Hi, George and fellow SC members--and hello, of course, to A.
A., I want to say first that, if your fiction is anything like your letter to George, I would happily read any story you wrote. The serious play of metaphor--editing is like rounding up sheep, like balancing scales, like carving the meat of the story--what wonderful work you are doing right there.
It is also certain that those shepherds, those accountants and merry butchers you conjure up so vividly, were in your position before, and might very well be again--in fact, I'm there now, with a long story I've had on my hard drive forever. And isn't the corollary true? It seems that some day you are likely to be one of those skillful shepherds yourself.
Here are strategies that have helped me--and maybe you've tried them, too:
a) Hear how it sounds. Read it aloud, have a friend read it to you, have an app on your computer read it. Does it work, does it play? Do you hear things--patterns of images, interesting rhythms on the one hand, rough passages to smooth on the other?
b) It seems that the raw material you're working with is _very_ raw: emotionally fraught, deeply meaningful. To give yourself some distance, try writing a scene or even the entire story from the point of view of another character. Or change the narrative voice. Or change the location or sequence of scenes.
These tactics might help you more clearly appraise not just what the original draft needs but what it has _become_ and can help you be (to use George's terms) not a "director" but a "receiver."
George, as SC was reading "Ivan Ilyich," I was also reading A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Your discussion of Turgenev's "The Singers" (if I recall correctly) acknowledged that the story seems--is--digressive and full of detail, but cumulatively what might initially strike us as irrelevant (like the energetic sparrows and dolorous crows) are part of a pattern--oppositions and complements that shape our understanding of the characters' songs, of the (very different) art they make, and, ultimately, of the role that art plays in our lives.
So I love the advice to listen to the story, to find ways to see where it takes you, before you worry too much about herding the sheep, counting the words, weighing the meat.
This answer resonates with me for short stories. I feel like I get that analytical/directorial impulse when I’m trying to work on editing my long-belabored novel. All those story charts and act structures I’ve studied maybe put me in the mode that I’m supposed to ‘know’ before I just go. I’m not sure if that’s a valid difference (we’ve discussed long form vs short form on here and I think the takeaway is it can be a similarly ‘one sentence at a time’ process).
Anyway, thanks for this question and answer. I’m a longtime reader and first time commenter here. I also just sold my first short story to an anthology so I’m feeling so grateful for the process and artistic discussion in this community. A million thank you’d could not cut the mustard ❤️
Excellent advice for writers at many stages of life.
Re: "[E]diting begins with…well, with being able to intuit where that resistance might begin for a reader." It also begins with being able to intuit where that resistance begins in the writer. For over 10 years I fulminated that I couldn't get an audience for my "difficult" work, which editors hated, and it turned out that I, not the editing, was the problem. In fact, I was just really, really terrified of the intimacy of having readers and being understood by others. It is really humbling to have to admit you played yourself and self-sabotaged, but I think many writers who are at this "huh?" stage and calling it their personal wilderness just have to trust they'll get out of their spiritual wilderness in some uncontrollable segment of time.
I appreciate the very important distinction George makes in responding to A, that it is perfectly legitimate to write (or paint, or sing...) however we like for our own creating pleasure, but we cannot necessarily expect others automatically to take the same pleasure in reading/watching/listening that we took in making it.
If we want others to enjoy our work also, we have to think about how our intended audience will respond to the work at hand.
That is what editing is, changing things out of empathy for the reader, trying to feel what the reader might feel at every turn of our work.
I would guess many of us do some writing (or sketching, or painting, or whatever) for our own satisfaction that will never see the light of day - and also do work that we want to offer to others. Our work for others takes the likely experience of those others into full and loving account.
What a loving ode to readers. Thank you for elucidating George's work further. I do so appreciate George even assuming out here, that we can write for our pleasure and call it a day. What a gift, and also a gift it is to present to others.
Just like how we clean up our home and cook our excellent dinners when we have guests, that same care needs to be meted out to our writing when we want it to be consumed by others as well.
Thank you for this loving perspective. It opened my eyes to have kindness, care, and empathy in all things we do, for ourselves and others.
Taking "full and loving account" of others, in this case readers, is an excellent way to put it, FR. Perfect turn of phrase! This full & loving account, though, in my opinion, is in no way akin to dumbing down or any other form of patronizing. I think it has mostly to do with respect, of the reader but equally of the self-respect that the writer (or, really, just about anybody) holds. I don't think much of any value can be accomplished without it.
"Editing these stories seems to me more akin to lucid dreaming than logically analyzing and trimming away the fat. It’s so sensitive, and squirrelly. I have to keep my eyes out of focus, sidle up to the story, keep a level of nonchalant detachment." Beautyful!
So here I am. Built a dedicated writing studio, (shed on wheels,) and now eye a fat folder of stories written over the years. I will become my own first-time reader of them, and, with all the great learnings from this club over these past three years, see what they need to become the best versions themselves. Thank you for this latest Q and A, and all that flows here.
Ha, the shed on wheels! All you need is a horse, a small mare, a white one if Maupassant is to be believed, to pull the shed and you along the byways and the side tracks (where you don't get side-tracked) and the quiet grassy lanes where she stops to crop a mouthful and all this time you are at your desk in utter concentration to which the shaking and the rumbling of the cart are conducive...
This question and GS’s gentle advice reminds me of what Hemingway said to the George Plimpton in The Paris Review: “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing.”
Enormously invaluable advice.
I have written a lot. I have learned to edit and why it’s important. The 1sr draft of my memoir was 150K words & was a messy expurgation that no reader could slog through, but I had to write it that way because I didn’t know how to “let it all go.” Mainly because it was a ton of Titanic emotional baggage I’d been hauling for decades. The final culling for my MFA came in at 68K words. Presently, it stands at 70,855.00.
The reader. The reader. The reader is the carrot I dangle in front of my nose when editing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had Beta readers tell me that what I thought I’d made clear was “still in my head” which is why having Beta readers is so important but…and here comes that irritating BUT not before its time. Showing WIPs to readers no matter how good can sabotage that wilderness or wildness that makes your story unique. But there comes a time when you’ve edited, put it away, reedited when you nerve yourself up to have good impartial “eyes” on your work. Then it’s still your story that only you know how to write/edit.
There’s a brilliant interview with the fantasy writer Kelly Link in Bomb Magazine where she discussed different storytelling techniques (daytime logic [story makes logical sense], nighttime logic [story has inconsistences that don’t all add up], and dream logic [where the story doesn’t make sense] that’s fascinating & something I’d never read before. Check it out. She has an entirely different approach to story than GS-she knows what she’s going to write prior, something I try to avoid.
Thanks for the Hemingway quote, Lucinda. Like a lot of people, I'm guessing, I'm familiar with the ideas in the first part from various schooldays literature/composition classes. However, I don't recall any of my teachers mentioning that last (and, to me, most striking and most important) part, i.e.: "...it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself."
I'm sure Hemingway wasn't discriminating between short story writers and novelists when he made this statement, but personally (and I am responding as a reader here; I'm but a novice writer), I think this might be why I love short stories so much. Almost every short story I've ever read has made me feel the story is something that has actually happened or is happening to me (and I include all kinds of sci-fi, surrealist, weird, etc. genres here), whereas very few novels have had that same effect.
Now, that could be just a matter of personal taste, of course, or it could be that I haven't read enough of the right kind of novels, or that I don't have the right amount of patience or haven't ever developed the right set of reading skills for long forms, or any number of things. In any case, if I were to ever take the plunge and try to move the level of my fiction/creative writing up a notch or two, I'd certainly want to keep this advice of Hemingway's (along with George's and other "reader-first" writers) in front of mind so that my readers would remember my story (hopefully) not as a story, but as something that happened to them.
I’d never read that part either. Reminds me of what my acting teacher said decades ago. That he audience should feel as if they were seeing something private and deeply personal. I’ve read few novels that deeply moved me. Portrait of a Lady is one because of the heroine overcoming her disastrous choice in husbands( Gilbert Osmond a scoundrel for all to love and hate) & doing the right thing by his daughter. I prefer CNF. Jenni Diski’s Ingratitude is incredible. It chronicles both her cancer that killed her & her coming to terms with her horrible mistreatment by her adopted mother Doris Lessing & getting the last word in. Lessing died afterwards ( what a monster ) & Janet Malcolm’s In the Freud Archives which is a hysterical book about a lot of brilliant people behaving badly including Jeffrey Mouseiff Mason who sued Malcolm for revealing that he claimed to have had sex with 1200 women👀👀🕶️🕶️🕶️ you can see I love stories of bad boys and strong women who overcame their bad odds. I prefer short stories too as novels require too much commitment. 🌷🌷
For me, the light dawned when I realized that "line by line revision" was not the same as glorified copyediting. That is, in addition to improving a sentence's flow and sound, or moving paragraphs around, I had the option to completely change the content. If a character says "Yes" at a critical point, what happens if they say "No?" Or "Why?" Or "Penguins shouldn't cost that much." Is the story that flows from that change better? This feels like a simple concept as I write this, and may be less relevant the closer the material is to someone's lived experience, but it took me a long time to figure out in the context of "line by line revision."
Dear A, I'm awed by your writing, by the beauty of the description of your process. I have little to add to Mr. Saunders’s answer, but to say, trust your intuition and continue to cultivate your imagination. That said, I’ll describe a recent situation I found myself in. I had a generalized but specific idea of thematic content about which I wanted to write. I did lots of research to guide my world building and kept notes. A dream image was important to the development of one character. My imagination led me into the story, and some of the notes I’d taken informed a general outline for one scene. Another character insisted on being present. The other day I wrote and wrote, without sentences. The draft is an utter mess, but from that ‘composted soil’ the story will emerge. Other details will grow, if you will, from the soil as I organize the words into sentences, weed out inessentials, etc.. Only practice will guide you as you come to understand how you create. You will hone your style and narrative voice and your style and voice will be unique to you.
A, you said, "corralling plots and characters," and I thought, that sounds like something I wrote a while back in my journal, I looked and found it: "the ideas are racing ahead so fast I have so little time to corral them and get them into legible, sensible sentences."
Reading this description of A.'s writing process...
"I’m piecing together daydream and memory, following the traces of a feeling, stitching together incoherent fragments. Characters and plots form from the scraps of life left behind, the gestures, idiosyncrasies of a lost loved one, half-remembered childhood imaginings, or even pinning down the irritating anomalous details of some everyday interaction- like the making of a spell, eye of newt, lock of hair, baking soda and flour etc."
...does anyone else think this sounds more like poetry than storytelling? I think George has encouraged/interrogated this process really well, and made some vital points about editing. But I wonder if A.'s process feels as it does, and presents the problems it does, because of an expectation that prose is going to do something that poetry is better at doing.
Not that a story can't begin as a collage of all these things (I'd be interested to see one that did), but that, at some point, the collage has to cohere into something. Maybe it's not a story.
Having just read "Martyr!," a first novel by a poet in which Borges is quoted, and which makes extensive use of the tools of poetry rather as much as those of narrative fiction, I begin to understand this.
Someone on SC mentioned Robert Olen Butler recently.
He suggests his process is not re-writing but re-dreaming. He goes back through the work, marks out the discordant passages or phrases, and then re-dreams these.
As George says in his kindly way, "Here, it seems to me that our dear questioner has an idea of what editing should be (directing, rational) and is about to enter a new space, where her editing will feel very different – freer, more intuitive and playful." That would be, as ROB says, closer to a redreaming. But, as Lucinda quotes Hemingway below, writing includes a lot of mechanical work, too. I find that the more I can admit my emotional or dreaming state during the process of revision, the more meaning the passages have and the more sense of fulfillment, and even joy. But it's not so easy, admitting that emotional state. It's very shy. It's worried about being scolded, or dangerous. Still it is longing to be part of the process, to reveal itself. And the rational editor part knows its limits, knows it's not enough, by itself. The two of them are learning how to get along. It's taken some time!
Also I love George's idea that the story-in-draft is speaking to me, telling me something, sharing something, taking the story-teller along for a ride.
I am so glad to have been able to read A's question and George's response, and then all the ways that those coincided, or collided, with so many bravely self-revelatory writers.
Personally, I think that the schism between the piece of your own life that sparks the act of writing and the story it produces, is absolutely at the core of why making stories is terrifying and glorious.
Respecting the shape of your work in the eyes, maybe better in the ears, of a reader when you edit is, I think, how it stops being therapy, or just self-obsessed rambling, or random remembering, and becomes valid work. There has to be truth and honesty (neither getting much of a look in in the world at large right now it seems) to make something worth sharing, and to make something from which to learn a bit about yourself.
Thanks for giving me the chance to express my own, preached but poorly practiced, relationship to editing a story.
I have nothing much of value to add. But wanted to say that this exchange was food for the soul as we sit here in Brisbane, Australia, in the direct path of a cyclone (hurricane?), due to make landfall tomorrow.
We should be fine but is eerie waiting times like these that one tends to reflect on all the big questions of life and what gives us joy. And I have come here to say: THIS gives me joy! This beautiful space you have created, George, where warm and human and deeply insightful conversations about writing take place. Thank you!
And A, as others have said here: your writing here was compelling so please be assured that your approach works! "It seems you can round disparate parts up like sheep"; I will, from now on, imagine George as an affable shepherd, gentle coaxing his words as they gambol across fields made of pixels.
Being a novice fiction writer, and a hesitant one at that, I have very little personal experience to offer the questioner. However, I'd like to recommend the following two Louisiana Channel short video interviews I've seen recently with authors who, I was pleasantly surprised to find, reminded me quite a bit of GS in some of the ways they describe their process: Mircea Cartarescu and Mohsin Hamid. It's always such a pleasure to me to hear voices like these three talking about writing--such a welcome departure from the more standard/traditional approaches I was taught (like several if not many SCers, I suppose) back in the day.
Annemarie, I'd never heard of the Louisiana Channel; it looks awesome. I peeked at the interview with Mohsin Hamid, and got hooked by his opening metaphor (writing is like digging a well; initially it's a void, but with time, and practice, it fills with water).
The Tessa Hadley interview was very engaging. (She reminisces about her early struggles: her mother read the drafts and told Hadley, "You're too nice." Hadley said she needed to "knock [her] characters about a bit.")
Writing something right now and it’s trying to be something other than what I had envisioned for it for so long… it has felt like a betrayal of sorts and I’ve been trying to control it and get it to submit to the original vision. Going to try and cede control. I love the hopefulness in George’s framing re the story outgrowing the writer… maybe that’s not a bad thing, maybe that’s a wonderful thing.
"Does the potency of the initial spark of the story really matter- or does it vary?" you write. Since you, as I do, explore the meaning of those sparks, I'd like to say it really matters. Merely to capture those sparks is the work of memoir. To delve into what they mean -- not just to me, but as an insight into shared truths -- it the work of fiction. It is unfortunate that the beautiful three-dimensional thing you have discovered after so much hard work must then be squeezed into the two dimensions of the page. Ah! How much is lost! Yet what remains can yet be shaped into a story that transmits the gist of your emotion to your readers (as does your lovely query to George).
The question and George's response carry me back to my own monsters and how I've grappled. Coming to writing out of a performance background (which included lots of "process content" - and which was beloved by those who liked that sort of thing), and now coming to writing as a somatic therapist (which, well, you get the picture..."issues are the tissues"), I have been inclined to value this Wildness of which you speak. I grappled with *ever* making something into its "cooked" version. My value erred toward subjectivity. But that was a monster I have continued to face into (for years now). Currently, (I'm daring myself to claim this), I've finally entered the camp that acknowledges an artifact as an Object. That term: object, really helps me see (at last) what I aspire to write. Pieces, with discrete shape and edges, that stand on their own feet. Offering this here since your question, A., reminded me of some of my internal tugs-of-war. (Don't know if I'm projecting any similarity.) And thanks to George's patient description of editing mind (listening, receiving, intuiting, quick trial implementation), to make that action feel something like a dance.
Hi, George and fellow SC members--and hello, of course, to A.
A., I want to say first that, if your fiction is anything like your letter to George, I would happily read any story you wrote. The serious play of metaphor--editing is like rounding up sheep, like balancing scales, like carving the meat of the story--what wonderful work you are doing right there.
It is also certain that those shepherds, those accountants and merry butchers you conjure up so vividly, were in your position before, and might very well be again--in fact, I'm there now, with a long story I've had on my hard drive forever. And isn't the corollary true? It seems that some day you are likely to be one of those skillful shepherds yourself.
Here are strategies that have helped me--and maybe you've tried them, too:
a) Hear how it sounds. Read it aloud, have a friend read it to you, have an app on your computer read it. Does it work, does it play? Do you hear things--patterns of images, interesting rhythms on the one hand, rough passages to smooth on the other?
b) It seems that the raw material you're working with is _very_ raw: emotionally fraught, deeply meaningful. To give yourself some distance, try writing a scene or even the entire story from the point of view of another character. Or change the narrative voice. Or change the location or sequence of scenes.
These tactics might help you more clearly appraise not just what the original draft needs but what it has _become_ and can help you be (to use George's terms) not a "director" but a "receiver."
George, as SC was reading "Ivan Ilyich," I was also reading A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Your discussion of Turgenev's "The Singers" (if I recall correctly) acknowledged that the story seems--is--digressive and full of detail, but cumulatively what might initially strike us as irrelevant (like the energetic sparrows and dolorous crows) are part of a pattern--oppositions and complements that shape our understanding of the characters' songs, of the (very different) art they make, and, ultimately, of the role that art plays in our lives.
So I love the advice to listen to the story, to find ways to see where it takes you, before you worry too much about herding the sheep, counting the words, weighing the meat.
This answer resonates with me for short stories. I feel like I get that analytical/directorial impulse when I’m trying to work on editing my long-belabored novel. All those story charts and act structures I’ve studied maybe put me in the mode that I’m supposed to ‘know’ before I just go. I’m not sure if that’s a valid difference (we’ve discussed long form vs short form on here and I think the takeaway is it can be a similarly ‘one sentence at a time’ process).
Anyway, thanks for this question and answer. I’m a longtime reader and first time commenter here. I also just sold my first short story to an anthology so I’m feeling so grateful for the process and artistic discussion in this community. A million thank you’d could not cut the mustard ❤️
Congratulations!
Congratulations Zebediah!
Excellent advice for writers at many stages of life.
Re: "[E]diting begins with…well, with being able to intuit where that resistance might begin for a reader." It also begins with being able to intuit where that resistance begins in the writer. For over 10 years I fulminated that I couldn't get an audience for my "difficult" work, which editors hated, and it turned out that I, not the editing, was the problem. In fact, I was just really, really terrified of the intimacy of having readers and being understood by others. It is really humbling to have to admit you played yourself and self-sabotaged, but I think many writers who are at this "huh?" stage and calling it their personal wilderness just have to trust they'll get out of their spiritual wilderness in some uncontrollable segment of time.
I appreciate the very important distinction George makes in responding to A, that it is perfectly legitimate to write (or paint, or sing...) however we like for our own creating pleasure, but we cannot necessarily expect others automatically to take the same pleasure in reading/watching/listening that we took in making it.
If we want others to enjoy our work also, we have to think about how our intended audience will respond to the work at hand.
That is what editing is, changing things out of empathy for the reader, trying to feel what the reader might feel at every turn of our work.
I would guess many of us do some writing (or sketching, or painting, or whatever) for our own satisfaction that will never see the light of day - and also do work that we want to offer to others. Our work for others takes the likely experience of those others into full and loving account.
What a loving ode to readers. Thank you for elucidating George's work further. I do so appreciate George even assuming out here, that we can write for our pleasure and call it a day. What a gift, and also a gift it is to present to others.
Just like how we clean up our home and cook our excellent dinners when we have guests, that same care needs to be meted out to our writing when we want it to be consumed by others as well.
Thank you for this loving perspective. It opened my eyes to have kindness, care, and empathy in all things we do, for ourselves and others.
Taking "full and loving account" of others, in this case readers, is an excellent way to put it, FR. Perfect turn of phrase! This full & loving account, though, in my opinion, is in no way akin to dumbing down or any other form of patronizing. I think it has mostly to do with respect, of the reader but equally of the self-respect that the writer (or, really, just about anybody) holds. I don't think much of any value can be accomplished without it.
The sort of editing George describes, and empathy itself, indeed have nothing to do with dumbing down or patronizing!
George describes it in terms of watching where the reader's energy may flag, caring about the reader's experience enough to change the draft.
"Editing these stories seems to me more akin to lucid dreaming than logically analyzing and trimming away the fat. It’s so sensitive, and squirrelly. I have to keep my eyes out of focus, sidle up to the story, keep a level of nonchalant detachment." Beautyful!
So here I am. Built a dedicated writing studio, (shed on wheels,) and now eye a fat folder of stories written over the years. I will become my own first-time reader of them, and, with all the great learnings from this club over these past three years, see what they need to become the best versions themselves. Thank you for this latest Q and A, and all that flows here.
Ha, the shed on wheels! All you need is a horse, a small mare, a white one if Maupassant is to be believed, to pull the shed and you along the byways and the side tracks (where you don't get side-tracked) and the quiet grassy lanes where she stops to crop a mouthful and all this time you are at your desk in utter concentration to which the shaking and the rumbling of the cart are conducive...
Reach into that fat folder, Iam!
On Editing
This question and GS’s gentle advice reminds me of what Hemingway said to the George Plimpton in The Paris Review: “Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing.”
Enormously invaluable advice.
I have written a lot. I have learned to edit and why it’s important. The 1sr draft of my memoir was 150K words & was a messy expurgation that no reader could slog through, but I had to write it that way because I didn’t know how to “let it all go.” Mainly because it was a ton of Titanic emotional baggage I’d been hauling for decades. The final culling for my MFA came in at 68K words. Presently, it stands at 70,855.00.
The reader. The reader. The reader is the carrot I dangle in front of my nose when editing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had Beta readers tell me that what I thought I’d made clear was “still in my head” which is why having Beta readers is so important but…and here comes that irritating BUT not before its time. Showing WIPs to readers no matter how good can sabotage that wilderness or wildness that makes your story unique. But there comes a time when you’ve edited, put it away, reedited when you nerve yourself up to have good impartial “eyes” on your work. Then it’s still your story that only you know how to write/edit.
There’s a brilliant interview with the fantasy writer Kelly Link in Bomb Magazine where she discussed different storytelling techniques (daytime logic [story makes logical sense], nighttime logic [story has inconsistences that don’t all add up], and dream logic [where the story doesn’t make sense] that’s fascinating & something I’d never read before. Check it out. She has an entirely different approach to story than GS-she knows what she’s going to write prior, something I try to avoid.
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2023/12/15/kelly-link-kevin-brockmeier/
Anyway, good question.
In solidarity 💙💛
Thanks for the Hemingway quote, Lucinda. Like a lot of people, I'm guessing, I'm familiar with the ideas in the first part from various schooldays literature/composition classes. However, I don't recall any of my teachers mentioning that last (and, to me, most striking and most important) part, i.e.: "...it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself."
I'm sure Hemingway wasn't discriminating between short story writers and novelists when he made this statement, but personally (and I am responding as a reader here; I'm but a novice writer), I think this might be why I love short stories so much. Almost every short story I've ever read has made me feel the story is something that has actually happened or is happening to me (and I include all kinds of sci-fi, surrealist, weird, etc. genres here), whereas very few novels have had that same effect.
Now, that could be just a matter of personal taste, of course, or it could be that I haven't read enough of the right kind of novels, or that I don't have the right amount of patience or haven't ever developed the right set of reading skills for long forms, or any number of things. In any case, if I were to ever take the plunge and try to move the level of my fiction/creative writing up a notch or two, I'd certainly want to keep this advice of Hemingway's (along with George's and other "reader-first" writers) in front of mind so that my readers would remember my story (hopefully) not as a story, but as something that happened to them.
I’d never read that part either. Reminds me of what my acting teacher said decades ago. That he audience should feel as if they were seeing something private and deeply personal. I’ve read few novels that deeply moved me. Portrait of a Lady is one because of the heroine overcoming her disastrous choice in husbands( Gilbert Osmond a scoundrel for all to love and hate) & doing the right thing by his daughter. I prefer CNF. Jenni Diski’s Ingratitude is incredible. It chronicles both her cancer that killed her & her coming to terms with her horrible mistreatment by her adopted mother Doris Lessing & getting the last word in. Lessing died afterwards ( what a monster ) & Janet Malcolm’s In the Freud Archives which is a hysterical book about a lot of brilliant people behaving badly including Jeffrey Mouseiff Mason who sued Malcolm for revealing that he claimed to have had sex with 1200 women👀👀🕶️🕶️🕶️ you can see I love stories of bad boys and strong women who overcame their bad odds. I prefer short stories too as novels require too much commitment. 🌷🌷
For me, the light dawned when I realized that "line by line revision" was not the same as glorified copyediting. That is, in addition to improving a sentence's flow and sound, or moving paragraphs around, I had the option to completely change the content. If a character says "Yes" at a critical point, what happens if they say "No?" Or "Why?" Or "Penguins shouldn't cost that much." Is the story that flows from that change better? This feels like a simple concept as I write this, and may be less relevant the closer the material is to someone's lived experience, but it took me a long time to figure out in the context of "line by line revision."
I had that very same light bulb go on over my head. The line by line revision is not and can not be simply copyediting!
Dear A, I'm awed by your writing, by the beauty of the description of your process. I have little to add to Mr. Saunders’s answer, but to say, trust your intuition and continue to cultivate your imagination. That said, I’ll describe a recent situation I found myself in. I had a generalized but specific idea of thematic content about which I wanted to write. I did lots of research to guide my world building and kept notes. A dream image was important to the development of one character. My imagination led me into the story, and some of the notes I’d taken informed a general outline for one scene. Another character insisted on being present. The other day I wrote and wrote, without sentences. The draft is an utter mess, but from that ‘composted soil’ the story will emerge. Other details will grow, if you will, from the soil as I organize the words into sentences, weed out inessentials, etc.. Only practice will guide you as you come to understand how you create. You will hone your style and narrative voice and your style and voice will be unique to you.
A, you said, "corralling plots and characters," and I thought, that sounds like something I wrote a while back in my journal, I looked and found it: "the ideas are racing ahead so fast I have so little time to corral them and get them into legible, sensible sentences."
Reading this description of A.'s writing process...
"I’m piecing together daydream and memory, following the traces of a feeling, stitching together incoherent fragments. Characters and plots form from the scraps of life left behind, the gestures, idiosyncrasies of a lost loved one, half-remembered childhood imaginings, or even pinning down the irritating anomalous details of some everyday interaction- like the making of a spell, eye of newt, lock of hair, baking soda and flour etc."
...does anyone else think this sounds more like poetry than storytelling? I think George has encouraged/interrogated this process really well, and made some vital points about editing. But I wonder if A.'s process feels as it does, and presents the problems it does, because of an expectation that prose is going to do something that poetry is better at doing.
Not that a story can't begin as a collage of all these things (I'd be interested to see one that did), but that, at some point, the collage has to cohere into something. Maybe it's not a story.
interesting point, this reminds me of Borges starting out his lectures at Harvard, 'all prose is poetry.'
Having just read "Martyr!," a first novel by a poet in which Borges is quoted, and which makes extensive use of the tools of poetry rather as much as those of narrative fiction, I begin to understand this.
It certainly is a pleasure to know this, may you share who is the author of Martyr. Thank you.
Martyr is a fetching read for sure. The structure also has its own poetic dance. I hope you enjoyed the ride.
Someone on SC mentioned Robert Olen Butler recently.
He suggests his process is not re-writing but re-dreaming. He goes back through the work, marks out the discordant passages or phrases, and then re-dreams these.
As George says in his kindly way, "Here, it seems to me that our dear questioner has an idea of what editing should be (directing, rational) and is about to enter a new space, where her editing will feel very different – freer, more intuitive and playful." That would be, as ROB says, closer to a redreaming. But, as Lucinda quotes Hemingway below, writing includes a lot of mechanical work, too. I find that the more I can admit my emotional or dreaming state during the process of revision, the more meaning the passages have and the more sense of fulfillment, and even joy. But it's not so easy, admitting that emotional state. It's very shy. It's worried about being scolded, or dangerous. Still it is longing to be part of the process, to reveal itself. And the rational editor part knows its limits, knows it's not enough, by itself. The two of them are learning how to get along. It's taken some time!
Also I love George's idea that the story-in-draft is speaking to me, telling me something, sharing something, taking the story-teller along for a ride.
I am so glad to have been able to read A's question and George's response, and then all the ways that those coincided, or collided, with so many bravely self-revelatory writers.
Personally, I think that the schism between the piece of your own life that sparks the act of writing and the story it produces, is absolutely at the core of why making stories is terrifying and glorious.
Respecting the shape of your work in the eyes, maybe better in the ears, of a reader when you edit is, I think, how it stops being therapy, or just self-obsessed rambling, or random remembering, and becomes valid work. There has to be truth and honesty (neither getting much of a look in in the world at large right now it seems) to make something worth sharing, and to make something from which to learn a bit about yourself.
Thanks for giving me the chance to express my own, preached but poorly practiced, relationship to editing a story.
Dear George and A (and all of SC!),
I have nothing much of value to add. But wanted to say that this exchange was food for the soul as we sit here in Brisbane, Australia, in the direct path of a cyclone (hurricane?), due to make landfall tomorrow.
We should be fine but is eerie waiting times like these that one tends to reflect on all the big questions of life and what gives us joy. And I have come here to say: THIS gives me joy! This beautiful space you have created, George, where warm and human and deeply insightful conversations about writing take place. Thank you!
And A, as others have said here: your writing here was compelling so please be assured that your approach works! "It seems you can round disparate parts up like sheep"; I will, from now on, imagine George as an affable shepherd, gentle coaxing his words as they gambol across fields made of pixels.
Hunker down happily! Love from across the ditch.
Being a novice fiction writer, and a hesitant one at that, I have very little personal experience to offer the questioner. However, I'd like to recommend the following two Louisiana Channel short video interviews I've seen recently with authors who, I was pleasantly surprised to find, reminded me quite a bit of GS in some of the ways they describe their process: Mircea Cartarescu and Mohsin Hamid. It's always such a pleasure to me to hear voices like these three talking about writing--such a welcome departure from the more standard/traditional approaches I was taught (like several if not many SCers, I suppose) back in the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqJHfKBgZkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q28LpRVY1gA
Annemarie, I'd never heard of the Louisiana Channel; it looks awesome. I peeked at the interview with Mohsin Hamid, and got hooked by his opening metaphor (writing is like digging a well; initially it's a void, but with time, and practice, it fills with water).
The Tessa Hadley interview was very engaging. (She reminisces about her early struggles: her mother read the drafts and told Hadley, "You're too nice." Hadley said she needed to "knock [her] characters about a bit.")
Writing something right now and it’s trying to be something other than what I had envisioned for it for so long… it has felt like a betrayal of sorts and I’ve been trying to control it and get it to submit to the original vision. Going to try and cede control. I love the hopefulness in George’s framing re the story outgrowing the writer… maybe that’s not a bad thing, maybe that’s a wonderful thing.
Dear A.,
"Does the potency of the initial spark of the story really matter- or does it vary?" you write. Since you, as I do, explore the meaning of those sparks, I'd like to say it really matters. Merely to capture those sparks is the work of memoir. To delve into what they mean -- not just to me, but as an insight into shared truths -- it the work of fiction. It is unfortunate that the beautiful three-dimensional thing you have discovered after so much hard work must then be squeezed into the two dimensions of the page. Ah! How much is lost! Yet what remains can yet be shaped into a story that transmits the gist of your emotion to your readers (as does your lovely query to George).
The question and George's response carry me back to my own monsters and how I've grappled. Coming to writing out of a performance background (which included lots of "process content" - and which was beloved by those who liked that sort of thing), and now coming to writing as a somatic therapist (which, well, you get the picture..."issues are the tissues"), I have been inclined to value this Wildness of which you speak. I grappled with *ever* making something into its "cooked" version. My value erred toward subjectivity. But that was a monster I have continued to face into (for years now). Currently, (I'm daring myself to claim this), I've finally entered the camp that acknowledges an artifact as an Object. That term: object, really helps me see (at last) what I aspire to write. Pieces, with discrete shape and edges, that stand on their own feet. Offering this here since your question, A., reminded me of some of my internal tugs-of-war. (Don't know if I'm projecting any similarity.) And thanks to George's patient description of editing mind (listening, receiving, intuiting, quick trial implementation), to make that action feel something like a dance.