I’m tidying up my site (bear with me! one day maybe I shall understand how drop-down menus work their magic …). I’ve just added a couple of extra pages:
To round out this short series of posts on editing, I want to add something on the occasions when writers might think about forking out on the services of an editor for either developmental or structural editing, copyediting or line editing, or proofreading. I sometimes, for example, come across writers who are asking for copyediting, but after closer discussion that might seem premature, as any copyediting might be carried out on a draft that could still gain from revision. Copyediting is basically a tidy-up done to an otherwise final and agreed manuscript.
As I need to maintain the gardening analogy: when do you need the help of a landscaper, a tree surgeon, someone to mow the lawn? (In this instance, let’s say you’re too close to the grass to spot the daisies. Okay, bad analogy, but you know what I mean.)
* If you are preparing to submit a manuscript to an agent or a publisher with a view to getting published: It should not be necessary at this stage to hire a copyeditor or a proofreader. If you know your spelling and punctuation are really dreadful, you might want to get a beady-eyed friend to pass an eye over the text to help your work look more professional. But an agent or editor is at this stage more likely to be looking for a compelling story told by an engaging voice, rather than prose that’s had every single error removed (along with most of its life). Lots of sloppy errors will, however, simply make you look … sloppy. But it’s hoped that you don’t need a professional copyedit to avoid looking sloppy.
Writers who are preparing to submit might gain more from a manuscript critique from, e.g., a book doctor or an editor. This could address matters of developmental and/or structural editing, depending on the stage you’re at in your drafting: be clear what you’re looking for. You might in fact already have this sort of input from beta readers, and feel confident enough to submit anyway – a critique is hardly a requirement. Having been read by another good reader in whatever form is a good idea, though. Sometimes even experienced and agented authors solicit the services of an independent opinion, e.g., for a fresh project that might be something of a departure.
Another alternative would be to attend a writers’ conference or similar event where writers can share a sample of writing or pitch a story idea with an agent, editor, or book doctor (as a book doctor, I meet writers in this capacity when I took part in theFestival of Writing in York). Only a snapshot of your writing might be read, along with a synopsis, but this can give a good indication of the strengths and weaknesses of a project, in the manner of a diagnosis of its strengths as well as areas for improvement. Plus feedback will be discussed with you directly, and little beats a face-to-face discussion, however brief it might be.
If you feel your style needs some serious help, maybe you are not quite ready to submit yet? Agents and editors can sometimes go for strong ideas and help you out editorially, especially with nonfiction, but help with your prose is something of a long shot and they’d have to be pretty committed to your concept in order to devote this much time to your writing. A freelance editor could help fix obvious mistakes and even tighten some of your baggy prose, but this does beg the question about the work writers need to be able to do for themselves. For me, style is vital to the way in which individual writers convey their personalities in writing, whatever genre they’re working in, and there are no quick or easy editorial fixes for that sort of thing.
So maybe there’s further work to be done in developing your own voice? And note that I don’t talk about finding your voice, as I don’t believe in that – you already have a voice, and it’s more a matter of using it confidently and working out how to put it into your creative writing. It might, for example, be worth taking some time to read widely in your genre (and others), figuring out how a particular style is achieved by another writer. You might also want to conduct a few experiments in voice and style, e.g., I Remember is a great exercise for this. And you could try your hand at some short stories (which of course have a value all of their own – a short story is not just trainer wheels for writing a novel). You might even want to do some broader studies in creative writing.
Also, though, matters such as style and voice are often quite subjective. You might just have to test your manuscript and wait for some reactions. At a certain point, you simply submit – try out your manuscript on the world. (Another post on that later.) You can always do further work, depending on any feedback you get.
* If you are preparing to deliver a contracted manuscript to your agent and/or editor: Some contracted authors do have longstanding relationships with independent editors and might get a critique or some help with drafting or even a bit of a line edit. But on the whole editorial work is usually done in relationship with the publisher (and sometimes the agent too).
Any submitted project is likely to go through further editing and revising: maybe some developmental or structural editing with agent and/or commissioning editor, and definitely rounds of copyediting and proofreading with your publisher’s editorial department. Occasionally authors have preferred freelance copyeditors, and even though they have moved publishers they continue to work with the same copyeditor for all their books.
At the time of delivering your manuscript, it is worth asking how your book will be handled – keep channels of communication clear and open, and know what to expect and when. I always think it is a good idea for authors to see a copy of the copyedited manuscript before it is typeset, though I am surprised at how often this seems not to be the case.
Note: authors should not be charged for editorial (or other) work done by a publisher, unless you are working with a vanity press, which is basically self-publishing (see below).
Sometimes an author will be delivering a draft of a manuscript to an agent who hopes to sell it to a publisher. An agent should not require payment for reading a manuscript or other editorial work; an agent earns a living by taking a percentage cut from any deals made on the author’s behalf. Scams have been known; though in practice such dealings are rare, they can make writers unduly wary. In fact, agents do sometimes recommend the use of an independent editor for a critique or a fresh view or some other editorial input, and this can be sincere and helpful for the writer. As in all business relationships, this is a matter of trust.
It can be reassuring and informative for writers at this stage of their careers to join professional or genre organisations that can give advice on matters such as working with agents and editors. Sometimes a bit of networking or lurking on Twitter or other social media can be instructive, though I recommend that discussions about personal transactions are conducted privately rather than in more public forums. And you’ll also find many similar resources on writers’ blogs and websites.
* If you are self-publishing: If you are self-publishing, do make sure you have at some point shared your writing with other readers before charging money to book-buyers or giving it away for free. Beta readers or professional editors see errors and incongruities that you miss in your own text. They will help you to improve your own work and avoid any embarrassment.
If you are publishing in print formats, certainly make sure your book is copyedited as well as proofread; typos and spelling errors make your book amateur. Before that, you might also want to have done some sort of structural editing, or have taken the book through revisions after getting feedback from beta readers. It will undoubtedly be a good idea to make sure that at least the proofreading is done on hard copy. The human eye catches different things on a printed page.
If you are publishing in both print and ebook formats, you should also aim for a structural edit, a copyedit, and a proofread. In practice, the work for both editions can usually be combined.
If you are publishing in ebook format only, again aim for structural editing, copyediting, and proofreading. Though the work is being published in a digital format, it is still worth introducing a hard-copy read of a print-out for either the copyedit or the proofread. It might also be worth having a final proofread on files converted for reading in their ultimate format on an ebook reader or tablet.
When briefing an editor, be clear about whether you want a light or a heavier copyedit – you might discuss this with the editor and even ask to see a sample of editing (which might need to be paid for) to be sure that any work done is to your liking. You might also ask a proofreader to look out for specific things you might feel need double-checking, e.g., a change to a variant in spelling that you made after the copyedit was done.
Editing and proofreading are often offered by many of the self-publishing operations that also provide design, formatting, printing, and distribution services. It’s worth inquiring about who’ll actually do the work, and again asking for samples. In some ways, though, it can make sense to arrange your own copyediting and proofreading – it will give you more control over the outcome. It might be a little more expensive to use an experienced editor, but it can make a real difference to the work that’s done.
Whatever else you do (even more important than copyediting!): hire a good designer to create a striking cover image that will look good on screen as well as on a print copy (print copies need to be sold online too).
Of course, you don’t have to do any of the above. As I often stress, if you want to be published, you don’t have to write a good book as much as a book that other readers want to read, and we know there’s no accounting for taste, right?!
* Who to hire? A personal recommendation is ideal – ask around, particularly of writers working in your field. It’s a good idea to know the editor’s track record: books they’ve edited or proofread, and publishers or writers they have worked for (sometimes discretion is required).
Rates vary significantly. I tend to quote on a job basis after seeing a sample of work, for example, while other editors set a page rate or an hourly rate. Don’t be afraid to say that you have a certain budget to work within. Don’t be surprised if an editor turns down a job, but too sometimes an editor can read opening chapters and a synopsis instead of a whole manuscript: this might help steer you in the right direction, whether this might be further work on your book, or some studies in creative writing.
I don’t give direct recommendations for editors on this site, though I do have various experienced associates whose services I can suggest, depending on the sort of book that needs help.
On Saturday I took part in the Getting Published Day at Regents College, London. As always, with Writers’ Workshop events, it was a lot of fun: meeting writers, making friends, talking books, having a laugh. Good spirits all round. I led a seminar on voice and also did some book doctoring, and I’m posting some follow-up notes on both below.
Book Doctoring
I read some good samples this time, and made various editorial suggestions for further drafts: tightening and brightening the prose style and voice; avoiding too much explanation that gets in the way; worrying not so much about fashions in writing but instead writing a book so good that it stands out as a timeless story (though some agents or editors might tell you otherwise); thinking about the narrative focus and the dramatic stakes (and the dramatic focus and the narrative stakes); not being too subtle; considering the single outstanding thing that this book might be, and trying to make that thing stand out on every page, every line (an impossible feat, I know, but it’s the striving that matters).
Oh, and importantly: paginate your manuscripts, even for short submissions such as the ones we used on Saturday. Do follow any specific guidelines, of course. But page numbers are probably essential for any reader – pages get printed, dropped, jumbled, need referring to consistently (there were a few places where I wanted to refer to something on, e.g., page 3, but I had to write in the page numbers myself first). A lack of pagination can seem a bit sloppy or thoughtless. And hey, if it’s your unpaginated manuscript that gets knocked off the edge of a desk, maybe it won’t get read.
In short: be professional by making life easy for your readers.
Reading recommendations included 20 Master Plots by Ronald Tobias, Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale, On Writing by Stephen King, and The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler. I also recommended the Writers’ Workshop online course on self-editing your novel taught by Debi Alper and Emma Darwin several times a year; it could be a structured and informative way to guide your book through another draft.
And if a book doctor session leaves you a bit confused or frazzled, you might find it useful to read an earlier post on working with feedback on your writing.
Voice Workshop
Find Your Voice is one of the great myths of creative writing; you have a voice already, so let’s find ways to turn it into writing. That’s the idea – I’ve put some notes into another post: Voice Workshop.
Till the next time?
Thanks again to the lovely people of the Writers’ Workshop for inviting me along (yes, that is a plug too, but I like and trust them a lot). And also thanks to all the writers I met – it’s a real pleasure to share in other people’s inspiration and creativity, and to listen to their stories.
And maybe I’ll see some of you at one of the London Literary Salons run by the Writers’ Workshop at Waterstones Piccadilly over the coming months? I’m co-teaching one on revising and editing with Debi Alper on 31 July.
1. When I ran a workshop on the Four Elements at York last year, a few writers in the audience at one talk seemed a bit surprised when, in discussing ‘The Colonel’ by Carolyn Forché, I asked them how their work was political. Because, I said, just about all writing has a political dimension. Even if it is ignoring the world around us, that could make it prop up the status quo.
2. On Wednesday morning, I read this news report about Chelsea fans indulging in racial aggression on the Paris métro last night. I know these thugs have nothing in common with me really, but it FILLS ME WITH SHAME. SHAME TO BE ENGLISH. SHAME TO BE WHITE. I know it’s not my fault. I know I am not the person standing on a train hectoring strangers, but. This is little short of monstrous. And it FILLS ME WITH SHAME to see these white English pigs abusing a black man on public transport in the capital city of another European country.
3. I hate the witless (straight male?) cult of banter. (I just realised: I don’t feel the shame of being male, as I really don’t relate to many of what might be regarded as conventions of being male.) I imagine Chelsea fans, at least some of them, must feel VERY VERY ashamed to be associated with such louts.
4. I tend to shy away from such overt opinions on this blog (though not in other places). ‘Opinion is the death of thinking’ – David Malouf. I don’t like to risk offence. This goes beyond opinion into passion (and fire, that element prompting discussion in the workshop of Carolyn Forché’s politics). But sometimes you cannot be silent. Sometimes you have to stop being a pussy.
5. I’ve just finally started reading Alexandra Fuller’s memoir Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, subtitled ‘An African Childhood’. It is FANTASTIC, and I’m only a fraction of the way in. Early on we get a potted history of Rhodesia, where Fuller grew up:
Between 1889 and 1893, British settlers moving up from South Africa, under the steely, acquiring eye of Cecil John Rhodes, had been … What word can I use? I suppose it depends on who you are. I could say: Taking? Stealing? Settling? Homesteading? Appropriating? Whatever the word is, they had been doing it to a swath of country they now called Rhodesia. Before that, the land had been movable, shifting under the feet of whatever victorious tribe now danced on its soil, taking on new names and freshly stolen cattle, absorbing the blood and bodies of whoever was living, breathing, birthing, dying upon it. The land itself, of course, was careless of its name. It still is. You can call it what you like, fight all the wars you want in its name. Change its name altogether if you like. The land is still unblinking under the African sky. It will absorb white man’s blood and the blood of African men, it will absorb blood from slaughtered cattle and the blood from a woman’s birthing with equal thirst. It doesn’t care.
6. I am taken back to a mobile classroom at King Edward VI College in Stourbridge in the early 1980s. A-level history with Mr Peacock. Grey skies, blusters of rain, half a dozen pastel shades of chalk outlining battlefields and tactics. The Falklands War was taking place as we sat lower-sixth exams, writing essays about the Boer Wars and William Gladstone. I learned facts in those two years – facts about the Scramble for Africa, the Russian Revolution, the rise of fascism in the 20s and 30s, the birth of the welfare state, the Spanish Civil War. A-level history (British and European, 1870-1945) probably forged my political awareness more than anything else. You can interpret, but some of these facts are inarguable.
7. As a sixth-former, I remembered the death of Franco in a headline in the News of the World a few years before. This wasn’t just history.
8. Other (nuanced, thoughtful) reads of influence: Exterminate All The Brutes! and Desert Divers by Sven Lindqvist. The Rings Of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Ban En Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil (more on that another time). The Secret River and Searching For The Secret River by Kate Grenville.
9. Yes, the EU might need reforming, and yes, this is a small island, and yes, resources are limited.
But. But but but. It is election season, and there is a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the air. A lot of anti-other, a lot of bullshit, a lot of populist dribble that lacks compassion and is unable to listen or engage, and seems to love to play the victim and talk over and talk down, rather than find complex solutions to complex problems.
I do think it is important to find ways to talk about race, and gender, and sexuality, and many other issues – and ways that don’t just get contrary positions dismissed as racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or rely too much on terms such as ‘micro-aggressions’, which can feel aggressive in their own accusation and create unhelpful victimologies. Because things are rarely black and white, and knee-jerk claims can be just as unlistening or disengaged. Sometimes we really do have to locate our senses of humour, or not let ourselves be offended. Dwelling on ‘micro-aggressions’ really can feel like engaging with excuses for resentment. Sometimes it is better to laugh things off, don’t you think?
10. But but but. History lessons. Consequences. Do As You Would Be Done By. This post was written in a state of emotion, or passion, and our old English teacher Mrs Blakemore always told us never to post letters written in emotion or passion. Leave it overnight. So I shall. (And I did. And I didn’t change anything.)
11. How can writing make us listen? Make us think? Again, David Malouf: ‘Opinion is the death of thinking’. One of my favourite aphorisms.
12. Too much of the way we are taught writing forces us to value opining. Thesis statements in freshman compositions and positions defended in debate club are just a hop from columns written by hacks in tabloid newspapers. And slagging off immigrants in one of those columns is just a skip from proudly announcing your own racism as you push a man off a train on the métro in Paris.
14. Frank Bruni’s column this week, which makes a case for studying poetry as a bulwark against ‘rushed thinking and glibness’. Let’s devote ourselves to developing the ‘muscle of thoughtfulness’.
15. How will you use your own muscle of thoughtfulness to remove the shame, and restore pride in yourself? How are you going to find ways to write about things that matter to you?
16. What does matter to you?
17. Poetry, fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, biography: these are forms that often embrace and explore complexities, and in doing so help to make the world a better place.
18. What word can I use? asks Alexandra Fuller before naming colonialism for what it is. Taking. Stealing.
I first encountered writers writing manifestos in a serious and active way when I was doing my MFA at Naropa. During earlier literary studies, I had come across avant-garde artists writing declarative statements of intent – I’m thinking in particular of the Surrealist Manifesto.
At Naropa, writers bring to life the practice of the manifesto in a manner that really seems present and urgent. Anne Waldman in particular encourages the writing of manifestos in her teaching and activism. Her prose collection Vow To Poetry, subtitled Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos, is a manifesto in itself, defining her commitment to poetry, while Fast Speaking Woman is a magnificent declaration of intent in poetry form (see a video clip of Anne fast speaking here). Of it Anne says:
I wanted to assert the sense of my mind, my imagination being able to travel as artist, maker, inventor. To see beyond boundaries.
A manifesto contains passion and drive and purpose, all wrapped up in the efficiency of a list (something I explored in another writing experiment, Lists, Lovely Lists).
Start looking, and you find manifestos in many places:
* This Critic’s Manifesto by Daniel Mendelsohn is as much an exploration-essay, but it amounts to a powerful distillation of the writer’s experiences, commitments, and desires in writing.
* David Shields’s Reality Hunger (subtitled A Manifesto) is a fantastic book-length cry for new forms in writing.
I do admit to finding some manifestos opaque, dull, or pompous, especially (sorry!) some of those by poets and self-described experimental writers and artists, and particularly (double sorry!) a lot of those by self-described experimental poets. I guess laying out your intent like that can open yourself to excess, abstraction, and cliché. It’s something to be mindful of, and to avoid or maybe to write with awareness of, writing through and out the other side until your writing is tangible and fresh again. But, too, I guess a bit of pomp is fair game when you’re giving free rein to your intent – and writers really should allow themselves this, unhindered, from time to time.
I also find that a manifesto is a useful tool during revision. It can be a super tool for clarifying where you are during your drafting, and I often ask writers I’m working with to write a manifesto – it helps me to understand what they are looking for, but more than that it often helps writers take stock, frequently at a point where they’re drifting or losing focus or getting stuck. Sometimes our intent shifts as a project evolves, and we need to keep tabs on that too.
Writing – and later referring back to and updating – a manifesto can also be a powerful way to restore flagging confidence at moments of doubt, or when you are shirking the task of fully owning your project.
So: for this week’s writing experiment, write yourself a manifesto. It could be a mission statement outlining your long-term intent as a writer, or it could be a five-year plan, or it could be a manifesto for a specific piece of writing, perhaps as part of your revision. It might be specific to a genre you’re working in. It could involve artistic and aesthetic principles as well as commercial goals, and it might (should?) also invite political consequence. Go on, be a revolutionary through your writing. Change the world. Even let yourself be pompous – this is one of those occasions where a bit of bombast will do you no harm.
Make that declaration. Set some boundaries, then see beyond them.
