I just got my first peek at the likely cover for my new novel, The Four Ms. Bradwells, along with a description of what the book is about. The two together got me thinking it might be fun to blog my way through the months left until the book hits bookstore shelves, to give 1st Books readers who haven’t yet experienced the pleasure themselves a glimpse at the publication process.
I’d start with today, but that would leave out the getting-the-manuscript-right part, the step #1 without which a writer never passes
Go, much less scores the Boardwalk monopoly. For anyone wanting to know how to get to the point where you have an editor, my personal version is at “In Praise of Writing Friends,” and some 65 other authors have shared their versions on the 1st Books Wednesday Guest Author posts and last month’s Poetry Tuesdays.
So … To be honest, the first draft my editor saw of The Four Ms. Bradwells still needed a lot of work. A lot. And the draft I sent her (close your eyes, Caitlin; you don’t want to know) was the eighth. Eighth. I’d put a lot of work into it, but it was still in manuscript puberty: in braces, with acne to boot. Gawky teenaged manuscript. I like to think you could catch a glimpse of how beautiful the smile underneath all that glaring metal was, and if its skin wasn’t yet clear, trust me: it had looked a lot worse. Still, I wasn’t sure how to make it better myself, and my agent felt that seeking my editor’s guidance at this stage was the right way to go.
What is having your manuscript edited like? If you’re lucky and have as amazing an editor as I do, he or she will spend some time talking with you conceptually about it, and you’ll be scribbling notes as fast as you can – a conversation my editor and I had on December 30th of last year. Caitlin was wonderfully descriptive rather than proscriptive at this stage of The Four Ms. Bradwells. And she was gentle with my ego: she talked about what she was “thinking” rather than what sucked, and she always found some other word to convey “trite.” I took 10 pages of notes in a little red journal while we chatted, things like:
“1st scene: loves Mia’s perspective, but ch. needs to be viceral – lights, cameras, pressure.”
“Make voices more distinct and individualize their backgrounds, make more vivid”
“Mia ‘rehearsed’ not really followed up”
It’s amazing how Caitlin never fails to zero right in on the weaknesses I fear are there but hope aren’t.
I slept on her “thoughts” for a night, and then …
Well, I’m going to try to keep these posts relatively short, so tune in at 1st Books tomorrow! – Meg
