John Green on book editors

Author John Green spills the beans about working with a book editor. Green feels they may be more important than writers. There is a case to be made for that sentiment.

Marc Jaffe on editors: "A competent editor is a publisher in microcosm, able to initiate and follow a project all the way through."

If you work with an amazing book editor, don't take the relationship for granted or complain about the costs/turn-around time/critique notes. Be happy the editor devotes himself or herself to your work. There should be a National Editor Appreciation Week . . . or at least a day.

a quick fix - dialogue that packs a punch

Natural sounding dialogue can be a struggle for many writers. To get that "right sound" to your characters' dialogue, try this quick fix:

Write a conversation between characters in whatever way you want; then go back through and strip out words to create shorter, choppier sentences, keeping in the interesting essentials but cutting away the unnecessary "fillers" found in so much "wooden" or "clunky" dialogue. Play around with using contractions and sentence fragments. Ask yourself, how can I say the same thing with less (not more) words? You'll find your dialogue will become faster, sound more natural,and pack a harder punch.

Keep the literary faith, friends. And keep writing.

how I spent my weekend

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft"
- H. G. Wells

I love editing someone else's writing. A friend told me once it was the perfect job for me. I get paid for telling others what's wrong with what they wrote. Of course, I hope I'm not that crass about how I approach helping others edit and revise, but, I must admit, it does suit me. Perhaps it's all those years of grading student work or my "Miss Know-it-all" attitude, which I have, mostly unsuccessfully, tried to kick over the years.

When it comes down to it, I like helping people learn to write well. I can't say I'm magnificent at it all the time, but it appears to be a skill so many struggle with and are afraid of. It makes me happy when I see them improve or they feel more satisfied with their manuscript. Somehow I believe the world becomes more orderly, more aligned, when I edit.

I spent this weekend editing a manuscript for a healthcare company. Even though it was a rush job, leaving no free time for leisure pursuits, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I get off using the Word Track Changes function. What weird creature am I?

the scissors and the pencil

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."
Truman Capote

Cutting passages and scenes you love, writing you've labored over with the sort of devotion and intensity a new mother shows her young,can be gut-wrenching. The only rule for me in writing is this: Does it work? If it doesn't, and many times we know it doesn't (even when we are in love with the sound of our own words), we must take out our scissors. Do it. Cut it. Cut it out all at once and be done with it. One sign of a good writer is the ability to see objectively, to know what works and what doesn't, and when it doesn't, to cut without mercy.

To edit is to edit is to edit is to .... Thanks, Gertrude

Today's task? Editing
Today's thought? "I try to leave out the parts that people skip." Elmore Leonard