Recently in editing Category

I just sent some revisions to my editor. As I suspect most electronic publishers do, mine asked me to use Microsoft Word's Track Changes feature. I've got an old version of Word, so this means that any changes I make appear in bright red. (Newer versions let you switch views so that your changes look like normal text.)

I turned out to be incapable of writing anything new in red. Either I keep expecting my grade school teacher to have written a scathing comment, or I can't mentally integrate the red and the black text, or maybe I'm just distracted by bright colors. I ended up opening up my trusty text editor, writing there sans any formatting whatsoever, and then transferring the changes over into the Word document.

It's also harder than I expected to tweak a part of the narrative. It ripples through the entire story, but I didn't want to overemphasize the change (why not just put up a neon sign?). I went for less rather than more this round, and will await my editor's verdict.

It was actually near-impossible for me to work on "Gutter-wing" while editing "Summer-set" (I know, I've got to do something about these hyphenated titles). Perhaps my brain needs a handy edit/write switch. Hopefully I'll catch up on my word count this weekend, but as I've got someone's novel to critique, I wouldn't place any bets...

I was looking over a friend's application essay for med school. He'd reused some elements from his college essay, which I also helped him on. And as I read it over, I distinctly recalled approving certain sentences which now made me frown.

This makes me happy. It certainly wasn't a terrible essay — it got him into an Ivy League — and the fact that I can look at it critically now and see so clearly how to make it better means I've become a better editor, even of words and phrases I had suggested myself.

I had to reread my novella in order to come up with a summary for the cover artist, and noted some spots which needed polishing. Granted, I finished in a rush in order to make a deadline, but I like to think that if I had noticed it before submission, I would have done something about it. Even in the span of a few months, I'm able to aim a keener editor's eye on my writing.

I only wish the same were true for biological vision. Off to get the contact solution.

I keep a box of keepsakes — cards, small impractical gifts, and such — around. I never look at it, because I don't generally have days where I suddenly feel the urge to reread, say, the six-page letter written to me when I graduated high school. But every time I move, I go through the usual triage of what must stay and what can go, and inevitably I end up sitting in sprawling mess of books and papers and clothes, totally absorbed in these years-old momentos. I certainly have no need for them, but they're lovely rediscoveries on each occasion, and utterly worth the space the box takes.

I'm digging through old story files now (buried in recursive folders of backups) and casting a critical eye over them. And some of them actually have a spark that I think is worth reigniting. Naturally, the flaws that kept me from ever trying to publish these stories are still evident — but if I can see them, that's the first step toward fixing them.

When I'm revising a story this comprehensively, I'll often print out a hard copy, prop it beside my monitor, and then start retying it entirely. It's the only sure-fire way for every single word to pass muster into the next draft. And there's a mental comfort present, too: I've finished this thing once, so I damn well can do it again. Better, this time.

One thing I found interesting when I briefly participated in that online critique group, was the inclusion of author's notes which called out specific recurring weaknesses. The reviewer was kindly requested to take particular note of these.

I'm vain enough to consider most of my recurring traits as stylistic. (I know someone who had issues with my continued use of colons, but they work for me.) But when I expand my view to consider plot, I start thinking, uh-oh.

My fantasy stories often use warring cities. I can't help it; I'm totally sucked in by the tension inherent in a romance between a conquerer and the conquered. Or just enemies on opposite sides of a conflict that spans far beyond them, geographically and time-wise. (Perhaps I can blame this on Ernest Gunn's Antagonists, the last paragraph of which still kills me ever so softly.)

Flashbacks. I think this is my way of avoiding prologues. They (yes, the commandments of fiction, collectively issued) say to start the story where the conflict begins. Then they say to show, not tell, the background. So I usually set my beginning right when things get interesting in the present timeline, then go into a flashback to explain how circumstances got to this point. In my sf, I usually even finagle some memory-related technology to validate this technique.

I'm positive I have other ruts I keep falling into. But if the writing leads me there, should I really turn away? Should I write it and then wrestle the story structure and plot into something else during my edits? Or just glory in my variations of these themes?

The colons, though, are staying.

These notes apply to a single online critique group, which I tried out of a sense of curiosity. I did receive some very helpful comments, but overall, I decided that this group didn't work for me.

Mix of genres. This was great in one sense, because I was free to read works from any genre. However, it was awkward if I critiqued someone's children's story and the group's expectation was for her to read and remark upon my erotica. Some people did write in both genres, but that's not a reasonable assumption. I think some level of focus is desirable, so that everyone has some common ground. While there was an erotica group, it wasn't particularly large, and most of it seemed to be contemporary.

Reciprocal critiques. Members were actively encouraged to give critiques to those who had given unto them, which was great in increasing activity, but it meant looking at works for which you were completely the wrong audience for (see above), or working with writers who were at a very different stage of their writing development—which hardly works out to be equitable. I would sometimes spend hours on a critique trying to articulate the issues I saw in a work, only to get a 300-word (the minimum critique length) list of sentences in which I used the word "was" in return.

Inline critiques. One popular feature was the ability to insert comments after specific paragraphs of the story. I found that this encouraged what I call reader reactions: someone saying, "I guessed it was him!" or "I wonder what she's hiding?" This is great feedback, since ultimately I do write for readers; but the whole point of a critique group is that the other people are fellow writers who should be able to provide actual constructive criticism, and not a litany of which points in the plot were surprising.

Incorrect corrections. Frankly, I was far stronger in grammar than most of my critiquers. Too many people have read that the passive voice is bad, and concluded that any occurrence of "was" constitutes passive voice. I was hounded to change many sentences to use active verbs, although that would have changed my meaning. (Read Passive Voice and the Verb "To Be" [imogenhowson.com] for an explanation.)

Time commitment. As I mentioned, I would spend a lot of time on critiques at first: re-reading the stories, writing up comments at each pass, and trying to summarize major strengths and weakesses (or as my company insists on saying, "areas of development"). Critiques could go over a thousands words easily, and then I would actually edit this stuff. When my wrists started giving out, so did my standards, which made me unhappy. I simply couldn't afford to type anything that wasn't work-related or my own stories.

I'm sure many others have found this group helpful, and as I mentioned, it wasn't a loss for me. But the cons outweighed the pros, and I'm striking out alone again.

I want to hear about the plot/characterization/etc. instead of proofreading errors.

Then actually proofread your story. Misspellings, incorrect punctuation, and poor grammar distract me from those elements you want me to pay attention to, and it doesn't make sense for me not to mention something that's clearly wrong. The point is for you to get it as good as you can on your own before you bother me with it—if you truly believe you can fix these things on your own, prove it beforehand.

(any long, rambling author's note preceding the story, sometimes including a glossary)

Your story should stand on its own without any explanation. That's how the reader's going to encounter it, after all. If there's something you want me to look out for, tell me after the story. I do read stories more than once, so that I can give you honest first impressions as a reader, then later observations from the perspective of a fellow writer. The latter's when you want me to be aware of particular elements.

...Yes, I am trying out a critique group, but my overall sense is that it's not of much value to me. This isn't a blanket statement about its suitability for any other writer. I'm going to finish some obligations there, and then write some more about the experience later.

I know that common practice is to finish a story and have it critiqued by fellow writers right away, but it seems a waste to me to get people's feedback on a first draft.

I firmly believe that all writers will be able to see where they can improve their work if they shove it in a drawer and forget about it for a few months. (Well, for the first couple of weeks at least, we'll be obsessing about it. But then the next shiny idea should hit us like a cartoon safe from the sky, and we really should get distracted by other things. Possibly the life we neglected during the rush of writing the first draft.) There's no way to look objectively at something you've just crafted; when you have the full force of the process in your short-term memory and each word is weighed on the merit of the blood/sweat/tears sacrifice instead of its value as part of an entire story.

I'm actually not convinced about the usefulness of writing workshops or critique groups, but that's to talk about another day.