Paksworld

Final days of  my work based on the editor’s notes.   What left for NYC already a few thousand words shorter than it had been, is now almost 3000 words shorter than that…and you would not miss one of them.  Well…maybe a half dozen, but you’d have to have read it before.

How do editors and writers decide what to cut?  Well…think of the classic example: Michelangelo saying that to make a statue all you do is cut away the stone that doesn’t belong.    It’s much the same with words, though figuring out what doesn’t belong is a bit tougher.  After all, if you’re carving a cube, and there’s this triangular lump sticking out one side…that doesn’t belong.   If the “David” had chin-wattles, that wouldn’t belong.  But with a story, especially the first of several that share a story arc…does the bit about the pony and the wildcat belong or not?  (There was no bit about the pony and the wildcat: I just made that up.   I made the whole thing up, but you know what I mean…)

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When I looked at the one editorial request that I just could not make work, and then finally figured it out, I realized it was a perfect example for study.   My editor correctly noted that the emotional high point of a relationship’s end was not at the end…there was an anticlimax scene.

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For the past week, I’ve been working on the revisions my editor sent me (in two parts), and it occurred to me that the process might be interesting to you.  I can’t share exactly what my editor said, because since she and I both know what’s in the book, our communications are just about solid Spoiler.   But with a little judicious tweaking, I think I can give you a taste of the experience of being edited by an excellent editor, though it will reveal some of my weaknesses as a writer.

Editorial comments  fall into three basic categories: the surface-level error…the structural glitch….the foundational/design disaster.  Within quote marks is the original text; the comments outside quote marks are my editors, suitably trimmed to avoid spoilerish revelations.  Square brackets are where I inserted a substitute, non-spoiler, filler.

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