What I ought to have said on that Fourth Street panel

[pameladean]

This year Fourth Street left room to drag people onto panels at the last moment. I had an hour and a half's warning of the first one, but missed completely the moment when I was put on the Sunday afternoon panel about how you know when to stop revising. skzb reasonably felt that, given the situation my book and I are in, I should be on this panel. I didn't have any preparation time at all, however. Furthermore, everybody else was talking about revision driven by the writer or at most by beta readers. What I had to say about that wasn't really different from what the other panelists truepenny, matociquala, and skzb himself) had to say.

Unfortunately, at the time I was in the foggy, foggy middle of formulating what was making me most uneasy about the project of cutting the 375,000 words of Going North and Abiding Reflection down to 100,000 words. I was over being grieved that I had to remove half a dozen characters, and had at least become calloused to cutting a lot of scenes that I loved madly and wanted other people to read. But I hadn't yet realized what was still making me twitchy. I kept thinking, though I didn't think of saying this on the panel, because I don't do well in realtime, that what I needed was to recognize at what point the book was no longer like a book that I would write. This isn't very useful advice to beginning writers in any case, because they don't know yet what the books they will write are going to look like. Every time I cut down a description, or removed a convoluted section of dialogue, or started with the action rather than moving into it crabwise, I would wonder if I had reached the point where the book didn't sound like me. I've always tried to keep all of such tendencies under control, not wanting a book entirely composed of them, but I thought I could go too far.

The problem was elsewhere, though. It was thematic. This book is about a lot of things, but among the ones I am aware of are such diverse elements as family, whether chosen or biological, and in particular mother-daughter relationships; identity, including both disguise and misidentification, and in general the matter of what I've heard Graydon describe as "being present as oneself in the world"; how community is formed and maintained; how romantic relationships are formed and maintained; and how all smaller relationships fit into communities. I just deleted a long conversation between Frances and Arry about why they never visited Arry's paternal grandmother. It's not directly pertinent to the plot, though it acts indirectly on the plot by informing Arry's actions. Her actions are somewhat overdetermined anyway, so that wasn't an issue, but I suddenly saw through the overt structure of the book and into the thematic underlayer and became seriously worried that I was doing a lot of damage to it. I manage that layer primarily by intuition rather than painstakingly thinking it out as I do plot (such as my plots are), and I felt that I might have done something crazy that would result in an earthquake.

I guess we'll see.

Pamela

Comments

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

Oh boy.

As a self-centered reader ... this brief description makes me want to read this book even more. (Especially in the long form, someday, if that's still something you plan to do.) It's got almost all of my favorite thematic elements.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Nodding (and thinking, as I do some radical revision)

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Interesting stuff. I have to think about it. Say, for the next year.

[pameladean]

I am so befuddled that the full meaning of this remark only recently got through. Excellent. I can't wait.

P.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff. I'm busy turning 130,000 words into 100,000 words (of which at least a third will be new), i.e. my dissertation into a monograph, so have had this kind of question on my mind the last month or so.

[pameladean]

Ouch. How's that going? As I remarked below to oursin, I'd think this kind of revision would be much, much worse for non-fiction, where you have an argument to make and where there are actual facts available.

P.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Well, I lost my argument mid-way and have had to regroup a little.

[pameladean]

I hate it when that happens. (Seriously, I know what you mean.)

P.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I believe you! It's the transition from a dissertation that involves surveying everything knowable about my topic while also making an argument about significance, to producing a publishable book making a direct argument about my topic.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

In my experience, turning a dissertation/thesis into a monograph is less arduous because you just have to cut out vast swathes of thesis-ese from the prose style, and also there are huge chunks of stuff you have to put in the thesis to show you have done the reading and engaged with the arguments of the authorities, which can be reduced relatively painlessly to two sentences and a footnote (although it's sometimes quite a long footnote). Or whole sections that you can publish separately as articles, and refer to...

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think the whole thematic thing, or "what is this book really about?" is a useful thing to think of about half way through, and again when doing a fix at the end, and otherwise best left submerged. I've never had to do what you're doing, thank goodness, because I'd be even worse at it.

[pameladean]

Yes, I only think about it in a vague way when I'm stuck between two choices of how to proceed, or want an example or a description or a background detail. If I happen to have an inkling of the theme and have a choice that will reinforce it, then I'll chuck that in there. Some of them come back out again at the end and some stay.

I am actually finding this process instructive, but I sincerely hope that what I learn will sink back into the intuitive part of my writing, or I will be very confused.

P.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

As a self-centered reader ... this brief description makes me want to read this book even more. (Especially in the long form, someday, if that's still something you plan to do.) It's got almost all of my favorite thematic elements.

Me, too.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Man. And the bitter thing is that I want to read the original book you wrote. Not that I won't read this version, but I do so very much hope the long form makes it out there someday.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Me too.

I found it quite bad enough when a journal edited an article of mine with a chisel and hacksaw in order to make my deathless perfectly adequate, if UK-English, prose conform in a clonking way to some (US academic) style guide, rather than assuming that if the sentences were actually coherent and non-obscure of meaning, this was a pointless and timewasting exercise.

Not to mention, the losing of a lot of socially- and period-contextual stuff in the biography to get it down to desired length.

Much commiseration.

[pameladean]

I'd think this kind of wnolesale hacking would be even more dreadful in non-fiction. My stories are malleable (characters, not so much), but the facts of the matter are REAL. Oi.

P.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

O well, doing the contextual stuff in detail has provided me with an entirely new project of research and writing spinning off.

I also do tend to deplore that thing that some non-fiction writers do which is put in stuff just because they have found it, even if it's tangential or not very interesting.

[pameladean]

Fiction writers do that too! "I suffered for my research, and you have to suffer too."

I'm glad you have an entirely new project. That is always a fine thing.

P.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

They certainly do! - have just finished a 1940s Charlotte Yonge tribute novel in which the research is definitely showing (especially the conversation, or rather monologue with interjections, about the introduction and development of ironclads in the Royal Navy). Immense amount of period detail of the kind that would never have featured in the original! (just as anyone writing a novel now, set in Jane Austen's days, would be obliged to mention the Napoleonic Wars.)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

The cut stuff isn't GONE gone, right? It exists somewhere in a file. Maybe you could do something with that one day, or (as several here seem to want) make the uncut version available as well.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

The book you wrote (as opposed to the one its being cut down into) sounds very interesting. Enough so that I hope they'll keep your 'director's cut' version available as an epub option when the other version goes to print.

[jphekman.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about Going North the other day, and thinking about saying this to you: The Secret Country trilogy is my favorite set of books in the world. I put off re-reading it because I want to savor it whenever I come to it. The fact that you are not able to write the sequel to it that you want to makes me unutterably sad. I know you have certainly already thought about publishing Going North privately, but I want to add my voice to the others which must be encouraging you to do it. I don't know exactly why you are still trying to make it fit your publisher's mold; I am sure you have very good reasons to do so. But I wonder if things are gradually coming to the point where those reasons seem less and less good.

You should do what you think is right, of course. But I wish to be selfish for a moment and let you know how very, very much I hope you will just publish Going North as it is, through some service like Lulu. I would pay a great deal of money for it (and as I am a student and live mostly on borrowed money, that is saying something).

Good luck.

Jessica

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

We likes being vacuumed, we does!

Mary Anne in Kentucky