Tag Archives: Editors

Revisions: Round Two

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Today I spent a few hours working on revisions to Glass Houses. Having completed line edits, I’m now reading every word from the beginning again, and thinking more about how it all fits together. It’s a complete immersion process–the kind of task that requires focus and concentration.

Once I get rolling, revisiting the manuscript is quite enjoyable. When I finished writing the initial draft nearly a year ago, the idea of fixing all the issues, both major and minor, was frankly overwhelming. The manuscript and the time period covered were too big for me to wrap my head around. So to be enjoying the revision process is a welcome surprise.

My tendency in writing Glass Houses, since it’s a memoir, was to include every single memory. Editing was hard. Everything was part of my story. I was too close to see whether what I remembered was part of THE story or not. The freelance editor really helped clarify what does and does not belong in the book. Despite all the red ink, she was probably nicer than she needed to be. Seeing the changes she suggested has helped me to see still more to make.

The only way I knew to tell the story was from the very beginning. I stuck with chronological order from start to finish. My editor suggested moving most of the very end to the beginning. At first, the idea of telling the story out of order nearly made my head explode. But having now made that change, I’m happy with the result.

The 110,000 word manuscript I sent the editor contained more than 130 very short chapters. I happen to like books with short chapters because it’s easy to find a stopping place. With Glass Houses, short chapters helped me keep things in chronological order. Now that the ending has moved to the beginning, I’m having a much easier time combining chapters and otherwise moving things around so that the stories within the larger story stay together. These changes will also make it much easier for the reader to follow what’s going on, saving them from having to back up to earlier sections to remember what happened or who’s who.

Having made it about a fourth of the way through, the manuscript has already shrunk by 10,000 words and 24 chapters. I’ve reached my goal to cut it down to less than 100,000 words. If this rate continues, I’ll likely get it down to around 80,000 words–possibly less–without hurting the story one bit. In fact, getting rid of all my superfluous memories dramatically improves the story. A couple of characters have been eliminated, too.

Another big change is breaking the story up into shorter “books” that focus on particular periods of my life. Book One covers the early years, to my increasing discomfort with potentially intimate situations with members of the opposite sex. I haven’t made it far enough into Book Two to be able to define it yet, nor do I have any idea how many of these books within the book there will be. My goal and the editor’s suggestion is three to five.

When I reach the end, I plan to go back to the beginning, one more time, to fix the biggest problem with the book. A memoir, by definition, is a narrative composed from personal experience. I relate a lot of events, but haven’t included much in the way of my experiences–reactions to and feelings about the things I wrote about. During the last read through, I’ll be looking for ways to address that shortcoming.

Yes, it’s going to be a lot of work. But this kind of work is so enjoyable, I really don’t mind. The biggest frustration is always the same…finding time to immerse myself in the task, here in…

My Glass House

Change of Plans

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Several months ago I hired a professional editor to take a look at Glass Houses. Due to other commitments, it took her a while to get to my manuscript. Today I (finally) received her review.

The five-page review was actually better than I expected. Her criticisms were nothing I hadn’t heard before, and included several ideas for how we might address them. Her thoughtful review emphasized the positive and helped me to see a way to fix problems I’ve known about since finishing the memoir.

Her review focused on general comments, strengths of the manuscript, and recommended revisions. The general comments revolved around narrowing down the storyline, selecting major characters (rather than the cast of thousands in the current draft), and identifying the major themes. She thinks I need to move part of the end of the story (my final conversation with Toodles) to the front of the book.  It’s interesting that starting with the end and doing a lot of flashbacks was my original plan. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.

The section on strengths of the manuscript was (obviously!) my favorite. She thought the story was chocked full of content that people could relate to. I’ve heard this from many of you who’ve read the manuscript but figured you were just being nice. Hearing it from a professional editor who doesn’t know me from Adam really made me feel good. She also listed her favorite chapters–all of which I re-read this afternoon.

She had high praise for my voice (my unique storytelling style) and wants to showcase it more. I’ve always thought my sense of humor was my salvation. She apparently agrees and would like to see more of it.

Her recommended revisions fall into four broad areas. She wants to vary the length of the chapters–right now all are very short which she sometimes found to be distracting. She says I do too much telling and not enough showing. She’s absolutely right–I didn’t learn the difference until feedback from the writer’s group about Addicted. She also thought my descriptions were too detailed in places and perhaps not detailed enough in other places (both common complaints from those who’ve read the manuscript).  And of course, she wants to pare down the number of characters. Her suggestions make perfect sense to me and dealt with issues I’ve been too close to the story to resolve.

She also thinks I need to change the title. I love the title Glass Houses for a hundred different reasons. It’s a family name and also works in terms of the openness of the story. I might be willing to consider Toodles and Me, or perhaps some kind of secondary or parenthetical title. We shall see.

To my surprise and delight, she expects to have all her edits to me by November 1, perhaps earlier. That’s a lot faster than I expected. That means I need to change my plans.

Yesterday I added a lot of new content to Addicted. This afternoon I added still more. I’m rapidly heading toward the end and should have it finished perhaps by the end of this month and certainly by the end of October–just in time to start working on Glass Houses again.

That means book number three will just have to wait. Writing Addicted has been a lot of fun and I have learned a ton about what it takes to write a novel. But my heart went into Glass Houses. Getting it published is job number one, here in…

My Glass House