Smite's Been Smitten. They Smote It. I'm Smat.

Well, we’re almost done with copyediting Smite the Waters, and the process was a breeze. The copyeditor caught some things that definitely needed fixing (most notably someone taking a seat when he was already sitting!), but it’s all been fairly straightforward for me.

It is probably less so for the poor copyeditor. In Michael Stephen Fuch’s The Manuscript (one of the MNW launch titles), the decision was taken to leave the book in American orthography and formatting. In the case of Smite, the spelling and formatting will be changed to British practice (or do I mean practise?) except for certain idiomatic usages. This has to be a fiddly, maddening job, since it isn’t as simple as converting everything in sight from American to British. I’m grateful that it isn’t my job, and someday I’ll buy that copyeditor a drink. Or a whole bottle.

But one minor hitch has emerged. We’re rethinking the title. I like Smite. (Sounds like a slogan—maybe we could hand out I Like Smite buttons?) Will likes Smite. But some of the folks who actually have to sell the darn thing believe that the title doesn’t give much of a clue what the book is about. I have to admit they have a point (and freely grant that they know vastly more about the topic of selling books than I do).

If the title goes, I'll miss it. The phrase has a grand, if puzzling, King Jamesey feel to it, and the words have that simple Anglo-Saxon force that makes me feel one of Hrothgar's minions has swung his meaty arm over my shoulder in a companionable way. And the title might in fact suggest the nature of the story to some--but those who immediately exclaim, "Ah, Exodus 7:20!" are probably not our core audience. DH Lawrence already worked the same ground for the title (and a rather coy title indeed, but those were different times) of his novel Aaron's Rod, but if I add up all the Biblical Fundamentalists and Lawrence scholars who will immediately catch my point, I don't find a big crowd...and I don't find that many thriller readers amongst them. So, I can readily accept the need for a change. But to what?

For a time, my pal David Thayer used An Aztec in Central Park as the working title for every novel he wrote, until the day that title inspired him to include an Aztec character in one of his New York crime novels, and the working title became a permanent title. I’m not sure what Mr. Thayer uses now that Aztec is taken.

I, unfortunately, use the ever-popular Untitled as my working title, so I don’t have any fallback to Smite. Will and I came up with a couple of workable possibilities, but it turns out that both of them have been used. Indeed, our front-runner alternative has been used by a novel coming out about two weeks before mine.

Serendipitously, Roger Morris just handed out a link in his latest post to a pair of essays by Barry Eisler (over on MJ Rose's busy site). Eisler has a wonderful discussion of titles, the first essay focusing on titles with automatic resonance (those that stir an intuitive understanding of what the book is about), and the second on titles with acquired resonance (those that are iconic, and just right, but only become meaningful once you have read the book. Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22 would be good examples of acquired resonance--when you first encounter them, you ask what they could possibly mean. I'm afraid Smite the Waters is in that class as well.)

Eisler makes a good case that booksellers lean toward automatic resonance, because it's a sort of sales handle embedded in the book. Acquired resonance is less appealing, especially given that many people in the decision loop will not have read the book themselves. He notes that Dennis Lehane wrote several books titled with automatic resonance before he published Mystic River--and by that point, Lehane's name was enough to sell books.

So, Will and I are off in search of automatic resonance. At least now I know what I'm searching for.

I think the best title anyone ever came up with is attached to Jincy Willett’s hilarious novel Winner of the National Book Award. But she already used that trick. Sigh.

Do Editors Edit? Part II

Jump to Part I

I actually had a good time. I’d look at his suggestions, one by one, saying to myself, “Yes, yes, yes, fuck you, fuck you.”

— Booker Prize-winning novelist Peter Carey on being closely edited for the first time.*

Early on in my days in this silly business (all of about five years ago), a well-known publishing-industry figure advised me: Never admit you’ve been rejected (or that you have unpublished works), as novels are somehow expected to emerge Athena-like in perfected form. (The corollary to this was never to admit you’ve been helped by anyone in any way, as the central myth of the trade is that of the solitary, rebellious, unschooled genius. ) That’s probably sound advice, but, in my unsound fashion, I’ve ignored it.

Roger Morris took transparency to a new level by publishing his first royalty statement. (Roger's second book, the mystery A Gentle Axe, inexplicably retitled "The Gentle Axe" in the US, is on it's way in March over here, so his first royalty statement is probably only a dim memory. It's been all of, what, four months?)

I can’t match Roger on that (and even if I had a royalty statement in hand I might not be inclined to), but I’ll spend a little time talking frankly about getting, well…edited.

My editor, Will Atkins, explained via e-mail that he would be editing me page-by-page, and also might have overarching structural comments, but assured me he expected the editing would be light as the prose was already polished. After we had an agreed-upon text, the manuscript would go on to copyediting, and once that was agreed upon as well, it would go to proofing.

All this sounded like standard operating procedure to me (much the same process a technical book or paper undergoes on its way to the press, and I’d been down that road before), so I sat back, waited, and meanwhile congratulated myself on my polished prose.

I’d like to tell you my prose was polished to such a blinding sheen that when Will sent his suggestions and observations, his only question was why the book wasn’t twice as long. I’d like to tell you that, but I’ll save my fiction for my books.

This is not a complaint. But for any who still doubt that Macmillan New Writing edits their books, let me state this: My editor’s ‘light’ editing consisted of, at my count, 83 specific points, plus another dozen or so general remarks (mostly about acronyms) that brought the total near the century mark. About a hundred points to be addressed. All of this, mind you, prior to copyediting, so we’re not just quibbling about who/whom or unclear pronoun antecedents here.

I’d call that rather attentive editing for a ‘polished’ manuscript (and makes me worry what form ‘heavy’ editing might take.)

Most of these matters could be described as minor—a turn of phrase that rang false, or a description that called attention to itself, or something that might not be clear unless it were read with the attention a lawyer devotes to a contract. A couple of questions were the result of sheer hamhandedness on my part, plain old inattentive writing. And a few were major, affecting a portion of the storyline, and requiring corrective surgery on a whole section or even chapter.

[On top of those items, a few queries were the result of the transatlantic gulf in the English language. In dialogue I sometimes used slang only an American would likely understand. Solving these problems wasn’t straightforward: if an item of American slang is incomprehensible, one can’t put the corresponding British expression into the mouth of an American. An American male does not visit the loo. (He might hit the head, take a leak, see a man about a horse, drain the lizard, feed the goldfish, shake hands with Mister Snakey, or engage in any number of other creative euphemisms, but the ‘loo’ will not be mentioned.)]

There were also passages containing common US acronyms that, Across the Water, must have been as immediately comprehensible as Linear B (and just about as much fun to read).

After banging my head on the floor a few times (by now I was already prone), I arranged these comments in order from Little to Huge, and started addressing them.

Now, I don’t consider my words to be each one fair and gold, which the hand of man ought not to mar, but the sheer number of issues at first took me aback. Hence the horizontal, floor-bound position (see above).

After I started to work though them, however, I saw that every comment was warranted. And then it sank in on me: This guy was on my side. We both had the same goal. He liked the book, and was trying to make it better. In fact, he was working hard to make it better.

(I hear a chorus of, “Well, duhs,” out there. Pipe down.)

It helps that Will Atkins has a sharp sense of humor and yet is quite gentle (the two don’t often go together). When he found the occasional clunker of a sentence, he never asked (as well he might have) whether I’d typed it with my feet, or if instead I’d somehow employed my prehensile tail as well. In one case, where a sentence had all the grace of one of Hannibal’s war elephants tumbling down an Alp in full battle gear, Will merely asked “A little inelegant—can you rephrase?”

I could, I did, I’m glad.

Some points needed discussion to get us in alignment. In one case, after we both contributed our views, I was amused to find we had swapped postions, with Will suggesting we let the original text stand, and I insisting that it needed to be altered for clarity. (If a good editor is confused or bothered by a passage on first reading, there is a very good chance that something is amiss.)

The book's population changed slightly, too. At Will's suggestion, I deleted a minor character who was too obviously there for the convenience of the author (and I then had to figure out some less deus ex machina way of spinning that plot point). Another character who was often referred to got onstage time at Will's suggestion that she deserved a scene. Luckily for me, I already had such a scene (which I had cut, apparently unwisely, in the name of pacing). Will had managed to intuit a textural hole, even though I was sure there was none visible. And one entire piece of technology was obliterated, painlessly (and, if you can toss something painlessly, I think that suggests it oughtn't have been there in the first place).

All in all, it was a great experience, and we now have a better book--especially because of some of his structural suggestions.

So far, I’ve learned many small lessons, but two important ones I'd like to share. First, for those of you who were wondering, MNW indeed edits (and doesn’t charge you--see previous post).

Second, when an editor acquires your manuscript, he is on your side—or, if not on your side, at least on the side of your book, which is what's important. By the time you have an editor, you've probably been through so many adversarial interactions with the publishing industry that you are prepared for more of the same. Relax. Time to take off the Kevlar vest, lower your porcupine quills, realign those brainwaves from spiky beta to smooth alpha. You have an ally now.

Writing is a lonely affair; the editing process is your one chance to collaborate with someone, and, if you're lucky enough to get a good editor, this can be one of the most rewarding parts of writing the book.

Enjoy it. After you get up off the floor, that is.


*[The Peter Carey quote is from Ben Yagoda’s wonderful meditation on style, The Sound on the Page. Great book—and, rather appropriately, quite stylish itself.]

Jump to Part I

Do Editors Edit? Part I

Jump to Part II

The Conventional Wisdom

If you spend any time listening to talks by literary agents or browsing through books on the writing business, you will soon hear that the days of intensive editing are long gone. No more, the agents caution, will a manuscript less than letter-perfect catch the attention of an editor. Agent (and former editor) Lori Perkins says, “The description of what a good editor once did is now the definition of what a good agent can do.” We are given to understand that if Maxwell Perkins (no relationship to Lori, so far as I can ascertain) were still alive, he would be working as an agent, not an editor.

Move a little further down the food chain, however, and you will be told your manuscript must be polished before it even arrives on the desk of an agent. Agent Noah Lukeman writes, “Agents and editors don’t read manuscripts to enjoy them; they read solely with the goal of getting through the pile, solely with an eye to dismiss a manuscript—and believe me, they’ll look for any reason they can, down to the last letter.” Despite Lori Perkins’ comment above, at conferences every session on getting an agent emphasizes you can’t send a manuscript to an agent if it still needs work.

That any manuscript a writer sends out ought to be close to publishable seems self-evident. Isn’t that the writer’s job in the first place? An agent or editor may make suggestions to make a manuscript a better book, but it ought to be a good book before they set eyes upon it. Right?

When Michael Barnard announced the launch of Macmillan New Writing, he made it clear they would not be acquiring works that required massive editing. This seems in line with the policies of virtually every commercial publishing house—are there any houses that are searching for books that are promising but far from being publishable? (If so, those houses ought to speak up, as agents routinely reject such books. There’s plenty available.)

Tempest in a Thimble

Apparently, many considered Barnard’s observations outrageous. In some places his remarks were willfully misconstrued, while in other venues people put forth wholly imaginary scenarios of what MNW planned to do…and then worked themselves into an apoplectic fit about their own conjectures.

In effect, some folks asserted that Macmillan planned to dump books directly from the slush pile onto the market with hardly a glance at the content. One somewhat hysterical observer argued—on the basis of no discernible evidence—that the MNW process would "take away the exercise of taste and judgment from publishing", as though Macmillan planned to print every manuscript hurled into their offices, and as if the only defenders of "taste and judgment" in publishing were the literary agents. (It isn't explained why any publisher would choose to make huge investments in well-produced hardback volumes without at least skimming the manuscripts before send them off for typesetting.)

At the same time, there were assertions that Macmillan would only publish books where the authors paid from their own pockets for editing services. (I’ve seen some recent bestsellers where someone, somewhere ought to have paid for editing services—and possibly even for remedial classes in composition—but that’s another matter.)

With all this noise over editing—or rather over the lack thereof—I was very curious indeed to see how MNW would approach the editing process on Smite the Waters. Would they demand that jail be rewritten as gaol? (I hoped not, as there are some things to which I will not stoop. Not many, but a couple, and once you give in on gaol, you’ll have them insisting on whisky as uisge, and then they'll be improvising--it'll be whale as uiol, and lord knows how you’ll be expected to render James Joyce. It’s this sort of thing, and not the tea tax, that precipitated the American Revolution.)

I’d never taken seriously the idea that, as some had speculated, I’d be charged for editing services by my publisher, since there was no mention of the concept in the contract. And how could such a thing work? Would I be charged (ka-ching!) every time the editor scribbled awk! or wd chce? or sent frag in the margin of my manuscript? (I’d be in trouble, as I’m known for awk sent frags, and odd wd chces, which together form an admittedly shaky pillar of my so-called style.) Would a single Post-It note reading Unclear Eleanor’s motivation re: speaking Count at manor re: Rudolfo’s parentage cost me fifty bucks (or, even worse, fifty pounds)?

As I waited to find out, I trembled, and not only for myself. No, I feared for Rudolfo and Eleanor as well.

Well, I at least maintained a lively interest. And if you want to know what happens in MNW editing, you’ll have to read the my next post. (And if you figure out who Rudolfo and Eleanor are, let me know.)

Jump to Part II