Novel Editing Novels & Stories

Where did you GO? I close the app and open the manuscript because the blog is a side project and the book – which is the real work – will save me from the feeling that’s building in my chest. But then I read a few lines and realize that the manuscript has the same disease – the pages I wrote this week are also clean and professional and completely devoid of the heat that my editor spent three phone calls telling me was the reason the first book sold. As I scroll through the new chapter about the Portland apartment and the first winter, I can see the Victoria filter on every sentence, the subconscious calculation of “is this too specific, will this make the sponsors nervous” running underneat

October had the quality of the right month for it the year far enough along that the events it described had had time to settle, close enough to the beginning that they were still present in the public conversation about accountability and institutional failure and the particular human cost of both. Clare had been working with me on the manuscript since August. Not changing the voice she had been very specific about that, from the first call. The voice is the book. We shape, we tighten, we clarify. We don’t change what it sounds like. What she had done was structural the particular skill of an editor who understood that a book was not just the sum of its sentences but the sequence and pacing

Proper editing will be done after the book is finished. I hope you really like the book though. Any suggestions are welcome. Kathy. ***

"No, I'm not. I'm the editor." "Wow!" I was quite surprised. Pretending to open another book, I asked as I showed the cover of the book I was holding, "An erotic novel? You edit these too?" The cover was just plain dark with a line of letters indicating the title and the author's name, but the content was a poison of desire. "Not many, but some." Ben nodded this time. He took a step closer, emphasizing our height difference as he raised his hand up over my head. "This too."