I’m Peddling As Fast As I Can; Or, That Slice of Heaven-and-Hell Known as “Revisions”

For those who are wondering --- and I understand if no one is (it’s a big world; lotso other stuff about which to wonder): Yes, I’m still working on the manuscript, and yes, I’m almost finished. Truly. I am finally --- FINALLY --- down to the end.

As in: Stretch your arms as far apart as they’ll go. That’s where I started. Now hold your thumb and index finger as close together as you can without them touching. That’s where I am now.

Whew. And: YAY!

But: I’m currently at that almost-the-end stage of the process known as “revisions.”

Whenever a writer says “I’m revising,” those who work in the business (other writers, agents, editors, whoever) nod knowingly and say, with sympathy, “Ohhhh. Good luck!” Emphasis on the sympathetic tone of voice.  

For those who don’t work in the biz, revisions go like this:

First the writer writes the manuscript, in my case a 100,000-word piece of non-fiction based on five years of research. Said writer writes the whole damn thing: Introduction! Chapters! Epilogue if there is one!

And then emails her editor and says “Remember me? The history-of-meat person? I’m finished!” (*1)

And the editor says “Great! Send it along. Let me take a look.”

And six or eight weeks later, give or take a month or two, the editor calls or emails and says “Oh, this is such great stuff! Wow. I’m so impressed! But . . . .”

That’s the abracadabra, not-so-secret word that unlocks the gate that leads to hell: “But . . . .”

The editor articulates that “But” in the form of pages (and pages and pages . . .) of comments and notes --- always emphasizing what a trooper the writer is and what great work this is --- “But:

Please re-write the entire manuscript. And add a new first chapter, and I think the last chapter isn’t really the last chapter, so write a new last chapter.

And so, dear readers, the writer begins her descent into that small slice of hell known as Revisions.

Translation: My poor abandoned blog sits idle and neglected because I’m rewriting the entire manuscript and writing a new first chapter and a new last chapter, the latter of which will likely require still more research, all of which is driving me slowly but inexorably insane.

The good news, however, is that I’ve been revising since June and I’m now down to the penultimate chapter (I’ve always wanted to use that word but never had a reason to until now). Hooray!

But of course once  I've revised the entire manuscript (and written those two new chapters), I'll return to word one, page one and --- start over! This time in order to examine every. single. word. to ensure that all 100,000 are engaging and lively rather than stilted and dead. (*2)

And I need to have it finished by the third week of October because the house is putting together its catalog for Fall 2013, which is when my book will come out, and so the editor and the VERY IMPORTANT sales and marketing departments need to see the manuscript so they can add their two cents to the project because no book goes out without input from sales and marketing and that’s when titles get changed and the author doesn’t even know it until the book jacket design shows up in her inbox and she discovers that the title she slaved over no longer exists but hey that’s life and I’m not complaining. (*3) (*4)

So. That’s what I'm up to. I shall return.

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*1:  Okay, hyperbole: My editor  knows who I am. I am extraordinarily fortunate to work with her. (See also *4 below.) She understands that long, complex pieces of work take, ya know, a long time to create.

*2: The payoff for this insanity is moments like this one: When the beer book came out in the fall of 2006, I did a ton of interviews (aimed at persuading people to read the book) and during one of them --- a hilarious phone sit-down with two beer guys ---- one of the guys said “Well, this wasn’t that hard, right? I mean, the story and facts were all there and all you had to do was write it down, right?” After I was through howling, first with laughter and then with tears, I knew I’d succeeded: If I made five years of blood, sweat, and lotsa tears look THAT EASY, well, by god, I’d done my job! (Because, in case you missed my point, neither the facts nor the story were “there.” I had to go find the facts [which took three or four years] and then make sense of them and then turn them into a “story” [which took another year or two].

*3: Which is why, ahem, this time around I came up with a blunt, straightforward title to which no one could object and which no potential reader could POSSIBLY misinterpret.

*4: Seriously. I’m not complaining. The self-publishing crowd thinks that traditional-publishing  dinosaurs like me should throw ourselves off the nearest tall building because it’s just SO EASY!! to crank out a book and whip up a digital file and put it on Amazon and make zillions of dollars and why would anyone want to deal with traditional publishing houses and editors because among other things traditional publishing just takes so. fucking. long. and why wait a year when you can publish an e-book RIGHT NOW?.

I disagree. Quality takes time. And in my case, a LOT of time because I do all of my own research and writing. I have no paid assistants. So there’s one benefit of traditional publishing: My publisher paid me an “advance” that, in effect, subsidized much of the cost of creating this book. (My beloved husband provided another chunk of “subsidy.”) But I also enjoy the input of a professional editor --- the one who read the manuscript said “Okay, it’s not bad but let’s make it better. Here’s how.”

The benefit of that extra set of eyes and perspective is, literally, priceless. Everything I’ve ever published has gone through the mind of an editor who marked it up in red pencil or digital “ink” and the work has ALWAYS, without exception, been improved immeasurably thanks to the editor’s input.

And yes, it increases the time needed to move a book from idea to published work -- not least because mine is not the only book coming out of the house. I have to wait my turn for the attention of the editor, the copyeditor, the jacket designer, etc. It’s worth it.

I Always Loved The Part I Didn't Hate

There's apparently a theme circling 'round this blog these days, much to my surprise (by this particular theme, I mean). This is first hilarious, and then not, and then rueful and wise. I'm glad (and lucky) that I never hated the part I love most. (Well, except when it won't cooperate, but that's what makes it interesting).

The gist:

But I secretly drew a line in the sand at Twitter. Most prostitutes have their boundaries, and for me tweeting was the one act so degrading I had to quietly take it off the table.

Most writers are closet exhibitionists, shameless only on paper, and having to perform and promote themselves is a kind of mild custom-designed torture . . .

I learned the meaning of the German word “sitzfleisch” — literally, the ability to sit, to spend serious time at something, devote your sustained attention to a single subject for four, six or eight hours, and resist the impulse to get up and take a break or check e-mail when you get fidgety or bored. I became a more disciplined person than I’d ever imagined I could be.

When you’re doing any kind of serious work, one of the most hazardous distractions you have to figure out how to ignore is the interference field of hope and anxiety associated with the results of that work, its imaginary payoff.

The part you hated was your favorite part.

All true ---. Glad he wrote it. Glad I read it. And damn! I'm STILL the luckiest person in the world.

Jackie Collins, Queen of . . . Self-Publishing?

Ayup. Jackie Collins is abandoning (more or less) conventional publishing. (This isn't "news" exactly; I gather she announced this in February [which goes to show just how carefully I follow the career of J. Collins] {I have to be honest: I had to look her up; I wasn't sure who she was}, but I just learned about it. Thanks, Anat!) In all seriousness, the blog entry I've linked to is worth reading because she delineates all the right reasons for making the switch. Any writer who isn't at least thinking about doing so is crazy.

On Writing, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and . . . Possibilianism?

Some days the hits just keep comin' (er, um, because I'm on my lunch break??). Apropos of all the other writer-related stuff (about which I've written more in the past week than in all of the six years I've maintained this blog), this interesting interview with David Eagleman.

A couple of money quotes:

On making complex ideas accessible (something dear to my heart):

I just follow the rule I tell all my students: if you can’t explain it to an eighth grader in a way that he/she would understand it, then you don’t understand it. As a corollary, one must understand the importance of narrative. Our brains have evolved to care about story. If you want to penetrate the brain of a listener, wrap the information in things they care about.

On writing "academic texts," non-fiction, and fiction:

In academic texts there is a particular landscape of facts that needs to be surveyed. In nonfiction one chooses a particular path through that landscape, taking the reader on a special journey of your choosing. In fiction one takes off into the third dimension.

Also, Eagleman is also responsible for a "movement" (his term, not mine) called "possibilianism." Who knew?

Have I mentioned how much I missed blogging?

Is Cheap/Free Worth It?

I ponder that question often, and in many contexts. (Perhaps because I've been writing a book in which "cheap" features so prominently? Maybe? I don't know. I just thought of that connection.) Anyway, I'm one of those dinosaurs who believes there is no free lunch, and on that note, here's a blog post worth reading. It comes from a site devoted to "scholarly publishing" (something else in which I'm interested for a number of reasons, many of them only tangentially related to the "publishing" part). Here the author is thinking about "social costs" and "social good" but doing so in a broad context. Worth reading.

Two money quotes:

Cheapness has consequences in the long run. We all end up paying for it somehow. And cheapness has a funny way of being expensive.

And:

You can save yourself poor as a business or an industry.

Ain't that the truth. (Hey! When else will I have an excuse to use a Zappa album cover?)

I May Live To Regret This . . .

UPDATE: The comments section for this post is FAR more interesting than the post itself. I'm grateful for all those who've stopped by to comment. I'm learning a lot from it, and what I'm learning makes me even more eager to see someone from The Human Wave get out there in front and tell the rest of the world what they do and how they do it. Because honest-to-god, folks, the rest of us DO. NOT. KNOW. UPDATE #2: Kate Paulk has taken my challenge and made a first stab at a "here's what we do" piece. Read it here.

. . . because I said that I rarely write about writerly stuff. But, damn! Again: from my point of view as a historian, these are exciting times. VERY exciting. So this is more the historian speaking than the author.

A bit of background: as I noted in a blog entry a few days back, publishing is in total disarray at the moment thanks primarily to the power of the digital. Thanks to that, it's now possible to publish a book without the middlemen who have long held sway.

This isn't a bad thing, and as I also said here, I wrestle every. single. day. with what to do with my own work. (That was the point of my original post about this: When your work consists of 85 to 90 percent research, and only 10 or 15 percent "writing," it ain't easy to give up the subsidy that traditional publishing offers.) (*1)

No one knows how the disarray will shake out because that's how "history" works: We don't know the end until the end gets here. (Unless you're a writer of historical fiction, in which case you can make things turn out any way you please, lucky you!

The ramifications of the "new" publishing are being felt by everyone in the business, as evidenced by this absolutely bizarro article in the New York Times a few days ago. That in turn prompted this response from a group blog I'd never heard of but somehow stumbled across in pursuit of who-knows-what, and there I found a link to this thoughtful commentary on the nature of "writing." 

But I digress from my main point, which is this: My original post about publishing generated, um, a response. (Not one I expected. I assumed no one would read it.) The response was, well, interesting, not least of which was this.

That got me thinking. Yesterday when I was walking, I contemplated the snarkitude of the response and thought "Wow. This is what a revolution feels like!"

This kind of rage is what, for example, the rich of Moscow likely felt as rebellion gained power and heft in 1916 and 1917. This is what ruling classes feel when the fury of the "oppressed" takes form and turns into outright revolution.  (Not, I hasten to add, that I'm either rich or a member of the "ruling classes." Rather, my point is that the self-publishing crowd regards people like me as elitist and they wanna see me suffer.)

Cool!

But then today, I was out walking (again; yeah, like most walkers/runners/swimmers --- I do all three --- my best ideas come when I'm in motion) and I thought "Well, okay. This is definitely what a revolution would feel like. Except --- they've already won!"

The self-publishers have won both the battle and the war. They've won. The spoils are theirs. They're making money. They call the shots. They're building audiences and did I mention they earning money from their work?

And no, I'm not being snarky. They've won. I'm the loser, as is anyone else who still clings to traditional publishing. (Which is why I a great deal of time pondering how and when I should move to The Other Side.)

So here's my question: Why are the winners so angry? I only follow one blog devoted to self-publishing, and its proprietor is a mostly mild-mannered guy; full of snark and condescension toward us losers (which, again, seems normal to me), but through his blog, I've landed at plenty of other self-publishers' blogs, and man! These people are ANGRY. (*2)

Is this normal human behavior when the oppressed finally gain power? They lash out at their former oppressors? (Again, I'm hardly an oppressor. I'm a mild-mannered, middle-aged historian. But in their eyes, I'm an elitist, whiney jerk with an overly developed sense of entitlement.) (*3)

So please: someone 'splain this to me, because I don't get it. And I swear this is my last take on writers' crap for awhile. It IS fascinating to me, but it's not something I can take a lot of time to ponder because, well, I've got to ponder equally historical shifts in the American food system and, hey, a girl's only got so many hours in the day.

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*1: I've thought about this often enough that I'm daunted by the prospect. Should I opt for self-publishing, I'd have to get a job, obviously. The only thing I know how to do other than "history" is waiting tables. So I could do that and then use my off-time to research. By my calculation, and under those circumstances, the kinds of books I write would take 10 to 15 years to complete, and that includes giving up any other kind of leisure activity. (Bye-bye, husband!) (*1.1)

*1.1: The self-publishers scoff at such calculations. According to them, people like me simply don't work hard enough. I think what's really going on is that they simply don't know what historians do, and for that, as I've said on many occasions, I blame the historical profession for its unwillingness to engage with the public.

*2: I inadvertently got a load of that contempt/condescension/rage myself a few days ago. And again: I get why the self-publishers are smug about their success. I would be, too! But angry? What the hell are they ANGRY about? They've won! They should be happy, not angry.

*3: I must say: that's the other weird thing about the response from the self-pubbers who responded to my blog entry: They somehow got that idea that I believe I'm entitled to some kind of public subsidy. To which I say: Huh? I'm not asking taxpayers to fund my work (something many, many writers do, I might add). My arrangement with my publishers is entirely legal and private and takes nothing from anyone's pocket.