Is it all about sex?

Hmm. Now that's got your attention let me talk about line editing, which is less interesting than sex even though it also has two participants (mostly, anyway) and the insertion and removal of things, with conclusions that are not always mutually pleasing. Your words, dear writer, are NOT actually holy writ sent by divine providence and unalterable and inflexible. In fact, no matter how beautifully they read, it IS possible that, if they were lost, you could write them again, and possibly better (I did not believe this. I found it out, however by losing a file. Being forced to rewrite what I considered some of the most brilliant prose I'd ever put together. Not selling it... and some years later, clearing out the manuscript cupboard and finding the original _and_ the second version on paper. Firstly, I failed to work out which was which, and eventually decided that better one must be the original... (and both of them stank mildly) and then realising that um, (as was almost inevitable) I'd got it wrong and it was the second that I preferred. Trust me on this, every writer that ever breathed has written a difficult piece that he or she marvelled at, and thought a direct and personal intervention of the muse speaking through their fingers. I went and had a chat with the Muse of Prose, where she was having a smoko behind the Parthenon. She's a little past her sell-by date now and becoming rather confused. She's spent the last 20 centuries inspiring ladies of the night in an entirely different direction, and letting writers muddle through on their own. Sorry and all that, but you really all do all right without her.

So: it's not Holy Writ (which judging by the versions of the Bible may be more flexible than you think too) and yes, Editors (particularly callow young ones wishing to stamp their authority on you - I had one of those a few years back) can be ignorant and mess up. But trust me on this too, they're not even in my league when it comes to failing to spot typos and grammos in my own work. My own attitude is ‘line edits do not need my approval before you do them. - send me the final product. I'll line-edit your edited version. (And there is a 99% I won't even notice the corrections).

Now onto the subject of sex. Ah yes, it does have a fascination for most humans, even for those of us for whom it is a spectator sport (which is why I used it in my intro-hook. Show-don't-tell, in action). Apparently, heterosexual males (which I believe is my subclass in categorisation of human or similar simian) think about this subject more than most other sub-classes, so that in a way says if anyone is going to be obsessed with it, I should have an idea what I am talking about. And this is my opinion, and you're entirely free to disagree with it. (In fact I'd love to hear your opinion on it).

It's LESS important than it appears. Sex, sex, sex, sex. It's great for getting our attention, can be good in a book, and sometimes the point of the book... but far from always. We're writing about relationships (and sexual relationships are merely a small subset of that). Interactions between people - which fascinates us because we're a social species, and being ostracised was as much of a death sentence as not breeding. And though I don't know how to break this to some authors... relationships, love even, are not primarily because of sexual attraction. Well, not all the time. It is a part of it, sometimes, but if that's all that it is, have you considered the blow-up version? Much less likely to give you a STD or argue with you.

What brings this to mind was checking on Heinlein's DOOR INTO SUMMER in Wikipedia last night for the Flinders Family Freer blog - I wanted to know how many doors (I remember 12?) Now this a great favorite of mine, a feelgood book I have re-read repeatedly. But the Alexei Panashin quote:
"The romantic situation in this story is a very interesting, very odd one: it is nothing less than a mutual sexual interest between an engineer of thirty and a girl of twelve ('adorable' is Heinlein's word for her), that culminates in marriage after some hop-scotching around in time to adjust their ages a bit."

Gah. And again, with feeling GAH! "Mutual sexual interest" my blue butt. There is about as much "Mutual sexual interest" between Goth and Captain Pausert in Schmitz Witches of Karres. Both sets of characters have planned to marry. This is not Nabokov. This was a perfectly respectable ambition, rather like wanting to be nurse or an entomologist, or a fireman for that matter, when these books were written. Perhaps wanting to have a lifetime relationship with someone who you like, admire or even love is not fashionable any more. But there is more to love than sex. I love my sons. I loved my mum. I cannot think of anything sexually appealing about them however - and that I believe is the norm, not the other way around.

So is Dave being un-PC yet again and is all explained about the non-best-seller status now? ;-)

Changing Hats

Let me begin by wishing everyone in the U. S., and all U. S. citizens abroad, a Happy Fourth of July! Have a safe and fun day.

I want to thank everyone for taking part in yesterday's blog. Just because a new blog post is going up, don't think we're moving on. We'll keep that one going for a bit to give everyone a chance to post and get some feedback.

Now for today's post. As writers, we have lots of different hats we have to wear, and I'm not talking about all the hats we wear in our every day lives -- parent, spouse, employer or employee, etc. No, I'm talking about all the different hats we wear as a writer. Just a few of them are: researcher, story teller, proof-reader, copy editor, market researcher, PR manager. Well, you get my drift. We are all better at some of these than we are at others. But to have a chance to succeed in this profession, we have to be able to move, if not seamlessly at least without too much trouble from one to the other.

Being our own editor is probably the hardest, at least to me, of all the hats we wear. This is when we have to step outside of our comfort zone and divorce ourselves from those 100k-plus words we've written and look at them with critical eyes. We have to keep reminding ourselves that our reader doesn't know what was in our head at the time we wrote that really great scene we love so much. No, we have to go back and make sure all the cookie crumbs are there to foreshadow that scene. Have we said enough or did we say too much? In short, we have to be more than objective as we edit our work, we have to be critical.

First readers are good resources to help with this. But, in the end, that final edit before we send our baby out amongst the strange agents and editors comes from us.

I guess I've been thinking about this a lot this past week because I've been in the edit process on several of my own pieces. I've been doing final edits on a short story that is about to be kicked out of the house to make the rounds. I've been looking at another short that has been out and back several times. Each rejection it's received has been very positive and the editors have asked me to send them something else. It's just that this particular story didn't fit what they are looking for just now. So I've had to look at that story and decide if I wanted to tweak it or send it out to other markets or just file it away for the moment.

Another project I'm working on is about ready to start making the query round of agents and editors. That means working up a query letter -- something I hate to do. I'd much rather just send the completed work, or at least a good sampling of pages and a detailed synopsis -- and synopsis. Actually, it means several versions of the synopsis because agencies and editors have different requirements. Some want a two or three page synopsis. Others look for 10 pages or so. Even others want every chapter, every scene, mentioned. This is one of the places where the researcher hat also has to come on, because the last thing you want is to send the wrong information to an editor or agent. And yes, this requires editing as well; not only for format but for content. Is there a sufficient hook in the query letter to get the editor to look at the enclosed synopsis and pages? Does the synopsis read in an entertaining manner or is it more "and this happened and then this and then this and the end"? Are the enclosed pages well-written, tightly plotted and is the hook firmly planted on that first page so they keep reading and wanting more?

Then there are edits to consider making on a novel that has been making the rounds as well. One editorial assistant, after reading the proposal, synopsis and first 100 pages passed. Why? It wasn't that he didn't like the story. No, it was the point of view that was wrong. For this particular genre, the editor he works with prefers first person over third. Sure, I could change it. It would be time consuming and I'd have lost about a third of the novel, maybe a bit more, that would have to be replaced. So my decision, after talking it over with someone else in the business who I trust, was to leave the novel as is and submit it elsewhere.

In the midst of all this, I have two more novels started -- very different in tone and voice -- and a short story waiting to be written. Did I mention being a writer means knowing how to juggle, at least in your head?

How do you handle the demands of editing? Do you have any secrets or tricks of the trade you use to make it easier?