Tag: editing

  • Q&A: Do you critique often? When you come across a manuscript that is particularly bad and you know that the writer is very new, how do you give help?

    You’ve talked about giving feedback for a novel that was particularly unfortunate. (The erotic 7th Heaven one….) Do you critique often? When you come across a manuscript that is particularly bad and you know that the writer is very new, how do you give help? Specifically, how do you not hurt feelings when the honest truth is that an entire manuscript really should be scrapped and rewritten from scratch? How do you balance encouragement with honesty?Thanks!

    I do not critique often. Only for a handful of friends. Extremely patient, forgiving friends. Because I am neither good at nor timely with my critiquing. 

    Mostly because I either like something or I do not like something, and I am absolute shit at explaining why or why not. 

    (Also, my taste is questionable. I loved Sharknado. I hated The Fault in Our Stars and Casablanca. If I am critiquing for you, you should want me to hate it. That’s how you know it’s good.)

    So I guess that’s the first lesson of critiquing anything: if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. Because if you hate doing it and do it anyway, you’re likely going to do more harm than good. 

    If you want to do it but are shit at it, like me, let the other person know you are absolute shit at critiquing. Full disclosure, and all that jazz.

    OK. So.

    What do you do when you are obligated to give advice on a manuscript, and your advice is scrap it and move on? Drink vodka. 

    And then be honest.

    The vodka to honesty ratio depends on the person, but my advice is to drink enough vodka that you are honest, but not so much that you are brutally honest.

    (For those of you who, like me, cannot drink (or choose not to drink) alcohol, do the same as above, minus the vodka.)

    First things first, the whole critiquing a book thing is awkward. 

    For everyone. 

    No exceptions. 

    I have been friends with Carol and Liz for almost six years. It is always awkward to give feedback to them. It is always awkward to get feedback from them. I owe one of them feedback right now, and when I send it, it will be like the freaking ding-dong-ditch of emails. I will upload the attachment. Hit send. And then we will pretend it never happened. 

    So that part is normal. 

    Secondly, resisting feedback is also normal.

    So don’t take it personally, no matter what side you’re on. 

    Thirdly, stick to big picture stuff.

    I am a proponent of moving from large to small. So if you feel a book is conceptually flawed, or that a large chunk of it needs to be completely rewritten, say so, and leave it at that. 

    Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of line editing. That kind of editing comes later, when the book is more structurally sound. 

    Fourthly—is fourthly even a word?—if you don’t say something, someone else will.  

    And that’s why it’s never OK to lie, to say you like something when you don’t, to say that something is ready to go on submission when it isn’t. 

    Because that friend of yours who’s writing really bad books? Probably won’t be writing bad books forever. Eventually she will learn from her own mistakes, and when she does, she will look back on her really bad books, see them for what they are, and know that you lied.

    To her face.

    And fifthly, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

    Even the shittiest of shitty first drafts have some spark of life in them, some glittering something shining amongst all that dirt. If you can’t see it, you’re probably not the right person to offer comments.

  • Q&A: I finished my novel, but I don’t know how to edit. Help!

    I finished my first novel during NaNoWriMo ’12. It’s crap, but I don’t know how to edit it. i’ve tried a few times but it’s like I get confused and I don’t know what’s good and what isn’t. It’s a complete mess and I don’t know how to clean it up. Help?

    Honest answer? Don’t even try. Most first books are crap and cannot be fixed. I’m not saying yours is, but most are. 

    So instead of worrying about how to fix it–which, after two and a half years, is pretty obvious you can’t, at least not right now–write another book.

    A better book.

    One you won’t have to clean up quite so much.

    And then, after you’ve written this new book, write another new book.

    And after you’ve written that new book, go back to the first book and look at it again.

    Because either you will see that it cannot be salvaged and should be shelved indefinitely, or you’ll have learned enough in writing other books that you have a better idea of how to fix it. 

  • The Five Stages of Revision

    Denial

    What do you mean there are 300 Track Changes comments? That can’t be right. Obviously have received someone else’s manuscript by mistake. Because mine is spotless.

    Anger

    Of course there’s motivation for her actions! It’s right there, in black and white, page twenty-six, paragraph three, sentence two! I EVEN PUT IT IN DIALOGUE SO YOU WOULDN’T MISS IT.

    Bargaining

    OK, I will consider the idea of changing the setting. But only if you let me keep the two-pages of backstory about his pet goldfish.

    Depression

    I hate my liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiife. I hate this boooooooooooooooook. 

    Acceptance

    Huh. Maybe it’s not so bad after all

  • Q&A: What’s the most you’ve ever written in a day?

    Anonymous asked:

    What’s the most you’ve ever written in a day?

    I’m going to tell you a little story about The Perfect Day.

    It was in December 2005. I was home sick with the flu, or at least that’s what I’d told my boss. I don’t actually remember if I was sick or not, only that I’d called in sick, and given my work ethic in 2005, it could go either way.

    (Oh, who am I kidding? It was more like 60/40, in favor of lazy over sick.)

    Anyway, I was home and in pajamas and I managed to crank out something like 45 pages. 

    It was kind of awesome.

    But of course when you have a day like that, you kind of start using it as a stick by which to measure all other days. And so, almost ten years later, I find myself thinking back to that day and wonder what I did right then and what I’m doing wrong now.

    The answer, of course, is that I did nothing “right’ then and I’m doing nothing “wrong” now. There are so many factors involved in that freakshow of a day, factors that will probably never align again. But still my subconscious won’t let it go. 

    So there’s your answer. Most words in a day: 45 pages. 

    But it’s also worth noting that those 45 pages? Complete and utterly useless. They got deleted on a first pass edit. I’m sure there was something I learned from those 45 pages that eventually found its way into the book. But the pages themselves? Not so perfect after all.