With most projects, it\u2019s clear when they\u2019re done. A bike shed is built once there are walls, a roof, and a place to store bikes. A lasagne is done once you have a gooey tray of tomatopastamince steaming in front of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And a book? It\u2019s done exactly when?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, as with most of these emails, I don\u2019t really know. The image that I mostly work with is that of an apple. You don\u2019t really pick it from the tree. You don\u2019t pull it. You twist it. And the twisting isn\u2019t best understood as an efficient way to separate fruit from bough. The twisting is, in effect, a question. \u2018Are you ready to come now, pretty red thing?\u2019 If the apple falls into your hand, it\u2019s ready. And if it stays on the tree, it\u2019s telling you that it would like another day or two to turn its pips from creamy white to nut brown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there you go. That\u2019s how it works with books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If that fruit-based methodology doesn\u2019t work for you, here are some others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can you find places to cut text?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can, you need to do more work. And I don\u2019t mean, \u201cCan you find chapters, pages and paragraphs to cut?\u201d, although of course that\u2019s important. I mean, \u201cCan you find a 12 word sentence that could use 10 words to say the same thing?\u201d I mean, \u201cIs there a descriptive paragraph that uses three sentences, where two word actually work just as well?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main aim of cutting text isn\u2019t to reduce the amount of things you communicate. It\u2019s to leave the communication unchanged, but with fewer words. If that process still has further to run, you haven\u2019t finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How easy is it to make insertions?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019ll always be little insertions you want to make. It might be a plot point, where your Big Reveal later in the book needs some little clue offered early. Or it might just be that you need to deepen Aunt Jem\u2019s character up front, because of the new role she plays in the warehouse shootout scene. Or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the things I notice as I\u2019m editing is that, the nearer the book is to completion, the harder it becomes to make those insertions<\/em>. When a book is looser, less edited, there are plenty of places where you can insert the blade of a screwdriver and force open the text. As the book moves towards being finished, it just gets harder to make those insertions. Yes, you could in theory put something about Aunt Jem on page 36, but when you look at page 36, it\u2019s feels very smooth. There\u2019s a sort of inevitable logic to the way the text plays out. You can\u2019t add anything about Jem without interrupting the emotional flow of something that needs to happen. That\u2019s good. Your apple is nearly ripe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you find greater density in your text?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bit more Zen, this one, but as a book gets closer to being fully ready, you may well start noticing echoes that you hadn\u2019t quite intended, but feel really good. It might be that a sea metaphor naturally crops up in Chapters 4, 12, 18, and 31. You wrote those damn chapters months apart, but now that you\u2019re editing into shape, it\u2019s almost as though you planted those references to show a particular evolution of something. The more you notice things like that, the riper your book is becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can you spot the bits you hated?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Frank Herbert, author of Dune, once said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t worry about inspiration or anything like that…. later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, “Well, now it’s writing time and now I’ll write.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a good test. If you can still feel the sweat and the awkwardness, you might want to work a little longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you done The List?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Editing involves plot, it involves character, it involves settings, it involves prose, it involves everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s easy to think of editing as a process that starts at page 1 and ends at page 350, and, OK, that is partly how it works. But it should also be a process that simply works through items on a list. Aunt Jem\u2019s character. The plot issue involving Gordon\u2019s car. Your holiday house setting. Addressing those things will involve hopping around through the book, fixing Jem, fixing Gordon, fixing that holiday house. So you work in layers, not just by page numbers. And once you\u2019ve worked your way through those layers, bingo. You\u2019re done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does it feel<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I enjoy editing. It\u2019s a pleasure, not a chore. But what you\u2019re doing evolves. Early on, editing involves quite a lot of fresh writing. This chapter just doesn\u2019t really work and you end up giving it a major rewrite. Later on, you are definitely editing \u2013 not writing, but manipulating plenty of text. And then you get a point where whole pages go by without you really touching them. Or maybe trying out a change here, reversing it, then maybe reversing again. And at that, you\u2019re done. There\u2019s a kind of sweet pain in realising it, though. Your book now is the best it\u2019s ever been. It\u2019s the first time you\u2019ve looked at your text and not thought ouch<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it from me. My own apple trees are coming into blossom, except the big monster tree which always blooms late and then produces huge green fruit well into October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Til soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harry<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With most projects, it\u2019s clear when they\u2019re done. A bike shed is built once there are walls, a roof, and a place to store bikes. A lasagne is done once you have a gooey tray of tomatopastamince steaming in front of you. And a book? It\u2019s done exactly when? Well, as with most of these<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[29213],"class_list":["post-30269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email","tag-harry-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n