Thoughts on Rewrites and Editorial Methods
I am still trying to shake the sleep out of my head and rub it out of my eyes. And it’s my day to blog. And lucky for me….I received a rewrite letter on Monday and am still trying to process it. So here goes with some general thoughts about rewrites and specific thoughts about this particular rewrite. In no particular order, because, hey, I’m still half asleep.
First – I didn’t cry over this one or even have to put it away for a several days to let it settle into the bottom of my brain and ferment a while. My new Lady Editor gets what I was trying to do and wants to make the book tighter and darker and with a greater clarity of purpose, all of which I totally dig.
As rewrites go it isn’t bad: Lady Editor pointed out inconsistencies, topics I duplicated or changed midway through, sections where one character is narrating (multiple POVs) and my editor doesn’t like the voice, wanting more backstory in the main character up in the first 40 pages.
The last part is a problem because my character is on a journey of self discovery while being a kickass killer of rogue vampires. The fact that Lady Editor asked for more means that:
1. either I did a poor job of pointing out that she has no memories of her early life, in which case I have to beef that up or
2. well, she wants more and I have to give Jane more memories out of the ones she has forgotten. None of which I yet know.
Fortunately Lady Editor has left how I satisfy her curiosity up to me, which I appreciate.
Over the years, I have had editors who were closet writers and who totally rewrote my books. My first rewrite letter made me cry for three days. It was like date rape. Really. I mean – hey, Mr. Evileditor wooed me and bought the book because it tripped his trigger, and he raved about the book and how wonderful my co-writer and I were and how totally fantastic the novel was yadayada. And when he sent the rewrite letter back he also sent a line by line (yes, already done, can you believe it?) and had rewritten the book in *heavy* dark pencil. Entire pages of backstory were X’ed out.
And that was the date rape part. He wanted everything except knives, guns, cursing, and sex removed. We were writing a bang-bang-shoot-em-up cop novel and the editor wanted only killing and blood. He said no one wanted to see why the character was what he was, no one wanted backstory or his home and date life. Just blood. And the more the merrier. Sick cookie. Not my character or co-writer, Mr. Evileditor.
And my agent was no help. He said, and I quote, “If you don’t like the changes you can send the money back.”
Ulp. That was the beginning of my shell. You know, the hard shell writers have to develop and wear to survive this business. A shell to protect us from the rare Evileditor, the less rare bad review that is like a knife to our spines, and the even more common self-defeating and self-beating voice, the comments made by our altermuses, the ones who don’t inspire but accuse. (You suck. You’ll never write another book. That voice.) My personal shell is pretty dang hard, but that little voice can get in through cracks I can’t see. It is far more evil and dangerous than Evileditor, and I work to seal against it nearly every day.
Okay, back to the rewrite. While the character names will mean nothing to you, here are some specific things Lady Editor wants:
*Similarly, Jane should tell us more about what she knows about vampires quite early on—how the vamp scene is organized, etc.
*I’d like to see a little more sleuthing on Jane’s part, so that her human investigations compliment her Beastly tracking. The tracking of land ownership seems to be her only real line of investigation, but I was never quite sure how that linked to the rogue—why should he hunt specifically on land that he owns? Could she do a little more investigation?
* As characters, I had trouble distinguishing between Bruiser and Troll. Maybe it’s because Jane reduces them to their similar nicknames? But could you make sure they seem a little more differentiable?
*Maybe Jane could call Molly a few more times to discuss things/report in so that she’s more of a presence in the book?
*If you see opportunities to do so, I don’t think it would be a bad idea to pump up Jane’s involvement with Katie’s Ladies. The scenes she has with them are really engaging, and it seems like they could be developed. Maybe if not in this book, then in the next one (helping Bliss explore her witchy powers for example.)
So, as rewrite go, this one was a really good one. Yes, it was 5 pages long and I only gave you snippet of that, but the letter was concise and easy to follow. So, now is the real treat. A total rewrite letter… below the break.
Faith