The Forest for the Trees: Editing a Novel. Or, the Coffee I.V.

“When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.”   
 ~ Stephen King, from On Writing

Throughout the month of March, my editor at Bell Bridge Books and I have been deep in the editing process with KEOWEE VALLEY. This has been a month of late nights and early mornings, of less exercise and more time at the desk, of red-rimmed eyes and deeper wrinkles. I wouldn't change it for a thing.

William Faulkner, notorious drinking writer that he was, once said that when he was writing, he "always kept [his] whiskey within reach." I can relate to this. If not for the toddler, husband, dog, house, and job, I'd likely spike my coffee in the morn and partake heavily of the vino at night. But my drug of choice, especially during the editing process, is straight-up coffee.

Coffee. Sweet, sweet nectar of the gods.

The first time I drank coffee was finals week my freshman year at Clemson University. My dorm-mates and I had plugged in a coffee pot in the study room on our hall and had a friend wedge a chair under the door knob outside, to lock us in. I had a lot of excess energy in those days, and I'm pretty sure I remember my friends beating on the door, begging the girls outside to get me out of there after I'd had a few cups. I'm pretty sure there were random push-ups, jogging-in-place, and the singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" involved. I'm sorry, college friends. So very sorry.

Now that the editing process is (basically) over on my novel, I can say I know without a shadow of doubt that there are two things every author needs after her novel's been bought:

1. Coffee. Lots of it. Perhaps entering through an I.V.

2. A great editor.

Luckily, I have both of these. Not the I.V. of course. That would be icky.

College, now that we've broached the subject, was the first time I ever dreamed about what it'd be like to work with an editor. I'd been writing novels and novellas (mostly in spiral notebooks under my desk in science classes) since I was 11 years old, but until I became an English major and began having real discussions about my writing with my professors, I'd never considered the nuts-and-bolts realities of writing as a career.

Up to now, oddly enough, despite the fact I've published work in newspapers, magazines and literary journals, and have been lucky enough to win some awards, I'd never really had my writing edited. Unless you consider the copyeditors at the newspaper where I worked right out of college standing over my desk late on Sunday nights, frowning down at me. The conversation usually went like this:

Them: "Uh, Katie. You can't use this word. It has three syllables."

Me: "Why not? It's a great word."

Them: Silence.

Me: "Shouldn't we elevate the standards of our readership? You know, write to our readers' best selves?"

Them: Silence.

Joking aside (though that was no-lie, real conversation I had several times as a 23 year-old reporter), they still didn't really edit my writing much. No one ever did.

Until now.

Until my novel. My baby. My sweet little 450+ page darling.

I thought it'd be harder, I really did. Family members used to joke with me over the holidays when my writing career was in its youthful beginnings (everyone knew I wanted to write books): "How are you going to feel about being edited?" they'd ask, as if I wouldn't be able to take it.

The truth is, when it came time--finally--for my first novel to be edited, I was more than ready. I relished the process. Because good editors, great editors, make your work better. And if you've an editor like mine, who actually takes the time to explain the choices/changes because she remembers what it was like to be a first-time author, you learn infinitely. And you get better.

I like the King quote at the top of this post because 1) I'm in the forest a lot, and 2) I now know what he means... in a way I wouldn't have years ago.

Because I've been writing an historical novel, I get lost--happily--in research. I like knowing what tree grew where along the Cherokee Path that my protagonist takes into the wild backcountry, like learning about the deadly sandbars her ship would have to pass at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, love discovering that there were black wolves, panthers and elk, and even bison roaming the South Carolina Upcountry in the 1700s. This sort of stuff is my literary crackrock.

I'm also a fan of words. Big, beautiful words that some folks may have to look up. (Can you see my old copyeditor frowning? She wore a permanent scowl when it came to me. Also a uni-brow.) My editor showed me that there's a place and time for these words. That sometimes, readers don't want to look things up; that sometimes, these types of words distract from the flow of action, eject the reader from the story like a big, fat stone in a medieval catapult. And no writer wants to catapult her reader over the moat. Especially me. I want them to keep reading.

This is only one example of the many ways I'm learning about popular/commercial fiction versus literary fiction, about how to make a story better. About how to respect my readers. I've got a heckuva lot to learn. And I've had a great editor guiding me. (Thank you, writing gods. The sacrifice will be left by the back door.)

There's much more work to be done on KEOWEE VALLEY before it's published in September. And I'll keep y'all posted. But for now, it's back to my coffee and my next novel. Where, hopefully, I'll have learned enough to consider the whole darn forest.

 

Books and Old Boyfriends

Next week I'll be getting KEOWEE VALLEY back from my editor at Bell Bridge Books, and my part of the editing process will begin. I can't wait. Literally, I'm itching to start. I picked up the novel two weeks ago, sticky notes and pen in hand, and began rereading for the first time in months. I was Sherlock without the faithful Watson, but on the hunt for content irregularities--like the fact that in one scene I'd given my protagonist a single chair, and in another scene she has two--and other mechanics mistakes: a doubled word, an odd sentence structure. Being an English professor, I'm a stickler for clean copy; it'll kill me if the final version of my novel has a mistake in it.

Breathe, my editor says. Put the manuscript aside for a few days; wait, she says, until you get it back from me. Then work. And after, let it go.

I've tried to back off from my novel, though review copies of it sit in a cardboard box at my feet. Sometimes, especially after a compliment from my publisher, or receiving a thrilling blurb from another writer, I pick up the novel and randomly flip it open, looking for what they see. At times, I catch a glimpse... at others, I see only potential, and I have to physically restrain myself from the primal urge to "make it better."

This is exactly how I used to be about ex-boyfriends.

In my past life, I was one of those people. You know: the person who wants to stay friends with ex-boyfriends. I could never understand how so suddenly I was cut off from this person I'd cared about, how I was supposed to remove him from my life and to forget anything we'd shared. Granted, I was a bit of a commitment-phobe before I met my husband, and so the person doing the "breaking up" was, 99 percent of the time, me. This puts a different spin on things, I know, but hear me out.

It's not just that I wasn't ready to let go of that person--that old love--it was also that I was second-guessing. It started in middle school with a boy I'll call Sam. Sam was a tall, dark, teen-idolish 12 year-old who began his pursuit of me by making fun of the size of my boobs. (I was a tomboy in every sense of the word, and at this point in my girlhood this type of male attention freaked me out and ticked me off. In essence, I'd no idea it meant he liked me.) Sam got better. Eventually he brought me roses. They were gorgeous. Still, I was confused. I liked him--alot. But I didn't know what to make of him.

Eventually, our young love was brought to a screeching halt with a three-way phone call in which I was forced to choose between Sam and my best guy friend, (we'll call him) Bart. My preteen intellect and hormones were flying around like the ball in one of those baseball machines at the arcade--you know the ones, where you stand and work the "bats" with your thumbs, and the little players twist this way and that, and the ball goes banging haphazardly into other plastic players and obstacles, and sometimes drops in the right hole. Mine usually flew completely out of the game into the "you suck at this" gutter. I didn't know what the heck was going on: I just knew that I liked Sam, I also liked Bart, and our little drama fueled the middle school gossip mill for months.

After I chose Bart--a whole other story--I couldn't help but wonder about Sam. I'd see him walk the halls--black-haired and brooding--or flirt with another girl, and I'd agonize over my decision. I still wanted to be friends! I still liked him. But he wouldn't talk to me.

Same thing happened in college, with my first real boyfriend. (We'll skip high school. That's a Sweet Valley High-meets-90210 boondoggle for another post.) We'd dated in high school, ended up at the same university. I liked this guy (we'll call him Alan) so much: he was cute, funny, and he liked the things about me that used to confound other guys. But freshman year, the whole college experience opened up before me like the deep end spreads below an Olympic springboard diver, crystalline, cool and sweet--with nothing to do but leap. And boy, did I leap.

Not long after my full-gainer reverse dive into the undergraduate experience, Alan started squiring about another girl on my hall. And suddenly, Alan--and our fun, heady, coming-of-age romance--began to look better to me than it had the first time. For a while, he responded to my emails, wrote me letters. He still cared about me, he said. After a  mountain weekend in Tennessee wherein a ton of Southern frat boys and amiable girls holed up in a big cabin together with free-flowing kegs, liquor, and music for three days straight (sorry, so sorry, Mom), we ending up kissing again. He kissed another girl the next night. It didn't hurt. But I was done. And yet, years later, I still want to be friends. It's an illness. 

Lastly, my first and only serious boyfriend before my husband--a wonderful guy, truly one of the good ones. This relationship, too, I broke (glad I did, or I wouldn't be married to my husband, but still... I broke it bad). And afterwards, I thought I wanted it back. Him back. I wanted his friendship, and I wanted more. But I wanted it on my terms, and he, I can say without a doubt, did not. He just wanted me. For months I tried to make him see that we could be friends; and, for a while, he came around--great guy that he (still, I'm sure) is--but it was too hard. Zoom in to us tailgating at a Clemson football game, both leaned up against the side of my parents' car, serious, me telling him I wanted to see him AND other people, and him telling me he couldn't and wouldn't. (At stage right are my parents and assorted family friends, trying vainly not to look like they're eavesdropping.)

And though I knew, somewhere deep down in my real self, that he wasn't the one for me and I certainly wasn't the one for him, I balked. I second-guessed. I wasn't ready to let go. 

The problem is, I want it my way, and I want it all. This has not abated since I was a 12 year-old brace-face or a 20 year-old co-ed. But it's my personality. And it ain't pretty.

Years later, I'm still, really, not friends with any of these guys, much as I'd honestly like to be. Two of them are "Facebook" friends. The last, I'm afraid, is gone for good, and any chance at friendship gone with him. That's my fault. And that's okay. 

My job, now, is to look at my novel like I look back at that last relationship I had before meeting my husband: to think on it fondly about once a year, remembering the good moments, and then to bid it adieu, wish it--and whatever comes of it--truly well.

To do this, I think I need balance. In my life, in my work, and at my desk. If I can achieve said balance, my life, my schoolwork, my next novel, and my desk will be better.

But currently, here's the state of my desk:

Would it frighten you to know that I cleaned it last night?

Here's another angle of my desk. My dog is the sprawling black animal on the right. She knows it's a non-preschool day and so we won't be hiking, and she's choosing to ignore me.

Looks all cozy and writerly, right? (In addition to being messy.) It is. Until you factor in the balance-upsetter, the game-changer, the love of my life: my two year-old. Can anyone achieve balance with a two year-old?

That's a ponder for another time. For now, here's what my husband and I got to try to distract the kid so I might find some balance in my writing life: (this is about three feet away from my desk)

Balance? Ba ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha.

Happy Weekend, all!