Dispatches By John Douglas Marshall

Authors' Secret Delight: Doing Revisions

     The writing of a book is usually depicted as a long, uphill slog, all those solitary hours of communion with computer and its blank, beckoning screen. This is supposed to be nail-biting, coffee-swilling grunt work, lightened only by the occasional detour to rearrange the desk, revisit the kitchen, do laundry, clip fingernails, skim magazines, water plants, pay bills, check email, clean glasses, dust the mantel, stare out the window or any other worthy little escape that happens to momentarily postpone the inevitable return to the keyboard. And then the grind resumes again.
     But book authors themselves tell a different story about their trade. They readily reveal the special pleasure beyond the pain of creation-the secret delight they experience during the process of doing revisions. This is still work, but satisfying, sometimes even thrilling. Revisions are the point in the book-writing process that best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard ("The Deep End of the Ocean") "approaches with great joy, as I would a Red Cross truck in a disaster."
     Revisions mean that improvements can and will be made, characters refined, repetitions spotted, prose tightened, claptrap and hogwash eliminated before it is ever seen by another set of eyes. It does not seem to matter whether the book author is a prize-winning resident of best-sellerdom or someone starting out who must go the challenging route of self-publishing. Revisions emerge as a favorite authorial pursuit, more ecstasy than agony. For this reason, writers like talking revisions, turn expansive, reveal themselves. What they say about revisions provides readers, fans and writing students with startling insights into the confounding and convoluted creative process-what works, what does not, the lingering insecurities of even established writers, the role played by editors and all the back-and-forth it takes to get to the finished book finally seen in bookstores or on e-reader screens.
     "My first drafts are almost always wretched," admits Jon Krakauer, the author of such monumental best-sellers as "Into Thin Air" and "Into the Wild." "The crapiness of what I've written is immediately and painfully obvious when I go back and read my initial effort, but usually I can see right away how to make the bad writing better. Fixing it feels good, so I'm eager to get after it. My problem is that I can never re-read anything I've written-even stuff written many years earlier-without seeing how to improve it further, and thus want to keep revising it over and over."

RUNNING A RIVER TWICE

     Karen Fisher brought her considerable skills as a Pacific Northwest outdoorswoman to her debut novel about the Oregon Trail, "A Sudden Country." Fisher draws an outdoor parallel to doing revisions, saying, "Writing fiction feels to me like running an unfamiliar river. Revising feels like getting to do it again, only this time with a memory, a map and a paddle. Being out of control has its thrills, but so does being in control."
     Helen Black also relishes the control that revisions provide. The former attorney in Portland, Ore. turned to novel writing with "Seven Blackbirds." It did not take long for Black to discover: "Revising a manuscript is my favorite part of writing a book because I'm a control freak. The actual creation, out of whole cloth, of characters, events and dialogue-turns me into a mess. Curled into a ball in the corner of the sofa, tugging on my hair; pacing around the kitchen island, talking to myself; you get the idea. My kids are looking at me funny...
     "Revising is COMPLETELY different and far less nerve-wracking. The dishwasher is humming, and I'm fully dressed, sitting in front of a neat stack of typewritten sheets, hugely relieved to see that, yes, it DOES all make sense, which means I am NOT crazy, and doing the totally fun, easy and satisfying part of cleaning and polishing and tightening it up. This is the downhill! What's not to like? The pleasure of eliminating unnecessary words, sentences, even whole paragraphs! And replacing them with those additional inspirations that come floating in from nowhere and make a scene perfect when you'd already thought it was just right! And you can cook dinner at the same time!"
     Sloane Crosley deserved enshrinement in the authors' corner of "Ripley's Believe It or Not" for the feat she accomplished in 2008. She went from being a Manhattan publicist for other writers' books to a writing star herself when her debut collection of smart, sassy and humorous essays, "I Was Told There Would Be Cake," became a New York Times' best-seller. It is to be followed this June by Crosley's second collection, "How Did You Get This Number?" But there is nothing humorous about the ruthless eye that Crosley brings to her own work during revisions. As she says, "I've cut entire finished essays if I felt I couldn't stand to look at them or read them anymore. And I've done so without anyone ever seeing them."
     Marion Winik has written memoir, poetry, fiction, essay collections, National Public Radio commentaries and now a young adult novel in her varied writing career, with the pleasure of revisions a constant, whatever the format. As the Baltimore author puts it, "I prefer revision to all other parts of writing, except perhaps giving readings... In the early phases of revision, I am usually still finding out what the thing is about-that's probably because I race through the initial phases so I can start revising as soon as possible. By the end, it is like decorating a house that is already built. Does it need a metaphor here? A visual description there? Should the living room be ripped off the front of the house, chopped in half and reattached to the master bedroom? Damn. But it's gotta be done."
     Revisions are indeed a necessity, but that does not mean that all authors turn rhapsodic about the process. Filing a distinct dissent from the views of many writing compatriots is Anna Quindlen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times who turned to novel writing with characteristic success, including such popular offerings as "Loud and Clear" and "Black and Blue."
     Quindlen emphasizes, "I can't communicate adequately how much I hate and fear revising. When I finish a draft of a novel, it's as though a heavy metal door has slammed shut. I have enormous difficulty opening it, and entering that room again, much less re-imagining and refocusing. But I have to do it because revising has always materially improved my novels. When you've lived inside a book for two or three years, you simply can't see the trees for the forest, or at least I can't. I have very little perspective left, on the characters, the situations, on what works and what is merely me in love with my own creations."
     Another detester of revisions is Brian Lee Weakland, author of such indie novels as "Tonight in the Rivers of Pittsburgh." What he did to his debut novel during revisions still rankles years later. Weakland says, "To me, self-editing is a pain that cannot be avoided. I cut about 200 pages from my first book because the editor said it was too long. So one sub-plot and three interesting characters were deleted in one bloody afternoon at the computer. Self-editing can best be compared to what Dr. Evan Kane of northwestern Pennsylvania experienced in 1921 when he removed his own appendix. He hated to do it, but he couldn't find a better surgeon."

ALWAYS REVISING

     A different sort of dissent about revisions is provided by David Guterson and Tom Robbins. The Northwest authors of such classics as, respectively, "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" insist that they do not follow the usual practice of doing revisions upon a completed draft of a manuscript. Instead, they revise as they write, what might seem to be a ready prescription for never finishing a book at all, with all the starts and stops and switches back-and-forth. Both writers concede their unusual approach can be time-consuming in extremis.
     Robbins, renowned for his inventive writing style, relates, "I craft a book, in terms of both form and narration, very, very slowly, one sentence at a time, with greater deliberation and intense concentration, yet always leaving myself open to spontaneity. Using that method, it takes me at least three years to finish a manuscript-but when it's done, it's done: There is only one draft.
     "As I dictate my handwritten manuscript to my typist-when, afterward, I have a typescript in hand, and when later I receive galleys from the publisher-I caress and polish. By the time the book goes to the presses, I probably will have changed scores of single words, scores of phrases, and maybe a handful of paragraphs-but never ever an entire section, a chapter or even a whole page: It simply is not necessary. Not one of my books has had to be rewritten.
     "I do look forward, however, to making those small caresses. In fact, I'm almost neurotic about them. My publisher very nearly has to hire armed guards to keep me away from the presses, as, given the opportunity, I'd be changing a word here and there right up to and maybe after the moment the machines (or electrons) start rolling."
     Finally, there are those writers who occupy the middle ground on revisions, those like Laila Lalami, the Moroccan-born novelist of "Secret Son" who finds revisions to be both "the most excruciating and most pleasurable part of writing." This camp of ambivalent writers seems to outnumber the solitary revise-as-they-go practitioners, but falls way short of the author multitudes who always look forward to revisions. Joining Lalami as fence-sitters on revisions are Garth Stein of Seattle, best-known for his popular "The Art of Racing in the Rain," and Anthony Doerr of Boise, the literary stylist behind such works as "About Grace," who concludes that revisions are "70 percent pleasure, 30 percent misery."
     Just how writers can become ambivalent about revisions is illustrated by the experiences of Tess Gerritsen, the other best-selling thriller writer from Maine, along with Down East compatriot Stephen King. Gerritsen has sold more than 20 million copies of her suspense novels around the globe, but she was a physician before she turned to writing during a maternity leave two decades ago. Her creative process still reflects a newcomer's tendency to let-it-rip first, fix details later, in order to allow inspiration to flow unimpeded. Her ambivalence about revisions grows out of that approach and its predictable stages of the writing of a book.
     Gerritsen stresses, "Revisions are both a cure and a pleasure for me-depending on where in the revision process I am. Since I write largely without an outline, my first draft wanders all over the place and is usually in need of major re-writes. So the beginning of the next draft is when I'm at my most depressed. That's when I see all the flaws, when I question my abilities, when I start to think that I should toss it aside and start all over with an entirely new plot.
     "Then I roll up my sleeves and get to work. By the third or fourth draft, the story starts to look like a real book. The characters are better defined, the writing more poetic, the plot twists more logical. By the final drafts (for me it could be anywhere from five to 10 times through), it starts to be a real pleasure. Suddenly you're working with smooth, not rough marble. You can see the curves and the luster. That's when I think: 'I really am a writer.'"

MULTIPLE REVISIONS

     Gerritsen's passing reference to doing five to 10 revisions of her manuscripts turns out to be a practice not uncommon among fellow writers. In fact, one of the more surprising common threads when writers talk about revisions is just how extensive that process can be. Inspiration, flows during a first draft, hopefully, but great writing usually does not. All signs point to "Road Work Ahead," requiring far more extensive reconstruction efforts than merely filling a narrative pothole here and there.
     Mark Nykanen, a former NBC-TV correspondent, turned to the writing of thrillers, a major shift in his life that also included moving to Canada and taking up residence with his family in the appealing British Columbia town of Nelson, reminiscent of Aspen decades ago. Nykanen's new career has turned him into a revision fanatic who will often, as he concedes, "rewrite a chapter 10, 15, even 20 times, and that's before I send it to an editor." Anthony Doerr admits a similar revision work ethic: "It's absolutely normal for me to put a short story or a novel through 15 or even 20 revisions before showing it to someone else."
     Journalist Peggy Orenstein recalls writing multiple revisions of the first chapter of her first book ("Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap"). Never mind that her debut would become a non-fiction best-seller. That book will always remind the Bay Area author of its tortured birth process, one whose first chapter threatened to spell "curtains" for her fledgling book-writing career. Orenstein remembers: "I wrote 14 drafts of the first chapter. Months and months. I'd never written a book before so I had no idea what a chapter ought to look like. Though people will tell you it's just like writing 12 magazine pieces, it's not. Finally, after draft 13, I gave it to my husband to read. In his characteristic gentle, kind, loving way, he said, 'This totally sucks.'
     "He was right. It was just a mass of information with no form, style or narration. I was so worried about sounding legitimate that I'd front-loaded the book with studies and statistics to prove how much work I'd done. So it was confused and boring to read. He made a suggestion that helped me not only with that chapter but with everything I've written.
     "He's a filmmaker and said to think of my reporter's eye as a camera-to think about establishing shots and close-ups and long shots. I don't know why that worked for me, but it suddenly made the whole thing snap into place. If you read the first chapter of 'Schoolgirls,' you can really see how that advice played out, how much more I emphasized narrative and visuals. I still keep that advice in mind when I write. Though, that said, I have never again let Steven read a rough draft of my work."
     Not all editing is done by loving spouses or the authors themselves, of course. There are indeed people known as editors whose actual job is to edit the work of book authors. That may be shocking news these days when there is such widespread criticism about books being badly edited, if edited at all. Far too many books now contain misspellings, mistaken punctuation, nagging inconsistencies in plot lines or characters. Even worse, the publishing business is a fertile breeding ground for a widespread book flu known as "overstuffed-itis." Rare is the book today that could not benefit from being 50 pages shorter, or even 100 pages. All these glaring problems suggest that many book editors today are missing-in-action, perhaps so tied up in book acquisition and marketing concerns that little time remains for wielding the editorial red pencil of yore.

CREDITING EDITORS

     Yet book authors themselves provide a distinct counterpoint. They widely credit editors for improvements in their works during the revisions process. They cite many examples where they were reluctant to accept editors' suggestions but now appreciate the wisdom of the editors' suggested changes. They name names. They proffer thanks. When authors discuss editors and their revisions, what also emerges is a host of practical writing tips that merit consideration by fellow writers, including their admission of being "guilty as charged"-letting their own stubbornness stand in the way of a better book. But it is difficult to throttle back on the authorial tendency to strike a defensive pose when deficiencies are pointed out in what has seemed a well-polished new manuscript after so many revisions already and changes are also suggested, sometimes significant changes.
     As Anthony Doerr puts it, "Every writer wants to hear his or her editor say, 'It's perfect, you're a genius, don't touch a semi-colon.' So there is an initial moment when her notes come back that revision is absolutely a disappointment. You feel you have given her a perfectly functioning machine and she wants you to take the whole damned thing apart and lay it on the garage floor and swap around some parts and remove some others and cast a bunch of new ones from scratch.
     "So it's initially overwhelming. But then, as you begin to take the book apart and hack out extraneous parts and reassemble it anew, you see that she is helping you make the machine sleeker, smoother, more efficient and very soon you become addicted to this sort of feedback. Facing the world without an editor is terrifying. A good editor like mine (Nan Graham of Scribner)... helped me see things I was wholly unable to see on my own and the work was far better for it."
     Marie Brenner of New York City has worked with many different editors through her long and illustrious career as a journalist and book author. Her work at Vanity Fair, where she is a writer-at-large, includes the startling expose piece on the tobacco industry that later became "The Insider," the gripping 1999 film starring Russell Crowe. But Brenner has also written biography ("House of Dreams: The Bingham Family of Louisville") and, most recently, memoir ("Apples & Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found"). Brenner has worked with some of the most illustrious editors in the country and is stalwart in expressing gratitude for how they have helped improve her work.
     Brenner emphasizes, "I love the revisions stage. It's puzzle-solving and a chance to rethink, hone and discard. A pile of pages for me is the happy phase of all projects. It says-almost, almost. And the great pleasure is that I am out of the prison of solitude, getting now to beg help from those I trust-my editors.
     "It has been my luck to have had the joy of learning from true genius editors: most recently, Sarah Crichton-and Jason Epstein, Wayne Lawson, Graydon Carter, Tina Brown. The list of those I cannot say enough about is longer, but each has nudged, criticized and made me smarter. Whatever I have done has been in collaboration. That is often said, but it is a truism which also happens to be especially important at this moment. . .in the new world of e books and writerly apps. It's hard not to think we are losing something precious-the twilight of the gods.
     "How about: Red pencils, text covered with laser zingers-'ZZZZZ. I'm asleep here,' Jason Epstein once scribbled in his elegant hand after one especially dull section of 'House of Dreams.' 'Next are you going to tell us who won World War II?' Sarah Crichton sees into the bones of text like no other-moving sentences and sections with an eloquent 'What if?' And then you suddenly see something in an entirely different and perfect way."
     "Paco's Story," the second novel by Chicago native Larry Heinemann, won the National Book Award in 1987 and has gone on to become one of the classic novels of the Vietnam War, with its searing portrait of a wounded combat vet working as a dishwasher in a Texas town after being the sole survivor of an infantry company massacre. But Heinemann readily points out that it was the suggestion of editor Pat Strachan that saved his authorial posterior by forcing him to reconsider the novel's ending. That is just one of the lessons about revisions that Heinemann imparts to his students these days at Texas A. & M. University where he is writer-in-residence.

GETTING IT RIGHT

     Heinemann says, "The first impulse for 'story' is the best-the revelation, the sparkle, the oomph-but rewriting is where the money is, which is what I tell my students. Aside from being part of the 'job,' rewriting is a pleasure. You get to 'see' the story again (and again and again), and get it right, as in letter perfect; let's not leave anything out. Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug, and sometimes finding the right word takes a minute...
     "When I was working to finish 'Paco's Story,' my editor (Pat Strachan) let me know that the last chapter was too much of a Hollywood ending. So I set 100 pages aside and completely rethought the end of the story. 'Paco the Sneak' worked out much better than the sentimental baloney I had in mind. Pat was right, but then she was pretty much always right. Thanks, Pat."
     Gratitude from writers for the work of their editors turns out to be much more common than usually thought, especially considering the potential for heated disputes and bruised egos over manuscript changes recommended or ultimately made. Non-fiction author Marc Leepson credits editor Chad Conway for making a suggestion on "Saving Monticello" that has influenced each of his books ever since. As Leepson explains, "He advised me that I should never assume a reader knows a newly introduced person, even someone who will only make a brief appearance, and so I should provide a brief bio of said person. He was correct and I did it in that book and the ones that followed. And readers (and reviewers) have pointed to that as a strength in my books."
     Mark Nykanen credits editor Deb Smith with prompting a profound change in his recent eco-thriller, "Primative." Nykanen recalls, "Deb said she thought I needed to come up with something that would nudge readers a little more into the corner of the radical environmentalists who are a huge part of the story. Immediately, I mean in seconds, I thought of methane and its potentially devastating effects on climate. Methane's threat provided a great-and highly plausible-element for a novel with strong thriller elements; but it also meant moving lots of tiles in the mosaic. And once you move even a single tile, the whole picture shifts. So I worked two months to layer in the methane angle. But when I was done, I felt Deb's suggestion had led me to write an even more powerful story (the author says modestly). I think that's an example of great editing: Deb loved the book, but thought I could do more with the story. She was right."
     Not all changes recommended by editors are accepted by authors, of course. Anna Quindlen, the revision despiser, says she generally rejects 30 percent of the changes in her novels suggested by editor Kate Medina who, as Quindlen acknowledges, "brings a fresh set of eyes. Since I trust her judgement, I usually trust her instincts. She does annotations on the manuscript and then provides detailed notes on things she thinks should be sharpened, deleted, enlarged, changed. I usually do about 70 percent of what she suggests, and the book is better for it."
     This push-pull collaboration between authors and editors-what is accepted and what is rejected during revisions-can still produce both regret and relief even years later. Jacqueline Mitchard still has those opposing reactions to what was decided during revisions with two of her novels-"Cage of Stars" and "Still Summer." As she remembers: "I absolutely loved the prologue in 'Cage of Stars,' but it is famous said, and with reason, that no really good book needs a prologue. Catherine Ryan Hyde ('Pay It Forward') reviewed this novel and she said precisely this: It was an almost-perfect novel, but should not have had a prologue. And so, while I loved the writing, it should have come out. I was told by a very smart editor it should have come out. I was headstrong.
     "In another case, my editor argued forcefully against an ending I love. After a harrowing story, it was funny, light, well-written, very Nora Ephron-ish. I finally gave up and took out that pretty ending. My editor, again, was so absolutely right. The tearing ambiguity of the ending of 'Still Summer' is what makes this book good."

SIGNIFICANT CHANGES

     Whoever makes the changes during revisions-whether it is the author or the editor or both-there is no doubt that the revision process has significantly altered many books, usually for the better. Characters are dropped, points of view compressed, narrators changed, new beginnings discovered, writing style honed. That is when, more often than not, cutting is the real priority. Karen Fisher professes her love for "the beautiful Delete key," saying, "I love to whack off the boring beginnings and ends of scenes, cut out unnecessary exposition, kill the clunky dialogue, and just let all the better sentences hang out and party together. Deleting is where I remember that not saying something can be more interesting than saying it. It's also the easiest way to maintain quality. I would always rather have no word than the wrong word, no line than a bad line."
     There are abundant examples of significant changes made during revisions. That was when Jim Lynch added a raunchy teen sidekick for Miles, the beloved kid protagonist in his much-noticed debut novel, "The Highest Tide" ("When I decided to give him a sex-obsessed buddy named Phelps, the next draft suddenly had the coming-of-age levity it needed"). That was when Laila Lalami cut the points-of-view in "Secret Son" from two characters to one; when Harry Groome ditched the investment banker narrator in "Wing Walking" ("he was a distraction and all he did was slow the story down so I zapped him on the spot").
     Revisions were also when Floyd Skloot finally figured out how turn a series of disparate essays into a coherent memoir, "In the Shadow of Memory." It was when Timothy Egan shaped the language to make it mirror his subject matter in "The Worst Hard Time," his portrait of the Dust Bowl that won the National Book Award ("make the prose as lean as possible-chiseled, hard, like the Dust Bowl itself").
     It was when Donald Ray Pollock scrapped the novella that was going to be the centerpiece of his first short story collection set in the Rust Belt environs of Knockemstiff, Ohio. As he says, "I was working on the title story, 'Knockemstiff.' I was trying for something very long (mostly because my stories are so short). I was up around 45 pages and had turned it into a crime drama with kidnapping and rape and murder. However, I soon realized that was just too much-there's already loads of violence in the book-and I decided the story needed to be more subtle, that it was really about Knockemstiff and the main character's loneliness. I began again, this was maybe the fifth draft, keep just the opening paragraph with the storekeeper and a later scene where two tourists from California pull up to the gas pumps. Out of the 45 pages, maybe a page and a half survived the cut."
     And it was during revisions that Garth Stein finally figured out a crucial problem in what would become his breakout bestseller. As Stein recalls, "'The Art of Racing in the Rain' has a very specific, limited narrator: a dog. We can only see what the dog sees. In an early draft, Denny, the master, dropped off Enzo, the dog, at home and then left to go argue with his in-laws about the custody of his daughter. We stayed with Enzo for this interaction, and so we didn't see it. Later, Denny returned home without his daughter.
"In revisions, I was able to look at the arc of the novel, and I realized something was terribly wrong. Denny would never leave his daughter with her grandparents. He simply wouldn't do it. I allowed it to happen, but that was my mistake as a writer, not Denny's as a character. I was not being true to Denny.
     "The reason I allowed it to happen was because I never fully imagined the encounter, and so I didn't feel the depth of emotion. So I decided to have Denny bring Enzo along for the ride. With Enzo there, I could see the anger and the fear and the profound emotional depth of the interaction between Denny and his in-laws. Of course, Denny leaves with his daughter, which triggers some very serious events in the plot. That's what I mean by the writer serving the text. The first draft, I write for me. All other drafts, I write for my story."

CHANGED PAPERBACK

     Jon Krakauer, the inveterate reviser, even had the rare opportunity to research and write new material for the upcoming paperback edition of his best-selling "Where Men Win Glory," his intense look at the life and death of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger who was killed in Afghanistan. As Krakauer relates, "Shortly after I turned in the final, much-revised manuscript, President Obama nominated General Stanley McChrystal to run the war in Afghanistan. My manuscript included some disturbing stuff about McChrystal's central role in the Army's attempt to conceal the fact that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire. But McChrystal had been careful to hide the extent of his involvement in the cover-up, so in the first edition of the book I didn't have enough hard evidence to expose the full magnitude of his perfidy.
     "Then, last June, when McChrystal was nominated to be the commander in Afghanistan, he had to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and during that hearing he inadvertently revealed some damning, previously unacknowledged details about his involvement in the Tillman incident. Armed with this new information, as well as additional information I got from a belated response to a Freedom of Information Act request, I was able to make substantial revisions to the paperback edition of the book (which will be released this summer), bolstering my case against General McChrystal. It was a lot of work, but it was very satisfying."
     Revisions may be the forgotten chapter in book writing for people outside publishing, but not among authors themselves. Revisions are the second chance for better work, the third chance, the fourth and more. Their payoff is immediate, tangible, rewarding, real. So authors revere what revisions can mean to a book, even with all the changes and hassles they often entail. Averted problems remain the very best kind of problems. Revisions, authors know, can provide their sweet cure.


John Douglas Marshall writes a bi-monthly column for Indie Reader. He is the author of several non-fiction books, including an award-winning memoir, "Reconciliation Road." He was the longtime book critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer until it ceased publication last year. Marshall can be reached at: jdmwriter@gmail.com