Vacation Imagination

 

John Clark taking a shot at the concept of editing. I’ll begin with an analogy, courtesy of our recent week stay at an off the grid cottage in Perry, Maine, something we’ve done most summers since 2008. When you start the process of preparing for a vacation, you’re likely to start imagining all the cool things you’ll do: hiking, visiting local stores, sitting on the chairs overlooking the small cove, stopping at favorite libraries (in my case the Peavey Memorial Library, and The Calais Free Library) to hit their book sales, discovering new hiking trails, enjoying the incredible silence by the sea, etc. Consider this the writing of a new book.

In order for all this to go anywhere near smoothly, there’s the list-making, purchasing of necessities, meal planning, packing, double-checking everything before leaving, etc. Consider this the editing process. If this isn’t done carefully, the trip is likely to do sideways more than once. I remember a trip to this same area with a friend several years before I met my wife. We took off without any real plan and paid no attention to the weather. On our second night, we were at Cobscook Bay State Park, trying to erect a tent in pouring rain and howling wind. It was neither fun, nor a pretty sight.

Now it’s true that you can pay a travel agent a commission to plan your vacation, and the same concept is true for some writers, hiring a professional to edit your work. If you’re like me, you’re stubborn and possibly parsimonious. You’d rather do the dirty grunt work yourself.

What are my suggestions, then?

1-Avoid the impulse to jump right back into a piece you just finished. Sure this works for home-made bread (as long as you have jam or butter on hand), but this is a case where absence makes the eye (and ear) grow sharper.

2-Pay attention to what I call the curse of proximity. If your critical eye starts seeing a particular word too frequently, do a find and replace, without initially replacing any. If you see too many of them, or any that are too close together, consider this as part of your book surgery.

3-Read your manuscript aloud. If it sounds awkward to you, think how it will strike potential readers.

4-If you use Libre Office like I do, there’s a neat add-on that allows you to highlight a section of text that your computer will read back to you. This allows you to hear it in a voice other than yours.

5-I heard this at the recent Maine Crime Wave conference and think it’s helpful. One panelist said “Even when you think it’s a polished piece, seriously consider removing one sentence from each page.

6-If you’re lucky to have an experienced novelist in your family like I am (https://kateclarkflora.com/) you can have them read your stuff and help make it better. It’s hard to argue with the expertise of a sibling who has more that twenty books in print.

Hope some of this is useful to a reader or two.