My writing: the discipline in the editing - it's not always first thought, best thought

Yesterday I wrote of “the passion in the prose” – writing a manuscript. After the passion though is the long haul of self-editing and revision. A work is never completely ended. All work can be fine-tuned, but usually a publisher’s deadline puts a finite end to the work, even though the author really does want to have another edit. But once it’s done, it’s done!

I am reminded of Hemingway, as I sit underneath a black-and-white photograph of him, taken in the 1920s in Paris. He rewrote “A Farewell to Arms” 39 times. He said he was “getting the words right.” Like Hemingway, it takes me a long time to get the words right. Then an editor changes a word or phrase in the publishing process and I want to rewrite the whole paragraph, or change the editor’s work. It is always a work in process.

There is some pleasure in the revision process though. Working through each paragraph, changing it, deleting it, rewriting it, transferring it to another section of the novel, conducting more research to check the facts, and so on.

Personally I edit on the computer screen, up to a point. After several edits I like to print chapters, or the entire work, so that I can see it in hard copy. It makes it easier to highlight, circle, write over the existing text, and add notes to send it to another section. It makes it easier to have chapter X and chapter Y side-by-side to check the threads of a theme. It makes it easier to crumple a piece of paper and throw it away. I edit just to be sure that the protagonist’s uncle has the same description, or a description adds to his personality, or is consistent with previous writing. And working on hard copy is less tiring on the eyes – a break from the screen can be quite a relief, and enables a review in another perspective.

There is also pleasure in the discipline in, as Hemingway said, getting it right. Was it what I really wanted to say? Is it clear to the reader? Have I added too many adjectives? Does the paragraph flow from the previous one? There is much to consider with each edit: the spelling, the grammar, the consistency, the facts, the threads, the themes, the plot, and so on.

And often there is much pain. Probably more frustration than actual pain, for it is not the torment but the continual search for a “true” sentence – true in the Hemingway sense: “A writer’s problem does not change. It is always how to write truly and having found out what is true to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it.” That’s not to say that Hemingway was always brilliant; he had both praise and criticism, as every author receives. And for every author, the edit is for the publisher, the critic, the reader, and the author – it’s just the percentages that alter.