Surviving the Edit

I was at a talk the other night given by a writer who’s currently flying high in the bestseller charts, and he had a frightening story to tell.

Several years ago he was in London discussing the novel he’d just finished over lunch with his editor, getting feedback and agreeing what work still needed to be done. The writer had the feeling his editor wasn’t entirely enthused with this particular novel but felt nothing had been raised that couldn’t be put right.

As an aside, however, his editor asked what he was working on at the moment, a conversation that resulted in the writer handing over a computer disk containing the first hundred pages of an as yet unfinished novel…

Two days later, the writer gets a phone call from his editor: scrap the novel we were discussing. I want to publish this one instead. And it needs to be done in five weeks. So that’s what the writer did.

Another writer, Chandler McGrew, explained how his elation at getting a six figure contract for his debut novel soured somewhat when his new editor said, in a throwaway manner, Could you add a second killer?

Welcome to the world of the edit: if you think the hard work’s done when you finally get offered your contract, it’s time to start thinking again.

Between your novel selling and being signed off to go to print, there are three stages it has to go through — an edit where you liase with your editor to get the writing, plot, characterisation and themes as highly polished as possible, an edit where a copy-editor goes through your manuscript for continuity, grammar, plus any of the above they feel still needs to be addressed, and, finally, page-proof sign-off — your last chance to spot any mistakes.

For me, with Broken selling in the UK, the US and Canada, I had three editors giving me feedback during the first of these stages, so ended up with a page of notes from Canada, a marked up manuscript plus four or five pages of notes from the UK, and another marked up manuscript (plus another four or fives pages of notes) from the US.

Once all this feedback was in, I redrafted until I felt I’d addressed everything I wanted to address, then e-mailed the revised manuscript back to my editors. We then had two or three months where we continued to question everything in the novel in an attempt to get it as good as it could possibly be.

The points raised at this stage typically included typos, queries on what was motivating characters to do certain things, questions on localisms in the novel (Housing Association properties alongside private residencies, for instance, are quite common where the novel is set, but not so elsewhere), and requests for confirmation that I’d researched police procedures and other events in the text.

Once this stage was complete, things went quiet for a few weeks while the copy-editor got to work. Then there were more notes and another marked up manuscript to go through before, finally, we reached the page proof stage, and a last chance to spot any mistakes.

All in all, from the editors first seeing the manuscript to giving final sign off took about six months. I’m not sure how typical this is, but I’ve read somewhere that eight months is the standard period of time set aside.
If you’re ever lucky enough to go through this process, I’d say have an open mind to any suggestions your editors make. I’ve heard some writers talk about editors as if they’re the enemy, and I’ve heard plenty of unpublished writers swear they’ll never make changes to their manuscripts, but I think a writer is always going to be too close to a manuscript to have a completely objective view.

I also think, once you’ve written your novel, the more feedback you can get, the better — it’s amazing how one small query can lead you off in a completely different direction, and by the time the edit was finished, Broken had grown in length by eight thousand words, the fates of two major characters had changed, and the strength of the novel — the ending in particular — had gone up several notches. Although it was stressful to have my writing put under such scrutiny by three people who were total strangers to me at the start of the process, it was also extremely rewarding, and an experience I’ll never forget.

Funnily enough, the most stressful part wasn’t the redrafting, it was the page proofs. No matter how often I looked through the manuscript, I never felt I’d checked it enough. Even now, with the novel being physically printed at a factory somewhere in Devon, I’m convinced it’s riddled with mistakes. I’ve even got a photocopy of the page-proofs on my desk. Several times a day, I go to a random page and look for the typos I’ve missed. A few times, over the past few weeks, I’ve even woke up from dreams where I’ve found them, and have had to get up and come in here to check it’s not true.

Sad? Natural? I’ve no idea, but if any other writers out there have been through this, it would be nice to know I’m not insane or completely alone…