Editors, A Mysterious Breed

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Canada Writes, contest, K.M. Weiland

I am almost finished a short, short story of 1,440 words. I plan on submitting it to Canada Writes. As usual, I sought help from beta readers. For the first time, I solicited help from an editor.

Editors. Impressive species. They remind me of sandhill cranes — drab, erect, self-aggrandizing, and uber-pedantic. An editor would slash the previous sentence five ways from Sunday. Mine would anyway.

He is a copy editor for a  newspaper. He is not schooled in the discipline but is a natural. He is the same age as my oldest daughter. He was born without fear. He is clear-sighted, has a perfect ear for prose, and he is expert at riding the conflict fence. Not only does he tell me what he is really thinking, but he makes me feel good about it. He is also in one of my writing groups, we share social time together over coffee or scotch, I am in his book club, and I call him a  friend. Even more dangerous. Only a good editor could edit a friend’s fiction and remain friends. *I’d say the same about the writer, but I have my doubts about him.

What baffles me is how they do it. I mean, I have worked on this piece since early September, have let close to a dozen people read it and give me feedback — see a previous post — and I have scoured over it almost daily. I have taken a couple of short breaks. I have also read up on self-editing. Fred Stenson’s “Things Feigned Or Imagined” has a couple of great sections on self-editing, and I’ve read every article posted by Writer’s Digest or K.M. Weiland. Yet the stuff my editor sends back to me baffles me. Not the content; that’s exquisite. I mean how he was able to discern trouble.

I had the following two sentences.

He staggers to the kitchen, yanks open the fridge door, and grabs another beer. He punches the tab and the drinking hole stares back at him, the empty, steely eye of his beer can.

He thought these verbs were too strong for where they were in the story. He felt the rise in action broke the tension prematurely. I read it and the rest of the section. He was right. What baffles me is I knew he was right all along. I knew these verbs were wrong and subtracted from my later explosions. I had felt it many times, but I did not recognize my feelings. He found other places where I distracted the reader, spend too much energy on getting points across, used wasted, superfluous adjectives. He messaged an answer to one of my challenges that he had read the sentence five times. He said that he follows the rule if he has to read something more than once, there is a problem and it’s his job to root it out.

That’s what I fail at, stopping. I let my uneasiness be passed over. I don’t stop and smell the flowers, or stinkweed. Again, I know this. I think I have acknowledged this before on this blog. And I don’t know how to train myself to stop, or if it is even a good thing.

Seriously, is it good to be able to stop and smell the flowers? Is it good to be able to read your most subtle reaction, stop, analyze them, and investigate the source of their being? It is for an editor, but is it for the writer? Once I learn, can I ever lock the editor out of the room? Don’t I need him to take a vacation while I write?

I often stray when I write. I step sideways, and backward, and sideways the other side, and even forward. I explore character and plot when I write, all while trying to keep to an objective of story, character, and scene. If I let my editor question everything I write, I wonder if much of what I write would never find the surface of the page?

I worry too much. Yet I worry, and worry is good. I hope.

If you have techniques for making yourself aware of issues in your prose, please tell me. Suggestions like my editor’s — if you have to read it twice, there is a problem. That will now stick to me until I die, but there have to be more of these techniques. These little mental reminders. Filters I can turn on and off as needed.

Oh, and I am extremely happy with my story as it stands. I think it has chances. If not this contest then in a literary journal. I think the story is ready. I just hope the jury is up for being slammed upside the head.

Thank you my editor and editors everywhere.

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Recent Writings — Canada Writes Creative Non-fiction

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Canada Writes, contest, Creative Non-fiction, editing, Writing

I spent most of the six weeks ending January 31st on an entry for Canada Writes’ Creative Non-fiction contest. I’ve had this story in me for a while, and it was past time to let it out.

I canned my first draft. I regurgitated all the facts — a good exercise — but it was a very telling narrative: this happened then that happened. Facts, no creativity. I read some previous winners and some of the site’s articles on how to write these stories. I quickly saw what I had to do and I did it. *bang* 1987 words. The limit is 1500. I quickly pared it down to 1499 and took it to my January 5th writing group brunch where I read it.

“Wow!” times seven.

I knew the wows were deserved, but they were for the content, not the prose. How do I know that? Because all of my unedited prose stinks. I knew the content. I knew I had been through hell and I knew I’d captured enough of that experience with my words. But I knew it wasn’t crisp prose. I knew I needed to work at getting it to where it needed to be.

I must have edited it every day over those next ten days. I’d read it, mark it with red pen, and correct the document. I’d say to myself “it’s just about finished.” The next day I’d repeat the process. It was like errors fell from the sky and landed inside my computer. I thought my systems must have caught an error generating worm. On many days I found many more changes that needed to be made than the previous day. I wondered if I’d every find the right words.

On Wednesday January 16th I read it again at a weekly writing get-together at our main library branch. There were six of us, and two were at my first reading. I didn’t get any wows, but I did get a “that’s much tighter.” It still felt loose to me. I decided to shelve it for a bit.

The next Monday I pulled it out and a new set of problems showed themselves. I had number formatting consistency problems. I repeated a few ideas. I found repeated words. I found ideas that weren’t fleshed out completely — “this happened.” But what the hell is “this?” — and I found foreshadowing inconsistent with the actual events — I began with the concept of clean water but didn’t end it with dirty water, not explicitly. *water is a euphemism*

I felt like it was getting close to complete, but issues kept surfacing. I decided to look at it only every second day. On January 30th I spent all day downtown. I pulled it out at Starbucks and read through it with my red pen. I didn’t take the cover off. A friend joined me. Jon is a big reader with a sharp mind, a chess master. I know he was taken by my story, and of course it put him on the defensive. My story does that to you unless you know my experiences. Nobody has known; which is why I wrote it. My daughter called it scary. Jon and I have a fairly deep, respectful relationship only old kindred friends can have. He held off any emotions and gave me several points of feedback he knew I wanted: “I liked how this ties into that. I like this description. I like how …” I like are good words. I ignored them.

I read it again on January 31st. I liked it all. I said wow. I paid the $25 and submitted it. I don’t really care if it wins. I wrote my story, and people will read it. I’m proud of the piece, and I want people to read it. If it doesn’t win, I will publish it myself, somewhere, maybe here. If I publish it first, I can’t win, and $6,000 and a two-week trip to the Banff writing centre are too much to risk.