Thursday, April 2, 2015

REVISIONS! And Other Big Projects by Anne Nesbet

This is a picture of the letter I just got from my amazingly perceptive Candlewick editor, Kaylan Adair, about things I might want to fix in Cloud & Wallfish, a historical spy-vs-spy novel for kids that's set in East Berlin in 1989. Notice something? THIS LETTER IS SEVENTEEN PAGES LONG!! And single-spaced, by the way! That's a lot of letter.

I spread it out artistically on the floor and took this picture, because a letter like this is a challenge and a treasure, both at once, and I wanted to document that somehow. Think how much effort and patience and perceptiveness and love go into an umpteen-page editorial letter! No book could be luckier. At the same time, think how much effort and patience and love are going to be required from the writer (aka "me") as she works through the points brought up in this letter and gets those revisions done by May first. Nope, no book could be more about to be torn to pieces and reassembled.

But as I begin this month of hard work, I thought I'd talk a little bit about how I tackle formidable tasks, like revisions--and ask you how you do the same.

STEP ONE (historically). Read It and Weep. The nice folks on Twitter almost always prescribe an immediate dose of wine and chocolate when an editorial letter arrives. I have to say that these days I don't even bother to weep. I'm just plain too much in awe of the work the editor has put into finding the weak spots in my manuscript to want to weep. The book is going to end up being so much better than it is now! That's amazing! So my current STEP ONE is simply Read It and Move On to Step Two.

STEP TWO. Let It Rest. In the past STEP TWO involved more flailing about, of the "What? What? But I thought that bit was good!" variety. Now I know to let it rest. For a few days, I leave the letter itself alone. That doesn't mean I'm not beginning to work, though. The first reading (STEP ONE) is enough to give me a feeling for what I'm going to be facing, so I start immersing myself back into the research (or the world-building). Often I've been waiting a while for the editor's letter, which means that often I've has been working hard on other projects. STEP TWO's rest phase lets me sink back into the world of this story.

STEP THREE. Turn the Letter into a List. This is the real reading of the letter. My resistance (thanks to STEP TWO) has been side-stepped, overcome, or outsmarted. I print out the letter and read it bravely and carefully, and as I go, I turn each of the editor's comments, questions, or suggestions into an item on a massive revision checklist. This particular 17-page letter is now a 5-page checklist. I'm not yet officially finding solutions to the problems--hey, I'm just making a list. And yet, miraculously, some solutions are beginning to elbow their way into the world. I note the ideas as they pop up.

STEP FOUR. Tackle One Chunk of the List at a Time. Fortunately, I love brainstorming. I take one plot problem, and I wrestle it to the ground, using pen and paper and strong tea and occasional conversations with friends, because explaining something to another person can really help ideas come together, even when that other (patient) person is just saying, "unh hunh, unh hunh, yeah!" The main thing during STEP FOUR is not to freak out about other parts of the list when you're chipping away at one particular item. STEP FOUR has to be repeated over and over and over for days and weeks. This is April, fourth month of the year: STEP FOUR month! By the end of STEP FOUR, I have a new version of the long checklist--now it's a list of solutions and fixes and reasons why so-and-so does such-and-such.

And that brings us to STEP FIVE. Quick, Transfer Those Fixes Into the Book. Finally I get to start checking things off my list, item by item, as I fold the fixes into the story. I like to have everything completely worked out in my head and in checklist form before I start messing with the text. Do unforeseen problems arise as my utopian solutions meet the actually existing prose? Oh, yes, they do. But if I've done my STEP FOUR work well, STEP FIVE isn't really that terrible.

STEP SIX. Make It Lovely. There should, ideally, be another pause between STEP FIVE and STEP SIX, but by this point in the process, time is almost always short. Still let me suggest that it is wise to try to get a good night's sleep before beginning to polish all that prose.

STEP SEVEN. NO, NO, NO! BACK AWAY FROM THAT SEND BUTTON. Have Someone Read the New Version First. Because by now, frankly, you are probably pretty groggy. Get somebody less groggy than thou to take a look. When that somebody says, "Looks great!"--then yay! You can move on to . . . .

STEP EIGHT. Off It Goes! Ah, but don't get too emotional. It'll be back, and probably with another long  letter, too.  And then it will come back again. And again.
Done????
In fact, just today I sent what I THINK was the last, last, last, last set of corrections along to HarperCollins for THE WRINKLED CROWN, coming out this November.

So that's my process. I'm curious, though: what is yours? How do you tackle enormous tasks and overwhelming projects? Any tips for making progress while remaining sanguine and sane?

11 comments:

  1. This is freaking fantastic! Big revisions always seem daunting at first. Thanks for this!

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    1. Sometimes it seems to me that EVERY stage of writing a book starts off as "daunting"! I am a little less daunted by revisions than I used to be, but I still have to remind myself at the beginning that I've done this before, and it seemed impossible then, and so even if it seems impossible now . . . it isn't!

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  2. Thanks so much for sharing this, Anne! I love that you displayed the revision letter in a pretty way to honor how much work it is for the editor. :-)

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    1. I am just amazed, over and over again, by the work editors put into making books as good as they can possibly be. In academic publishing, the true "editor" is an endangered species, so I am deeply grateful that editing still plays such a central role in children's publishing.

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  3. Thanks for sharing this stage of your work. You must have an amazing editor!

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    1. You know, I have been INCREDIBLY fortunate in my editors! Rosemary Brosnan edited my first two books, The Cabinet of Earths and A Box of Gargoyles. I think of her as the 21st century's answer to Ursula Nordstrom, who edited Harper's "juvenile books" for so many years. (Have you read DEAR GENIUS: THE LETTERS OF URSULA NORDSTROM? It is such an inspiring and encouraging and entertaining book!) Then the main editor for the book coming out this fall, The Wrinkled Crown, was Alexandra Cooper, who misses nothing! Nothing! (No eye is sharper than an editor's eye!) And now Kaylan Adair is editing Cloud & Wallfish, and as I read her comments, I'm again simply in awe. Working with these brilliant editors has been the intellectual highlight of my life. I'm so deeply grateful to them.

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  4. That is almost exactly what I do! I love it! I also adore color-coding the book in Scrivener based on how much work I have to do. I also add comments throughout Scrivener, then count them as I whittle them down, so I feel like I'm getting something done. (Like, hey, today I eradicated 32 comments! Yippee!)

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    1. Caryn, that sounds brilliant. I often produce rough drafts with Scrivener, but I've always converted to Word for editing. I never even thought about adding comments to the Scrivener to check off as I go--what a great idea! I may try that the next time. (And I don't use color-coding enough, either.) Thanks for those tips!

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  5. Anne, oh I can't tell you how timely this is for me as I JUST received such a letter from my editor yesterday for book 2 in my Joshua and the Lightning Road series! And your list is right on. I am digesting this letter right now myself - and then will create a plan of attack to-do-list. And editors do spend so much time on our books, and making it harder for them is having to connect it to other books in the series too.

    After working on other projects it is wonderful to immerse yourself in your book you handed off weeks or months earlier. I love your idea about brainstorming with pen and pencil for those "chunks" of areas to work on. I love to do "passes" on each area through the book such as character arc, repetitive conversations, narrative flow, sentence structure, world building, etc. This makes it manageable while also allowing me to check off things on that list and feel like I am accomplishing at the same time. Good luck on your revisions!

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    1. Donna, good luck on your revisions, too! I hope you're making progress already. I'm working through the biggest items on my list and worrying a lot about taxes being do next week, which feels like the sort of interruption I really don't need right now. :) (Of course, when does one EVER want to do taxes?)

      Rooting for you as you work through Book 2!

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  6. I love, love, love the respect and gratitude you have for your editor. Isn't it amazing how much hard work they put into our books to make us look better?

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Thanks for adding to the mayhem!