You may recall that when last you saw our fearless hero (me!), she’d had the bad judgment to send her editor a revised draft of The Four Ms. Bradwells on Valentine’s Day. I went off for a romantic evening with my husband only after my editor, who was out here on the west coast for a few vacation days after the San Francisco Writers Conference, assured me I didn’t need to hand-deliver hard copy to her hotel.
She started reading on the plane home, and emailed me on the 19th that she was loving it (yay!), and would like to talk Monday. She also raised the issue of the title, which was then “The Ms. Bradwells” – uncounted. The excellent copy team at Ballantine would be brainstorming titles, but she wanted to get me thinking about that too. I hate titling, but I’ve written on the subject for Writer’s Digest, and recognize it is one of the most important decisions in the making of a book. So I put together a list of really lousy titles, only four of which I wasn’t too embarrassed to send along to her. And no, I’m not sharing them.
Monday morning, there was a lovely email from Caitlin, saying the draft was “fantastic.” And when we chatted, she called the novel “smart and thought-provoking, culturally and politically.” (Yay!!!) Ballantine would put it on the spring list, she said. She’d already sent it off to be copy-edited.
Copy edits?! But it wasn’t even due to be delivered for another five weeks!
(Copy edits, in case you don’t know, are a very careful process of reviewing a manuscript, which I’ll go into more in a later post.)
She assured me she’d be sending me line edits, too, and I could continue to make as many changes as I wanted even after it had gone off to be copyedited. After some discussion about a few things in the draft, we agreed I’d turn one last draft that week, and let the copyeditors have it early the next week.
The moment we hung up I started reading through the draft again, and emailed her a new draft on March 2.
Caitlin fed-exed me line edits for Friday delivery – this is Friday March 12 – ten days later, and when they didn’t arrive, emailed a pdf. Line edits are exactly what they sound like:
– a few words marked to delete along with a notation “to keep the opening tight, & also because this is fairly implicit”;
– a bracketed phrase marked “I like this gesture for visualizing the scene – maybe move it down a paragraph or two? or maybe mention her camera?”;
– the occasional six or eight paragraphs marked “I actually think you could cut all of this”; and
– the much coveted “nicely done – such a compelling opening!” or “ha! very charming & terrific characterization throughout” or simple “v. nice.”
But repeat that probably 1600 times over 400+ manuscript pages. This is such a time-consuming process on the part of the editor. To have your writing considered so carefully is truly an amazing thing.
I sent the new draft back to Caitlin Friday evening, March 19. Phwew! I hadn’t worked that hard since my days as an M&A lawyer.
I know some writers think the editing process is to be dreaded: someone else mucking around in their art. And no doubt it is without an editor you respect. Even John Gardner, who writes so amazingly about writing, said, “One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors. They are all, without exception – at least some of the time – incompetent or crazy.” But I’m with Peter Mayle, who says, “Listen and learn.”
Tune in next for how we settled on the final title, and perhaps a bit about AREs and covers. – Meg
