The art of slow writing - Louise DeSalvo 2014

Writing as collaboration
Challenges and successes

When I go to author readings, I often hear people ask questions about writers’ work habits, their sources of inspiration, or how long it took to complete their works. But I’ve never heard anyone ask, “How much editorial input did you have? How much did you change your work based upon editorial suggestions?” And I think this is one of the most important questions we can ask published writers.

I’ve noticed that beginning writers sometimes treat their works in progress as if they’re sacrosanct, as if they can’t—and shouldn’t—be changed based upon a mentor’s reading. “It’s my work,” they say. “This is the way I want it.”

This stand assumes that writers are the best possible judges of their work, and this might sometimes be true. But according to this view of the process, writers won’t revise their works based even upon what a very well-qualified person suggests. These writers might be willing to make cosmetic changes. But they stick to their own sense about the narrative arc, the work’s voice, its point of view, its order. This may be the way some published writers behave, but it’s not the way the ones I know do.

When a writer I’m working with refuses to budge on something I’ve indicated needs revision, I suggest they read the correspondence between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor, Maxwell Perkins, about The Great Gatsby (1925), and that they compare the published version of Gatsby with the earlier version, Trimalchio, to understand how a great writer makes changes based upon editorial input.

Although Perkins praised Trimalchio, he pointed out three major problems with the manuscript. Two chapters—VI and VII—weren’t working. Gatsby’s character was “somewhat vague”; Perkins thought Fitzgerald needed to sharpen his portrait. Perkins believed the reader needed to understand how Gatsby became so wealthy. Finally, although Perkins liked the title (referring to a character in the Satyricon), the Scribner’s editors didn’t.

According to James L. W. West III, after receiving Perkins’s criticism, Fitzgerald “undertook a complicated rewriting and restructuring of the novel.” He rewrote chapters VI and VII; he introduced information about Gatsby’s past earlier in the narrative; he alluded to how Gatsby had acquired his wealth. He also “polished the prose extensively” and introduced new material—the most memorable being the “description of Jay Gatsby’s smile in Chapter III.”

Fitzgerald had changed the title many times before: Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires, On the Road to West Egg, Gold-hatted Gatsby. After first agreeing to change the title to The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald suggested, instead, other titles, Under the Red, White, and Blue, for example. But Perkins insisted the novel be published as The Great Gatsby.

Published writers don’t often share what the publication process is like. We don’t often describe how many changes we’ve made based upon an editor’s input. We don’t often admit that our manuscripts required a complete overhaul. Many published works become, in effect, collaborative efforts before publication. I know of one famous writer who, at the end of a project, is installed in a hotel while he and his editor work on complete rewrites. This writer—not his editor—gets credit for the work’s brilliance despite the fact that what he submitted only approximated the published work.

Writers complete their work. Editors evaluate their manuscripts. Then author, editor, assistant editor, and copy editor join forces to turn manuscripts into the best books possible. Writers might believe their work is completed when they submit. But we learn, sometimes with chagrin, sometimes with gratitude, that there’s far more work to do. We’ve been so close to the book by the time we’re finished that we sometimes lose perspective and need an objective eye to let us know what needs revision.

At this stage, in my experience, there’s a lot of give-and-take, some negotiation, perhaps even a few arguments. But none of my books and none of my friends’ books has been published without considerable changes. So, if seasoned writers take editorial advice, and beginning writers seem less willing, I think one reason is because beginning writers don’t know how many changes published writers must make to their work because of editorial input.

After meeting with their editors, I’ve often heard well-known writers say, “I have to rewrite the whole thing,” or “I have to rethink the way I present the central character,” or “I realize the structure of the book isn’t working.” These writers listen and make fundamental, large-scale changes in works they’ve labored over for years. What they thought was the end of the process was, in fact, the beginning of yet another round of work.

Mary Gordon is one beginning novelist who took a mentor’s advice and profited thereby. Gordon’s first novel, Final Payments (1978), underwent many revisions before it was published, “the most significant of which—going from third- to first-person—was suggested by Elizabeth Hardwick, Gordon’s former teacher at Barnard.” Final Payments became an utterly different work when it was told in the voice of Isabel Moore, a thirty-year-old woman who’s given up her life to care for her father. The novel became a sensation, selling over a million copies in paperback.

Here are some changes I’ve made based upon editorial input.

Virginia Woolf (1989): My editor insisted I write an introduction, situating Virginia Woolf’s sexual abuse in the context of Victorian England. That entailed an enormous amount of research. But I wasn’t then only writing about one girl’s experience but about an entire society’s mores.

Vertigo: My editor’s letter requesting changes was ten single-spaced pages. I had to rewrite how I dealt with my depression. I had to write a preface, which took me an entire summer and was perhaps the most difficult writing I’ve ever done. I had to rearrange the chapters’ order, which meant revising the whole book. And I’d thought I was finished.

Adultery (2000): The editor wanted me to take a late chapter and make it the first chapter so the book would begin with a punch, and begin differently from my other memoirs. This meant revising the whole book.

Crazy in the Kitchen: My editor insisted I delete a chapter too similar in subject matter and tone to Vertigo. Deleting that chapter meant a revision of other chapters.

On Moving (2009): My penultimate draft was a hundred thousand words. The editor decided the book should be forty thousand words. I didn’t like the version an editor presented me with. So I cut the manuscript to sixty thousand words myself, deleting much personal material.

Norman Rush calls his wife, Elsa Rush, “’a partner in the process’” of writing, helping him at every stage with support and concrete advice. They often discuss the function of the novel. Elsa believes readers enjoy works that “’move right along and things happen.’” Rush’s novels are noted for pages-long diatribes by his characters and for pages-long internal monologues. Though Elsa says that Rush is the boss of what he writes, when Rush wanted to include a 154-line poem in Mortals, Elsa told him he was “’self-destructive and insane’” and he removed all but “14 lines across 2 stanzas.”

Seasoned writers hear what needs to be reworked, and they revise. They don’t cling unthinkingly to the version of the work they’ve completed. They listen to expert advice and, more often than not, take it. And their published works are far better for it.

Would The Great Gatsby have been such a success had it been called, instead, Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires?