Math was a two-part exam and I once didn't go for the second part. I knew I'd done so badly on the first it was hopeless. I re-took it about four or five times. I think I eventually got it by getting the top GCSE grade.
The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.
I know that many authors say editors don't edit anymore, but that's not been true in my experience.
Which editor? I can't think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.
A very good editor is almost a collaborator.
It's more like I write multiple first drafts, handwritten. So with my first novel, I wrote whole drafts from different points of view. There are different versions of that novel in a drawer on loose-leaf sheets. I won't even look at the first draft while I'm writing the second, and I won't look at the second before writing the third.
It's just as well that I write in the same facile way wherever I am - no blocks or anguish, no contemplation, no elaborate revision, no need for love-tokens or nice views.
I've learned to really love revision over the years and worked hard to build up my craft muscle to make my revisions less and less painful with each book.
Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
Writing the first draft of a new story is incredibly difficult for me. I will happily do revisions, because once I can see the words on the page, I can go about ripping them up and moving scenes around. A blank page, though? Terrifying. I'm always angsty when I'm working my way through a first draft.
Sometimes you just need words on a page to memorize.
Your spouse, a sibling, a friend need to read your drafts. They have to be people unafraid to tell you what sucks. For early feedback, that's more important than professional editorial skill. Most people know what sucks.
If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.
Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place.
I write all over the house. Because I write in longhand, I can go anywhere I want... I have some notebooks here and there, and then I type it in and pull it out, and I do the revisions all over the place.
The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.
One of the things I like to do during an 'overhaul' revision is bust out my highlighters and colored pens. Tools like these make me feel like a real writer.
When I write a novel, every word is mine. I welcome suggestions from my editor, but in the end, I make all the final decisions.
Does anybody learn writing, or do they just touch someone who lets them see the power of the deleted word?
The lessons of slushing and editing build up over time, and you're not necessarily thinking about them while you're working, but they're in the back of your mind, probably influencing your choices.
'The New Yorker' was really my first experience with serious editing. Previously, I'd more or less just had copyediting with a few suggestions - not much.
I've often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn't really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn't seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.
I'm not a writer, but I'm very good at editing. That's my specialty. I can read something and tell you everything that's wrong with it and what's great about it and what needs to change, but it's hard for me to organize my thoughts.
Once when I went over my work with my Washington University professor, the late great Stanley Elkin, he pointed to a passage of mine and said: 'Stop vamping.' It has remained a caution.
Finding pleasure in revision is the thing I would most strongly advise to people. It's not something I did as a younger writer; I learned it over time.
