Blood, sweat and tears
By Juliet Marillier | January 8, 2009 |
January finds me working through the editorial report for my new adult novel, Heart’s Blood. I got my manuscript back just before Christmas and I have until the end of the month to make changes. (To recap, the editing is a joint venture for separate publishers in Australia, the UK and the USA – same book, different editions, same publication date of November 2009.)
When I turned in the completed manuscript a month or so ago, some aspects of the story still weren’t working – it was not great, just OK. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong. The ms did have a disrupted path to completion, with a nine month gap in the middle while I wrote another novel at my editor’s request. The report on Heart’s Blood indicates that the part I wrote before the break is the weakest. The ms requires structural edits.
I absolutely hate structural rewriting. It’s messy, requires intense concentration, and often means deleting favourite passages to streamline the narrative. As a writer I am a control freak, and right now my work table looks uncomfortably busy: laptop centre stage, marked-up hard copy on the left, with the editor’s pencil comments now overlaid by my slashes and scrawls. The hard copy is bristling with star-shaped post-its, on which are scribbled things like ‘window, rain’, ‘pitiful remnant’ and ‘wager’. Other post-its are stuck directly to the table. To the right of the laptop is the editorial report itself, which contains firstly general comments about character, pace, themes and so on, and secondly more specific queries. My long-term editorial assistant, Sonia, is lying across as many pieces of paper as a large cat can reasonably cover.
Of the twelve novels I’ve written to date, three have needed significant structural reworking at the editorial stage. This time around I need to do substantial cutting and pasting – more of the former than the latter – and quite a lot of rewriting. Editors do generally suggest solutions to perceived problems, but I don’t always use them – more often I find my own way around the difficulty. For some parts of this ms I’m finding it easier to set the original aside, think about what is truly essential to the scene, then write the whole thing again from scratch. This means a scary amount of the original is being discarded, which has the potential to cause continuity problems. The book has four generations of stories running alongside one another, the main, linking one told as a first person narration, the others conveyed through memories, documents or visions. When I finish and read through later in the month, I’ll be looking out for characters quoting from speeches that have now been deleted, for instance, or characters knowing about something that they now don’t get to read or hear about until later in the book.
I also need to capture some emotional nuances it seems are not quite there yet. It’s salutary to hear an editor’s take on your story, and to discover that the central characters who seem so real to you are not yet pressing all the right buttons for the reader. Ideally these characters will leap off the page and straight into the reader’s heart, to inhabit her dreams and imaginings. The reader should be cheering the protagonist on, shouting warnings as she heads into peril, weeping with her as she gets her heart broken. These subtle changes can be the trickiest to attend to.
I’ve definitely learned something from the long-drawn-out process of writing Heart’s Blood. If I have a long gap in mid-novel it’s extremely hard to pick up the pieces. Taking a brief period off to write a short story or do editorial work on another book is fine; taking most of a year off to write a different novel isn’t. To write effectively, I need to immerse myself in the world of my story, get under the skin of my characters, live their journey with them. The project switch left the Heart’s Blood cast in limbo and played havoc with their already challenging lives.
Of course, many writers successfully juggle several projects at once, including novels, and enjoy the variety. They seem to switch around without any difficulty. What’s your experience? Do you need total immersion, or can you happily multi-task as a writer?
Juliet Marillier has written twenty-four novels for adults and young adults and two collections of short fiction. Her works of historical fantasy have been published around the world and have won numerous awards. Juliet’s most recent series was Warrior Bards, of which the third and final book, A Song of Flight, was published in 2021. Her collection of reimagined fairy tales, Mother Thorn and Other Tales of Courage and Kindness, had its trade release in 2022. Mother Thorn is illustrated by Kathleen Jennings and published by Serenity Press.
Juliet is currently working on a two-book fantasy series. The first book in this duology, The Amber Owl, will be published by New Dawn in February 2025.
When not writing, Juliet looks after a small crew of rescue dogs.
I need total immersion. I stalled halfway through a project once, and I’ll never go back to it…too many mind threads lost forever, and my desire to work on it completely evaporated.
Do you think having several editors (aka several minds) inflated the challenges laid out for you in the editorial report? Just the thought makes me tense up!
Thanks for sharing the details of your editorial process with us, Juliet, and good luck with those edits. We’ll be anxious to hear how it all turns out.
Total immersion, definitely. I took a month break in the middle of a first draft once, and it was so hard to make the whole thing flow. I can’t work on more than a project at a time.
Not at all! Working with the joint editorial report is actually heaps easier than my past experience, when I had different editions coming out at different times, and had to deal with each editor separately while trying to keep the end result as close to the same as possible. With Heart’s Blood the three editors discussed their main points together, reached consensus on most of it, then one of them wrote the report on behalf of all three. With one or two points they’ve said ‘X thought this, but Y and Z don’t think it’s so important.’ Mostly it seems they had very similar responses to the ms.
“For some parts of this ms I’m finding it easier to set the original aside, think about what is truly essential to the scene, then write the whole thing again from scratch. This means a scary amount of the original is being discarded, which has the potential to cause continuity problems.”
DITTO. Unfortunately. And I find this to create a slooow revision process as well. Sigh.
But I really liked this post and the way it’s “just a day in the life of a writer” vs. advice. (Advice is good too, but I’m saying I like the variety!)
I think for me I need to be focused. I used to think I could multi-task, and maybe someday I can, but right now I’ve realized that if I let myself work on too many projects at once, they all suffer.
“For some parts of this ms I’m finding it easier to set the original aside, think about what is truly essential to the scene, then write the whole thing again from scratch. This means a scary amount of the original is being discarded, which has the potential to cause continuity problems. ”
I’m in this situation myself.
With my current WIP, I started a good chunk then had to break away six months for the CONFESSIONS project. The agony going back in was incredible PLUS I realized that several scenes I loved before weren’t working. They have to go….but letting them go is breaking my heart. I think I’ll just have to chuck them and start over.
Heart’s blood indeed.
I multi-task but only because I have other writing commitments. I don’t find it hard to write short op-ed or column stuff while working on manuscripts but I do find it hard to work on two fiction pieces at the same time regardless of length.
This was a really interesting look at that editing process for me. Thanks for sharing.
I just finished a structural rewrite of one of my novels, and immersion became necessary. I was able to do the first half in pieces, changing things to lead to the coming new narrative, inserting chapters to create a new pov character…but just couldn’t think about the harder part, the reconstruction of the second half of the novel where most of the changes were needed.
So I took a week off from the day job, dived in, and had it done within that week. I think it works (waiting to hear from a couple of beta readers) and to polish.
But I have to say that I enjoyed, in many ways, the recreation. I changed the arcs of two key characters, introduced a new and interesting one, deleted two, and ultimately feel like I have a better novel as a result.
But then, I’m not the best judge, am I/
At least all the editors saw the same problems and were willing to work together to help you improve the ms, and I have no doubt that the end product will be a wonderful book, as all yours are.
I think immersion is always the best way to create anything, but in this case it’s essential because of the continuity issues. It’s immersion on two levels, isn’t it – being there with the characters and also being the all-seeing eye from above, ready to pounce on inconsistencies. A tall order, playing God and Adam both at once:-) Heart’s Blood, it seems, is demanding some of yours in sacrifice!
Ray, I also take some pleasure in the recreation – even though I’m aware of time ticking away, I’m enjoying writing the totally new scenes, especially the ones that crank up the romantic tension. So it’s not all angst.
God and Adam – yes, Satima, right now I have a lot of sympathy for both of them. My protagonist is prone to nightmares in which she revisits traumatic episodes in her past. I’m experiencing a similar phenomenon, waking at 3am with my mind churning over one plot point or another. Must cut back on coffee …
Total immersion, otherwise I get very lost and have a hard time getting back into the story. I keep a specific journal for whatever novel I happen to be working on, and when I can’t write that day for whatever reason, I try to write something in my journal or look over my notes – anything to keep me in touch with the story.
I love the picture leading this entry! Cat’s always find the best spots in a house to settle.
As for me, I could call myself a mixture of the two. The last large work I finished, progress was interrupted by other projects, and I found the breaks helpful. I liked the change in pace from one thing to the other, and it gave me chance to mull multiple things over, and to start anew with fresh ideas.
There are other times, however, that working on many projects turns out to be torture. Hard to concentrate, without a clear sense of the character’s psyche’s or speaking patterns or anything when I wait too long to go back to something.
As for rewrites: the second, third revision, etc, is when I start to hate the work and everything about it, have got five other ideas for new things and am eager to get some ‘fresh air’ with work.
I actually love the first round of rewrites, though, filling out things that seemed weak before, adding in ideas I hadn’t thought of the first time. My best lines almost always come in a rewrite, so I really can’t begrudge them much.
Good luck with your rewrites! Major restructuring is a huge challenge!