first public airing. In preparation for the next revision — the third draft — I'm rereading it myself. I've been dreading doing this, but now that I'm a good 100 pages in, I feel more at ease.

Not that there aren't problems, both big and small. I've a lot of work ahead. I marvel at the writers who are able to create a coherent novel in a year or two.

The small problems are almost amusing. Who was the author who advised his daughter, also a writer, to "always make sure that the moon is in the right place"? This is basically saying: attend to the details. I had to laugh: one scene opens in spring and in the course of a few hours moves into fall and then winter. It's a good thing Dan has a sense of humor.

Editing sings the blues

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For writers in the throes of revision, this is a wonderful You Tube author video.

(Thanks to the Twitter suggestion of writer Ami McKay.)

The wonder of Penelope Fitzgerald

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Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore and The Blue Flower are on my list of all-time great novels, but what I love best about her is that she didn't start writing until her late-50s.
To quote from the Guardian book blog, "The quiet genius of Penelope Fitzgerald":

Fitzgerald was a wonderful writer, and since her death in 2000 her reputation has continued to soar. Despite a late start (she began writing her first novel when she was almost 60, composing it as a diversion for her dying husband), she gained immense popular and critical acclaim during the last 20 years of her life. She won the Booker (for Offshore), and became the first non-American to win the National Book Critics' Circle award (for The Blue Flower, which many consider her masterpiece). In the eight years since her death, an increasing number of readers - including AS Byatt, Frank Kermode and Hermione Lee - have begun speaking of her as the greatest English novelist of recent decades.

I heard Penelope Fitzgerald interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel on the CBC radio show, Writers & Company. I was struck by her account: her first novel was a mystery. Accepted for publication, her editor asked her to cut it by half. She did so, and continued to do so, for every book she wrote. A good lesson, that.