I am in the process of a new (8th) draft of Under Shōko’s Bed, making the changes suggested by my editor, Fran Lebowitz. I found her through reedsy.com, a very useful platform. She has edited best-sellers, and before that spent years as a literary agent. The edit was a long time coming; I first contacted Fran in March, but she was booked up into July, so I waited four months. I waited because her testimonials were superlative. And it was a productive wait; I wrote the first draft of a whole new novel.
This is my first professional edit, so I was not sure what to expect. Fran’s editing process is a little old school, but it has worked well. I sent her a PDF manuscript of the novel. She printed it out (400 pages) and then sat down and worked through it, pen in hand. When she was finished, she scanned it and sent me a PDF of the manuscript with its handwritten notes.
I had imagined Fran telling me that my punctuation needed work, too many ellipses and em dashes, for example, and that I too often stray into passive sentence constructions. I thought every page would likely be marked up with myriad changes large and small. What I really feared, though, was that Fran would tell me, “Some people were never meant to write. Count yourself one of them.” Instead, she sent me a message halfway through the edit: “Hi, your writing is sublime! I’m making so few notes that my conscience is screaming at me. … I am so impressed and must say you do seem ready for prime time, no kidding.” She believes in my writing enough that she is willing to make introductions to agent and publisher contacts!
When Fran’s edit was finished, and I saw her notes, I found that most of my pages had no marks at all. It seems that my punctuation and grammar are actually quite good. And Fran did not try to change my voice. She did, though, have a few pointed criticisms about pacing, the treatment of the subject of depression, and an overabundance of tech and art detail. So now I am fixing things. I have cut the first and last chapters by 30 and 60 percent, respectively. That is still less than the 50 and 70-90 percent that Fran recommended. I have cut out a few scenes entirely. I have cut technical details. I am just starting the process of removing enough of the art content that the reader does not feel she is being subjected to an “art class.” The cuts so far total 7400 words, 7 percent of the novel. It’s hard, but I keep reminding myself of Stephen King’s words in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
With each cut, I can see the novel getting tighter. I loved the details, but the reader would not have. In the end, if I want Under Shōko’s Bed to touch people, they have to read it, and Fran reinforced that the plot has to move, the tension has to increase and the pace has to quicken as the novel approaches its climax, and then it needs to end promptly.
There is a lot more work to do. I’ll post again in two weeks to report how the rewrite is progressing.