Editing Out Loud - a Fast Track to Better Writing
Alicia Sammons |
I always felt in awe of writers and aspired to their magic with words, an assessment shared in popular culture. We see a lot of juicy movies about authors like The Hours and Midnight in Paris. On the other hand, editors can't get much respect even from their writers, including a few authors with whom I've worked. Vladimir Nabokov sneered at them as ‘pompous avuncular brutes.’
Robert Gottlieb edited books of Joseph Heller, John Le Carré, John Cheever, and Toni Morrison. The legendary Maxwell Perkins edited and famously mentored Lost Generation icons F. Scott Fitzgerald through his most powerful works, including The Great Gatsby, along with Ernest Hemmingway and Thomas Wolfe.
Only a few of the writers with whom I've worked appeared to be adept at self-editing. One was the late Ray Bradbury. No wonder, him being a literary/science fiction giant and all.
Ray Bradbury |
I'm no Ray Bradbury. I find myself writing fiction in my later years, by mixture of chance and choice. Living the dream, as they say, and on some days, the nightmare.
Turns out, no surprise, that despite my extensive editing background, I suck at editing my own copy. I can barely stand the cringing. The process has bolstered my respect for editors. A good, supportive but objective editor can be a writer's best friend - as some of my colleagues can attest. A good editor is hard to find.
I've been lucky to hire some capable professional copy editors over time. I've also traded off editing with colleagues.
Good editing needs to be iterative - applied to stages - i.e. drafts - of fiction, staring with edits on early drafts that we usually do for ourselves. But I don't have the stomach (nor the ability to distance myself from my work sufficiently) when it comes to those crucial later drafts. Few of us do. That's why God created editors.
Maxwell Perkins |
Maybe the method not new, but it's new to me. It's simple - if one can find a willing and capable colleague (not easy). In my case, it's my eldest daughter Alicia Sammons, a longtime English teacher and credible columnist off-and-on herself. She reads my drafts back to me aloud over video connections. (I've also done same with her literature teacher husband Brian on his scifi novel drafts.) Perhaps only a caring relative would volunteer for the task, but I can readily envision doing this reciprocally with a colleague.
The read-aloud editing accelerates the process. I share my drafts with her on Google Docs - a boon for collaborations. I read silently along as I listen. We both catch obvious errors like dropped words, non-sequiturs and muffed punctuation. Beyond that the processes allow me to hear the cadences, word usage, and nuances that bring stories and - especially - characters to life.
With writer and editor working together, there's no more deciphering editorial corrections on paper manuscripts or on screen. Another plus is that Google Docs allows each of us to revise copy online, then see and comment on changes as we go along.
Additional benefits include the ability to correct copy on the spot, and best of all to get feedback from one's editing partner on the go. It won't work for major revisions, but it's great for elegant, stylistic solutions. The editor and writer collaborate closely in real time. As a writer, my revisions can be consistent with my copy's intentions and voicing.
My enthusiasm for read-back editing may stem from my having grown up in the pre-television era back in the 1940s, when our primary home entertainment and news came over the radio. I spent hours as kid listening to radio dramas, adventures and detective stories.
The method doesn't obviate the need for final proofing, of course, but I find it a great help in the creative process as well as necessary flyspecking. Writing is repetition after all. Plus, there's the companionship, like finding an oasis in the often-desolate treks of writing.
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Cover by Eleanor Spiesss-Ferris |
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Enjoy my Hollywood noir detective thriller: The Phantom Eye (a Frank Ritz Mystery) - soon to be followed by Oddly Dead and Death and the Droid.
"Tosi writes with tremendous style and a pitch perfect ear for everything that makes the classic noir detective story irresistible. Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, make room for Frank Ritz!" - Elizabeth McKenzie, best-selling author of The Portable Veblen.
Comments
I think the idea of using the family is a good one. I thought too that that was a great memory of Ray Bradbury. You are lucky to have known him. You won't have known Upton Sinclair but you have probably read The Jungle. I have just finished an exhaustive 400 plus pages of The Penguin Classics 1985 edition. (Perhaps this version could have done with a better editor as parts of it left me breathless.) I was thinking of you during my reading as I know you live in present day Chicago. The book was quite a reading experience: I couldn't identify with Jurgis but felt his horror at the corruption he met with there.
Thanks for the blog.