LIGHT EDITING

posted by James Reel

    Earlier this year, I spent almost every waking hour I wasn’t here at KUAT or off reviewing some play or scrambling to meet some magazine deadline hacking away at somebody else’s 285,000-word book manuscript. That’s about the length of two normal non-fiction books. A publisher for whom I do editing and proofreading asked me to turn this ungainly thing—a memoir by someone who is not a professional writer, I might add—into something that could go onto the fall list with some expectation of selling without causing hernias among readers nationwide. Fortunately, it’s a compelling book written in a distinctive voice on a topic of high current interest. (OK, I’ll stop being coy; it’s the career story of a retired U.S. Customs agent named Lee Morgan, to be issued this fall under the title The Reaper’s Line.) I had to professionalize the writing without muting the voice, reduce the Deadwood-like frequency of colorfully used expletives, and, above all, chainsaw the thing into submission. I wound up getting it down to about 205,000 words, which is still a fat, gray book, but it’s already getting some good advance interest, so I am well pleased with the outcome.
    This has belatedly reminded me of a column I wrote back around 1998 or so for an e-zine called The Whole Wired Word, or TW3. The references to “recent” novels are obviouisly dated (and no, eight years later, I still have not read the books I mention, except for the very last one), I of course no longer work at the newsaper I mention, the guidebook I refer to is mercifully out of print, and there are a couple of inside references to the site that you won’t understand (John Bancroft was the e-zine’s editor, and Fred Thomas was a columnist who wrote about print magazines). But there might be enough here to distract you while I take a few days off from blogging in order to write a radio script, catalog 30 new CDs for the station, and finally catch up on a few things I neglected when I was working on Reaper’s Line.

Real Writers Need Real Editors

    NOVELS ARE LONG; life is short. Our bodies have better internal editors than our publishing houses.
    However exhilarating, sordid, noble or dull my life may be, my biological editor will keep it within certain reasonable bounds, and require my life to end before existential bloat sets in. Novels, in contrast, are expanding as fast as their authors can type. The only limits placed on them now come not from editors, but from carpal tunnel syndrome. Write until your wrists seize up, then hope your royalties will cover the cost of surgery. A fat book does, after all, command a fatter list price.
    What, exactly, are editors doing these days? It seems that they merely help novice writers produce something a little more salable by, perhaps, suggesting the addition of a sex scene or changing the main character's name. More prominent authors apparently are left to their own devices. Anne Rice, for example, will sell even when she turns out something as thick as the dictionary. So why should some editor persuade Rice to make her plot more cohesive and tighten her rambling prose? The manuscript has arrived; let's get it to market and start making money.
    Now, a long novel is not necessarily a swollen self-indulgence. But at the bookstore, as you absently stroke your significantly thin credit card, you can't help wondering if every word in the latest big novel really counts, especially since brilliant writers tend to let their genius elbow aside their common sense whenever a fatigued editor looks away.
    I ponder the recent, unread novels on my shelf and fret. Did Thomas Pynchon really need 773 pages for Mason & Dixon? Did Don DeLillo, most of whose novels have been admirably concentrated, absolutely require 827 pages for Underworld? Is David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest truly worth slogging through 1079 pages?
    The answer to each question may well be a resounding Joycean Yes. But I don't know, because I'm so damned intimidated by the sheer heft of each tome. Editors these days aren't even decent proofreaders; can they be trusted to help a writer shape a novel into the perfect form for its content and style?
    In his remarkable A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Julian Barnes requires only 307 pages to meditate upon the past three millennia of human existence. Barnes boils it all down to our uneasy balance of love and hubris, and our conflict between inherent curiosity and a need for security. He journeys from Noah's ark to Apollo spacecraft in 307 pages of unified themes, intricately integrated metaphors and rollicking, satirical storytelling. No editor could take credit for imposing such a fine sense of direction on a novelist. But an editor could keep Barnes' focused pages in mind when considering whether the latest manuscript under consideration truly needs to be three times that long.
    One problem with editors these days is that there are too few of them. A publisher of travel books commissioned me to write a guide to my own city. As the submission deadline approached I casually referred to the manuscript as a first draft. My editor snapped like a too-sharp pencil point. She was handling six books at once, she wailed, and simply had no time for the careful reshaping and give-and-take involved with multiple drafts. The guidebook was strictly formatted to begin with, so she hoped that the manuscript would require little attention beyond the usual style-vetting and fact-checking.
    And, at this point in the production stage, pretty much everything I wrote has gotten through as is—even a few passages that initially disturbed my editor, such as the entry for a strip-mine tour, in which I conjure dreams of filling the pit with the corpses of eco-rapists.
    Indeed, I must push things a bit far to jolt editors into blue-penciling my copy. In many years of contributing articles to the music magazine Fanfare, for example, only one line has ever been seriously altered: In a review of a Yo-Yo Ma video, I complained that the cellist indulged in the distracting facial contortions of a man abusing sexual aids. I still think that's what he looks like, but it's the editor's prerogative to fix up material deemed unsuitable for the publication's readership. No hard feelings. Why doesn't this happen more often?
    Even here at TW3, the editing amounts to changing a couple of paragraph breaks and inserting the HTML tagwords. John Bancroft could deaden his brain with a bottle of wine, three martinis and the latest issue of Mac World, and he could still outwrite me. Yet he keeps his hands off my copy. Part of that is because John doesn't like to screw around with a writer's unique voice. Part of it's because I turn in my column only a few hours before it hits the Web. Between this and his other responsibilities, John just doesn't have time for deep editing.
    Which is precisely the problem I face as a sub-editor at a daily newspaper. I'm the foreman at a word factory. When my reporter/critics dump their stories onto the production line right at deadline, there's no opportunity for major rewrites—I've got to keep that conveyor belt moving.
    Fortunately, the writers I supervise produce solid work. But I look at my finished section every week with vague disappointment. The commentary could have been a little sharper, the choice of quotes more colorful, the style crisper, if only I could have spent a bit more time with the reporters along the way, instead of attending meetings in which we strategize how to placate the overpaid out-of-town consultant, outwit the bean-counters and transform every belch and fart from the last focus group into story ideas and design concepts. Some editors must now devote so much time to long-range planning meetings that they're hardly involved in getting out the daily paper. When a reporter and editor do finally sit down together, the best they can do is triage editing. Exasperated, we rationalize: What difference does it make? Today's news and reviews will be tomorrow's fishwrap.
    In his Off the Rack columns, Fred Thomas has addressed many of these issues in greater detail and with greater eloquence and vehemence. I can contribute little more than a mild mea culpa and a shared dismay over the sorry state of things. Yes, isn't it a pity that editors—what few there are—have become little more than marketers-without-portfolio? What a shame that novels and newspaper features alike see print only if someone thinks they will significantly increase sales in the target demographic. How awful that maintaining the corporation's profit margin takes precedence over hiring an adequate number of experienced, savvy editors. My, my. Tsk, tsk.
    The truth is that even under these circumstances, with a little planning and forethought, a good editor on the same wavelength as a good writer can still nurture blue-ribbon work. But it requires more organization, dedication, energy and sharpness of mind than some of us can muster.
    As for me, the next novel I feel equipped to read is Benjamin Anastas' 147-page An Underachiever's Diary.