I really enjoyed Saturday’s workshop on The Craft of Revising – a lovely group of writers came along, and we left energised and enthusiastic to return to writing projects, seeing them in new ways and ready to try out fresh things with them.
We talked about Buddhism and drag queens and different types of editing, and taste and technique, and intention. We asked ourselves what genres we are writing in, and how our books might be positioned to readers by publishers. We thought about our characters and their yearnings, and discussed how specific slants or perspectives on our material can not only create a stronger focus for our stories but also lift their telling. I stressed the importance of not only verbs but also paginating your manuscripts, and we sought gifts and questions in each other’s writing. We talked about shitty first drafts, and I suggested lots of practical tips for self-editing and looking at your work in a fresh light. We also discussed working with feedback.
A serious aim for the day: the idea of listening to your writing. Listen by reading it aloud, listen by hearing it read aloud, and most of all listen with your eyes: hear what’s there on the page or the screen. Let your material make itself known.
We were lucky to have novelist Michelle Lovric come along to give an inspiring talk on tackling ambitious and challenging projects, and also provide useful and most intelligent guidance on creating voices for your narrators.
I think it’s important that the publishing business is demystified for writers, and we ended the day with a Q&A with Lennie Goodings, Chair of Virago Press, who gave many practical insights into the work of editors and what happens within a publishing house: when to stop editing, being an advocate for your authors with your colleagues, the importance of good booksellers. Lennie brought further inspiration with her good humour and absolute passion for books and writers.
Given I was the only man in the room, it also seemed relevant to touch on the subject of gender in the crowd at creative writing events. Do women writers like coming to workshops, while men writers prefer to attend masterclasses?! Or maybe they just go it alone?! ‘Discuss …’
As usually happens when energetic writers get together, we had far more content to share than we had time to cover. (I want a time-turner!) Everyone in the group had skills and expertise of their own, and there’s so much to learn from each other.
Follow-up notes are being emailed, and lots of handouts were provided (unpaginated … but they are individual, one-page handouts … though please please add page numbers to your own manuscripts!).
Kellie and I hope to run further workshops-slash-masterclasses in the autumn on voice and plotting (dates to come, maybe along with some men?!), and I am planning other workshops in other places too. Do register your interest by contacting me or Kellie.
Thanks to Kellie for a wonderful day, and to Michelle and Lennie for their generosity in joining in, and to everyone for coming.
Kellie Jackson of Words Away recently interviewed me on her blog for the workshop on revising and self-editing that we are holding in June, and I thought I’d copy it here as well. I know some of the people who’ve signed up already, and there are a few spots left. Do let us know if you have any questions – and I’ll look forward to seeing some of you on 23rd June.
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Kellie: We have an exciting new workshop, The Craft of Revising, all planned and ready for Saturday, 23rd June. I’m teaming up once again with experienced editor and writing teacher, Andrew Wille, who’ll be leading the workshop. There’s also a Q&A session arranged for the afternoon with Virago Press chair, Lennie Goodings. Our venue, the London Bridge Hive, is a recently renovated space located three minutes walk from London Bridge Station – close to Borough Market and the cafes of Bermondsey Street. I thought it would be interesting to interview Andrew about next month’s workshop to give you a flavour of what’s on offer – especially as we’re planning more craft oriented workshops later in the year.
Kellie: Our first collaborative endeavour, Everyday Magic: The Four Elements of Creativity, had an emphasis on creativity and intuition rather than outcome. This new workshop is focusing on the ways in which we Create, Craft and Connect our writing – our approach will be intuitive and practical, challenging yet generous. Can you expand on this a little?
Andrew: It is certainly more outcome-oriented, in that we’ll be working towards the goals of a finished manuscript and a published book, which are practical aspects of writing we might relate to the left side of the brain in the Everyday Magic workshop. We’ll discuss aspects of form and technique essential to improving a draft (Craft), and also talk about the realities of the market (Connect).
I prefer to think about readership rather than marketplace, though: writers connect when their books are read, rather than when they are sold, so let’s think about relationships with readers instead. Writers connect especially when their books move readers, so what do we need to do to convey feeling in our work? Much relies on developing intuitive approaches: digging deeper with character, achieving the right voice and tone, remaining open to a book’s potential, experimenting.
And how do we sustain those initial sparks that bring your work to life (Create)? And what in fact were those initial sparks, and how might the work have shifted during the drafting?
I’m hoping this course will foster a creative and intuitive approach towards a practical outcome. Both/both, rather than either/or.
Kellie: How developed does a writer’s manuscript need to be in order to get the most out of this workshop?
Andrew: Writers who have a first (or an umpteenth) draft should find this useful, but so should writers who’ve embarked on a work-in-progress and completed some writing of substance: an outline, or a few chapters, maybe the 15,000 words of an MA dissertation. It’s about training yourself in approaches to revising, as well as the tasks that self-editing might involve.
The workshop should be helpful for novelists and writers of longer works, but also writers of short stories and essays. Some of the discussion might seem more obviously focused on the craft of fiction, but this can be just as relevant to nonfiction too. Voice, character and setting are vital in a novel, for example, but they are also needed in nonfiction, even if they crop up in more subtle ways.
Kellie: Is editing a creative endeavour?
Andrew: Of course it is! Occasionally we generate pieces of writing that come out perfectly formed, but on the whole I’m with Anne Lamott: expect first drafts to be shitty, and improvement to come through the creativity of revising and editing.
Kellie: Are all first drafts shitty … ?
Andrew: Actually, maybe I’m not so much with Anne Lamott – maybe I don’t like the idea of anydraft being shitty? A first draft is just a first draft, after all – it’s about getting the material down, and sometimes we don’t really know what we have until we get to The End. And what’s shitty about that? It is what it is.
By contrast, Allen Ginsberg said: First Thought, Best Thought. Though I question that approach, too – I’m all for spontaneous bursts of genius, but a First Thought can often be revised into an Even Better Thought.
Kellie: You clearly think drafting is important, then?
Andrew: Yes! I’m surprised at how often beginning writers finish a first draft, give it a light dusting for typos, and then submit a manuscript for publication. I guess there must be occasions when such books do get published – though if anyone knows of an example, please let me know! It’s more likely that much of the real work begins once a first draft is complete.
The task of creation gains depth when, armed with the hindsight of reaching the end of a first draft (or even just its middle), you start to probe your intention: where on earth did that come from? Why did I write that? Should I follow that trail for a while …? Giving yourself permission to explore during the drafting can be very important.
Maybe the shittiness of a first draft is rich manure, and maybe what’s grown in it includes lots of seeds that need thinning out, and some dead wood or crossing branches that need pruning, and maybe a bush that needs some special attention so that its flowers bloom more brightly?!
Gardening presents many analogies for the work of self-editing and revising. You take what’s there, and see what’s needed and what’s not needed, and you plan accordingly. And: you can’t have everything! This is advice that my own garden is only finally heeding now. I’ve had to murder a few darlings, or at least give a few away, and the frost did some of the rest in. Likewise, focusing your energy on your strengths and resources will make your writing more effective.
Kellie: You have a background in publishing and worked as an editor of fiction and nonfiction for many years: what do you hope to bring to this workshop that might be new to writers?
Andrew: I’ve worked with writers for decades now. I started working in publishing in 1987 as a trainee with the Maxwell Corporation. Later, I was part of the successful editorial team when Little, Brown won its first publisher of the year award, and subsequently I’ve freelanced for all of the major UK houses and many small presses and individual writers. I’ve worked with bestselling and award-winning writers, and also on books that were, sadly, published without trace. So I bring commercial experience, and my own instinct as an editor.
Kellie: And you write too? And teach, of course?
Andrew: Yes, I also write, though in a haphazard way. Mostly short fiction. So … I sympathise.
More than anything, I consider myself a reader, I think, which is one reason I love being an editor. I was always writing as a kid, but that seemed to stop sometime after I began work in publishing. Reading is very consuming when you work in-house.
Then I started writing in earnest as an adult when I studied and later taught at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, which recently discovered it is the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement. Working among poets and small press publishers and activists as both writer and teacher gave me many gifts, not least among them an understanding of contemplative traditions in the arts.
In my practice as a teacher and an editor, I try to bring together these two approaches: an indulgence of creativity for its own sake, but also an understanding of what it takes to get published. These are not mutually exclusive categories.
I also find similarities between my editor self, who’s always seeking to improve the work, and my teacher self, who’s always trying to make writers more curious about their potential.
Kellie: If a writer is struggling with a particular aspect of self-editing will there be an opportunity to explore this problem on the day?
Andrew: Absolutely. We’ll probably open with an overview of the types of editing done by both writers and publishers, and subsequent sessions will be focused on different aspects of craft: the bigger picture of character, setting, and storyline; choices in narrative style; and last but not least the nuts and bolts of prose style. There will be plenty of chance to raise questions throughout the day – specific examples will offer everyone valuable lessons.
The group will be relatively small, so even the shy ones will get a chance to speak. I’m hoping there will also be room for everyone to share some of their writing or maybe a rough outline with other writers, working as partner-editors or in small groups.
Kellie: And we‘re concluding the day with a Q&A with an editor?
Andrew: Lennie Goodings, the chair of Virago Press, is a good friend – I first met when we attended editorial meetings together at Little, Brown. I cannot think of any press more hallowed than Virago, and Lennie is, simply, one of the best publishers in the business. She’s passionate and engaged, and she understands the book trade, and she has a sense of humour (a requisite in any workplace). And she edits – yes, she edits! Contrary to scurrilous newspaper reports, editors do edit, and the list of authors that Lennie’s worked with speaks for itself.
Lennie is also writing a book for Oxford University Press called The Idealistic Publisher. I think the world needs some idealism right now.
We’ll probably have a couple of questions ourselves to ask Lennie to get things started. But I’m hoping that the delegates will bring lots of questions of their own, and we can have a lively discussion about books and writing and editing. There might even be gossip. (Where publishers gather, there is always gossip.)
Kellie: Can you elaborate about your idea of a DIY MA? What’s the ethos behind your idea? How would this work and who would it be aimed at?
Andrew: There are so many resources out there: workshops, masterclasses, writing groups, mentoring, retreats, online courses, festivals, genre conventions … I’m interested in helping writers to develop their own programme of studies in the craft and process of writing. I have blogged in more detail about this here: Learning and Studying and Writing: A DIY MA in Creative Writing.
Kellie: Incidentally, I’m testing out some new cake recipes to bring along for morning and afternoon tea. Besides your editing expertise, what are you bringing?
Andrew: I have a sweet tooth, so biscuits might be involved, but I can’t swear they’ll be homemade. I’ll also bring lots of handouts and worksheets. We can’t possibly cover everything about revising and self-editing in a day, but we can send everyone home fired up, and equipped with a set of exercises to try out on their work-in-progress.
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Hope to see some of you at the workshop if not before!
I was very lucky to see George Saunders talking about his first novel Lincoln in the Bardo this week. The man is a true inspiration. His writing is hard to categorise – good, we say! He’s not a conventional realist, and his stories are these great shots of something we can’t predict – they have strands of the surreal, the hyperreal, the dystopian, the fantastic, the satirical, the gonzo and oddball and geek. Even more impressive is the fact he’s made himself a successful career as a published writer and a highly regarded teacher of creative writing (at Syracuse) on the basis of not publishing a novel, at least till now. Yay for not writing novels yet! If only we all were so patient.
And this novel: worth the wait! It’s quite a feat of the imagination. Many screen inches have been devoted to it already, so I shan’t repeat any of that, but what I shall say is that it contains many of my favourite things in writing: ghosts, the American Civil War, voices, intelligence, daring, swearing, exquisitely carved sentences, great liberties with history, great truths, a big heart.
His talk at Goldsmiths, where he was expertly interviewed by Erica Wagner, featured an enactment of several chapters with himself and several speakers. And, of course, it also featured many nuggets of his teaching and editorial genius, delivered with great wit and warmth and purpose. George Saunders must be a strong candidate for the writers’ writer.
Something I enjoyed in particular in his discussion of writing was this sense of a great writerly intuition uncluttered by self-consciousness or overthinking. As has been reported, this was a book that was a long time in the coming, and it seems to be a book that emerged instinctively. ‘When I wanted to outline, I didn’t,’ he said. He specifically talked about writers cultivating their ‘intuitive swerve’, discussing writing as improv, and letting the ghosts speak – his ghost characters in this book, but too I think that applies to the ghost that is any character we create.
Discussing historical fiction, he said emphatically that he doesn’t care what life was like in 1862. That’s my kinda historical fiction.
He also talked about the differences for him between writing a short story and writing a novel. This novel, of serious matters (war, a parent’s grief), required earnest writing, and his short form comes with a ‘tic of humour’ that’s pretty much a hallmark. It makes me think how some of my own short stories, written for workshops and for reading aloud at events, perhaps play a little too easily to the gallery, at the expense of digging deep. I think it’s quite an achievement to have combined humour and earnestness in Lincoln in the Bardo.
George Saunders also stressed the importance of revision – important in so many ways. First (and I think he quoted Einstein here?), he talked about problems needing solutions beyond the plateau of their conception. Of course our first drafts need work, and maybe lots of it! And revision offers so many chances to rework and fix and tweak and polish – ‘the little move is what distinguishes you’, he said. He parsed the sentence ‘Frank came into the room and sat on the brown couch’, showing how many of those words, or those sorts of words, are superfluous (we ended up with just ‘Frank’). Through pruning away and leaving some work for the reader, we grow a respect for the reader, which creates intimacy.
George Saunders also advocates empathy more broadly as a cure for the tensions of these politically divided times. He describes Trump voters, for example, as including the sort of ordinary people he grew up among, and he met many too in reporting from the 2016 campaign trail, describing them as nice, affable, not angry. ‘How much compassion can you give? An infinite amount.’ And this gets embodied, of course, in the shining example of Lincoln in his book, as he told the Washington Post:
The main thing that I feel is — whatever you want to say about Lincoln — his empathy expanded as he lived. He was probably a typically racist Indiana boy. And then those last three years, his pot of empathy went out to include everybody: his soldiers, of course, these millions of Americans who were being enslaved, even the South. So that’s why we love him, I think because with all that pressure on him and all that hatred coming toward him, he didn’t turn to the haters and disabuse them; he actually tried to include them in his love.
Though too he cautioned about the enabling dangers of what the Tibetan Buddhists call ‘idiot compassion’, something that we perhaps need to hear more often. (I am sick of all the pandering, and I want my country back.)
Finally, Saunders also warned all writers against ego. ‘Don’t get ambitious. Don’t get elated.’
All round, a very brilliant and engaging evening. I am so lazy nowadays, one of those lazy home-working Londoners, and I don’t go out that much. But it was only the next day that I realised I’d schlepped all the way to SE and back (left the house at 4.30, got back at 10.30) without hesitating to think about it, because if you are serious about writing you don’t miss up the chance to listen to someone as brilliant and much loved as George Saunders speak.
PS Sadly, I didn’t get my book signed. There were a ton of people in the queue, over a hundred surely, and it moved maybe one spot in the fifteen minutes I did wait. But I had a train to catch, and a city to cross! I did of course enter my own imagined space of how to commune with the great man among so many fanboys and -girls, and puzzled about the least smarmy way to ask if, given his interest in Tibetan Buddhism, he’d visited Naropa University during his time at the Colorado School of Mines, where he was an undergraduate. But I’d probably have only got tongue-tied and blushed and blabbed, anyway. Here’s the front of the adoring queue on my way out.
For this week’s writing experiment: As an exercise in revising and drafting, print off a copy of your manuscript in a format different from the one in which it was originally composed. I suggest making it look like a book. For example, use a bookish typeface (I think this was 11pt Baskerville, but Garamond and Caslon look good too), and make it single-spaced and justified, and print it out two pages on a landscape sheet of A4/letter paper, like the facing pages of a book – see the sample above. Check your print settings for how to do this: you might have to play with the margins. Or you might simply change the Layout of the whole document to have Two Columns in Landscape, Single-spaced and Justified.
And, unlike me in the example above, remember to add page numbers, else things could get confusing.
Defamiliarised, your writing will look and feel different when you read through it this time.
Take a block (or blocks) of time to sit down with a pen or pencil, and read through your work.
At the top of every page, make a note of the gift you are giving the reader on that page.
Your offering can vary: sometimes it’s dramatic stakes (tension in a scene), sometimes it’s narrative stakes (plot point and tension within the bigger story), sometimes it’s a fresh insight into character, or a snappy exchange of dialogue, or surprise, or a quiet interlude that gives us an emotion, or a lovely bit of sensory detail of setting, or some poetry in the prose, or a powerful symbol working its magic, or some clarifying perception of the world.
If you can’t identify anything in particular, 1. stop being negative about yourself, and 2. simply find the strongest word on the page, and rewrite that at the top as your gift: maybe, later, you can give some thought to the deeper meaning of that word.
Also, don’t be tempted to note more than one gift on each page. Each page might have a number of offerings, but it can help to identify what’s most important. This might give you some thought about whether some items might recede, or even be pruned. Writing can get too clotted, just as it can feel too thin.
Don’t rush. Read in a leisurely manner. It can even help to read aloud. Otherwise, avoid making further marks on the pages; this is an exercise in focus and restraint about your skills in the arts of giving.
Once you are done, collate your gifts into a list:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
… and so on for every page of the book.
Put this to one side for a couple of days, then come back and see what work you need to do. You might annotate your list further, e.g., noting where you have too many gifts, or too few. There might be some evening out to do in the pacing.
You can extend this further, e.g., thinking about the gift in every paragraph. But I think every page works fine.
And at the end, ask yourself: what is the gift this book is giving as a whole?
Happy Christmas! (That lovely rose below was a gift that came this morning. Flora makes such lovely gifts, and in this case the glitter charmed me too. Maybe think about your own writing as a glittering flower too: something a bit natural, something a bit made?)
Last night I was very happy to take part in the inaugural Words Away literary salon run by Kellie Jackson and Emma Darwin. It was a super evening: a great turnout, with a lovely, engaged crowd of writers, and the Teahouse Theatre is a wonderful venue for this sort of event too. Also, Vauxhall is so easy to get to from so many places, and we were a very short walk from the tube.
The subject under discussion was self-editing, which as Emma pointed out is a useful term (and something of a recent coinage) that brings clarity to this idea that to edit ourselves we need to put ourselves in a special frame of mind.
I emphasised the idea of working free from attachment. I mentioned that super quote that I believe comes from Terry Pratchett (and I paraphrase): writing the first draft is just the writer telling herself the story. It’s good to give yourself room to step back (and especially away from the computer) to ask yourself what this book can be. Has your intention shifted? I suggested practical ideas such as printing off your manuscript in different formats in order to defamiliarise your own words. It’s also helpful to do exercises outside of the book itself, or using some of your content knowing that this writing is not going into your baby (and in fact sometimes it will end up in the book after all). Be free in your writing at this stage.
I often describe these early stages of editing developmental editing, and I discuss this in more detail in this post on structural editing. Sometimes input from other readers or agents or editors can lead to doubts, and it makes sense to be reflective: this post on working with feedback might give you some pointers.
In practical terms, the natural speaking voice is, I believe, the greatest asset to any piece of writing, so learn to trust it. Here is a link describing a workshop on voice I led in the past (it includes links to further exercises on voice too). And I heartily recommend I Remember exercises as very easy and accessible ways to work with voice in your own writing.
I do like some narration in my storytelling, and here is a link to a subtle bit of narrating to be sampled at the start of My Name Is Leon by Kit De Waal. Tweaks for the art and craft of narrating are often essential during revising,
This salon was titled ‘Make Your Novel Shine’, and I do think there is a great value to decluttering our minds of words and letting symbolic thinking (or maybe I should say symbolic feeling?) guide us through revising. For example, think about the idea of a light shining its way through your book like a torch, or maybe be guided by the image of a prism reflecting light in and off its many facets. Something else I suggested was thinking about writing as giving, and the gift you give your readers on every page. Such ways of working can force us to go a little deeper, and perhaps discover unexpected treasures that belong in the writing in some way or other.
Thanks again to Kellie and Emma for having me along. Forthcoming salons will have speakers talking about character (17 October), plot and story (14 November), and historical fiction (5 December). Hope to see you there.
