The other day I finished my final read of my next novel, putting a polish on it, fixing a couple continuity issues, cutting little bits, adding others. But mostly just reading it through like I would any other book. And frankly, I’m going to have to hand it off to a couple of “beta” readers who can tell me what I’ve got. I’ve worked it over so many times, I don’t know what it looks like through a reader’s eyes.
Here’s how bad it is: When I got to the end of my book, I didn’t have an ending. Yep. The original closing scenes after the dramatic climax no longer worked, and somewhere along the way I forgot to rewrite that final postscript. The odd thing is that I thought I wrote a new closing chapter. It was bouncing around somewhere in my head, but I never put to it into Times New Roman. The book climaxed and snuck out in the middle of the night.
When I decided to chronicle my writing journey with Creative Loafing Tampa, I figured I would have some interesting learning experiences, and some ups and downs. I’d already published one book and that was fairly painless. I didn’t know book #2 would find me such a different writer. A better writer, but a hell of a lot fussier. In book #1, I think I met with my editor three times. Three. It was 12 months from “It was a dark and stormy night…” to “Your book is now available on Amazon.” Book #2 has taken several years (maybe 30 lunches with my editor), and yes, my life has taken enough turns that no one would have blamed me for putting it aside completely. I’ve got enough material on my laptop to be the posthumously publishing Tupac of novelists.
But I love the story, even if I can’t tell what it is.
When I began this little essay I Googled a couple of phrases as they pertained to editing a novel. Phrases like “too close to the material” and “can’t see the forest for the trees.” (Perhaps all I have left in me are cliches.) I learned that I’m not the only writer out there with this issue. In fact, as I finish this process, I’m beginning to understand that if an author doesn’t feel that way, they probably don’t even know what they don’t know. (That’s how I would describe myself after I published my first novel: Naive.) The curse of many writers is not knowing when to self-edit — the ability to know when they are writing some bad shit, or just writing too much. A few examples from my next release:
1. In the first draft of my next novel, women were crying all the time. All of the women. All of the time. My editor (a woman) let me have it. Her commentary in the margins was perhaps the most entertaining thing about that first draft. In my final edit, women don’t cry. Ever. I think I had one character almost shed a tear, just as a joke to my editor. In the margins I wrote: No Woman, No Cry. (Now that song is in your head for the rest of the day. You’re welcome.)
2. At one point I had written over 140,000 words. Yet the final version will come in a just under 80,000 words. That’s not to say that I cut 50,000 worth of scenes — or that I can even add (editor's note: sigh). Much was scrapped in favor of rewrites. But a lot was just author diarrhea. Some of my favorite books are epics. And when a good book is long, it’s like a great long friendship. But when a bad book is long, it’s like a really boring friend cornering you at a great party, with all those other good books sitting across the room.
2b. Cut those scenes you don’t need. I don’t care if you wrote them. I’ve spent more time trying to make something that I’ve written work, rather than just delete them and move on. (I just did it trying to phrase that sentence.) Kill your darlings, darling.
3. Almost all of my cops were Latino. Even in the final version, my law enforcement figures are still largely Latino. I have no idea why… perhaps geography. Thinking back, my book has so many Latino characters, Trump might build a wall around it.
4. Know where the hell you’re going. More than half of the editing on this book (maybe up to 75%) is the result of a decision to deviate from my original outline (a decision I later regretted). If you’re going to make a change to your plan, that’s fine, but you have to change the rest of your plan. And if you’re planning on just sitting down to write and see where it goes, beware you end up with a meandering story, one that is unnecessarily long, or one that you don’t finish.
So soon I’ll let go. I’ll stop obsessing over details, major and minor. I’ll let the book be what it is to the reader. I’ll eagerly await the reviews. I love the reviews. Five of the 10 most recent Amazon reviews for The Grandfather Clock five stars — including one from a person who says they don’t finish one-third of what they start, and hadn’t read an entire novel in one sitting in 20 years. That feels good. And you know, even the three-star review that said, “Pretty good book” was satisfying. I mean, as writers, we’ve got to be honest with ourselves. In the wide array of great and good books that I’ve read, I would not give my own book five stars. But the fact that it delivers exactly what many readers were looking for, is why I pursue this wonderfully frustrating craft.
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 3, 2018.