If you’ve fallen in love with your manuscript, I’m guessing you’ve finished your first draft and haven’t quite managed to move into the editing phase. Time to get over yourself, at least when it comes to your writing. But it’s not always easy to see the flaws in your own work, especially when you’ve written enough pages to fill a book.
So what now? Morri Stewart, my part-time assistant at the One Stop Writing Shop, recounts her experience which, yes, includes meeting me:
I suspect, no, I’m pretty darn sure, the writing process is different for every individual. That being said, there is commonality to the creative process. For example, let’s look at that Great American Novel idea. Who is your audience? How does your story flow? How are you forwarding your storyline within the chapter?
Sometimes the rewrite, or rewrites, can feel endless. The book will never be done, you think, and, in a sense, you are right. You could spend the rest of your days on rewrites. It might even be safer that way. No public critique, just pages and pages of your personal great American novel taking up space in the closet. No writer wants that.
Enter Linden Gross, writing coach extraordinaire and editing guru.
Although Linden works with most of her clients over the phone since they’re spread across the country, she happens to live in my home town. So on a warm spring day, she suggested we meet for lunch at her home. I was nicely surprised that she would offer this personable and a private setting. As a thank you for her hospitality, I picked up a handful of tulips, handing them to her when she greeted me at her door. It was friendship at first sight and one of the best meals I have ever had. A salad on a grand scale with all the fixings.
During the course of this meeting, not only did we further suss out our compatibility, we made a working game plan. Linden proposed that I send her my completed (to date) novel. She would read it and get back to me with her thoughts. Since writing and editing are both so subjective, the critique would allow me to gauge how she thinks, she pointed out, and to make sure we were on the same page before I invested a lot of time and money working with her.
So I handed over my manuscript. I knew she was headed out of town and already immersed in a huge co-authoring project (yes, she does that too….). I waited. I checked my mail. My twitchy fingers itched to text a “How’s it going on the critique?” A month went by and the critique came as an attachment. I ran to the printer and watched as 12 pages of thorough notes and thoughts fed out onto the tray.
Skimming through Linden’s critique, I was instantly impressed at the clarity of her professionalism. She had suggested chapter flow changes to create a tighter story line. There was a mini lecture on ‘showing verses telling,’ as well as conceptual problems in which the reader would be lost. There were paragraphs on active and passive verbs with examples pulled from my writing. There were even examples of redundancy of words I had missed and missed and missed. (I crack myself up sometimes.)
The challenge became this: Where do I begin? How do I take this information and go through my baby, AGAIN, to make it better, tighter, greater? I can do this, I thought. I can do this without calling Linden. (Not even an “oops, I butt dialed you and by the way…?” No.)
As I turned to the pages of my manuscript to begin the nit-picking look at passive and aggressive verbs, I realized quickly that without a clear storyline, the little edits didn’t matter. Yet. I needed to start big and go little.
First came the organization, or re-organization of chapters. Without a great hook, the reader would not be pulled in by their curiosity. It became a question of, “Where does the story truly begin?” I was surprised to find the beginning of my book somewhere in the middle of my manuscript. I realized that in creating this new hook, the reader could be left wondering, Who is this desperate character and why are they pacing, near tears and on the verge of throwing themselves off the balcony? That would keep them reading.
Once I pulled that prize chapter to the front of my manuscript, I was left with a hole in my story that needed to be filled. Rather than see this as an obstacle to overcome, I realized that I had been given a new opportunity to further enhance and develop one of my characters and share with my readers a tiny backstory that brought the weave of the tale even tighter.
Big stuff done, I was now ready for the nit-picky fine tuning.
I never did call Linden with questions. But we are having lunch at her house pretty soon. She has promised to make us a great salad. I promised to bring a new and improved manuscript…and a bouquet of flowers to grace the table. Now, that’s a good deal.
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