"But It's Fine the Way It Is . . . "

I’m leading a workshop about indie and traditional publishing at the Breathe Writers’ Conference this October. This is my second year being involved with the conference (sat on an authors’ panel last year) and I’m looking forward to it.

It’s also my wife’s second year leading a workshop. Last year, she spoke about finding the time and space to write (she also wrote a book on the topic, which you can buy here). This year, she’s delivering a talk she’s been working on for some time, on a topic about which she’s very passionate: editing your work. Seriously, that’s what she decided to speak on. Editing.

Now, I suppose that makes sense, considering that, in addition to having been called “[one] of the greatest up-and-coming fiction writers today” by the Saturday Evening Post, she has also worked in the publishing industry for more than a decade, in both editorial and marketing capacities. She loves putting words together, then moving them around, then losing some, then nixing the whole thing and starting over. That’s her idea of a swell time.

She also likes moving furniture around, so there’s that.

I, on the other hand, am the opposite. I like to find the best arrangement right off the bat and leave things be. That couch goes there, and it stays there. That semicolon goes there and I have no intention of moving it. If I didn’t want it there, I wouldn’t have pushed the little key with the semicolon on it. Suffice it to say, editing my writing is not among my favorite pastimes.

Let me just quickly acknowledge that different people work different ways here. Some writers do their best work when they just vomit everything out onto the page and then later sift through it for what’s good, rearrange it, etc., like that one scene in Columbiana with the flashdrive and the puke (which is probably a double-loser of a simile, in that it’s both really gross and also a reference to a movie that only like sixteen people ever saw). Others (people like me) like to work it all out internally, running through every idea, word, and phrase mentally (and, sometimes, orally and aurally, using a digital recorder) before putting anything to paper. And by paper, I of course mean this ten-year-old word processor.

Both methods have strengths and weaknesses, but the major weakness of my school is that we tend to convince ourselves that there is no need to edit. When you’ve lovingly, mentally caressed the words into exactly the right shape (note: we have left the “words as vomit” metaphor behind at this point), you are loathe to change that shape or—μὴ γένοιτο!—slash some words out of existence. And when someone else (say, my editor at HarperCollins) wants to get in there with the mallet and the scalpel, my first instinct is to defend with all necessary force. That’s step one: plant feet, raise battle axe, and shout This is Spartaaaaa! I’m only on my second time through this process, but I can already identify the rest of the steps:

• 2. Remember that I am contractually obligated to go through the editorial process and that everyone has do to it and that I’m not a beautiful-and-unique snowflake.
• 3. Bite the bullet and try to change just enough to appease the editor.
• 4. Realize that the book is getting better.
• 5. Go back through with the editor’s notes, with an actual open mind that these changes (the vast majority anyway) might improve the book.
• 6. Finish the back-and-forth with the editor and discover that the book is far better than the one I originally submitted.

I don’t want to move the couches around, but once they’ve been feng shuied to perfection, I do realize they look better and then I find myself ready to viciously defend the new configuration.

Here’s a couple photos to illustrate. They’re totally extraneous at this point, but they were what initially prompted me to write this post, so it seems a shame not to include them:

This is the south wall of my study. It has looked like this for almost a decade (see also: never moving things around). However, I recently acquired a bunch more books, necessitating more shelves (this little square was pretty much the only wall-space not covered in bookshelves).  I knew I’d need to make room for the coffee maker (and, heck, why not also get an espresso machine?), but the rest of the space would still more than accommodate all my new books. Naturally, I was loathe to mess with it, but when my wife started dropping hints about the stacks of books blocking access to her own new bookshelf at home, I finally jumped in and started the project.

Here’s what it looks like now. Upon surveying the completed project, my first thought was, "Wow! It really looked kind of cluttered and junky before, with all that stuff piled and stacked everywhere." I mean, it was fine the way it was and I was happy to look at it every day, but it’s much better now and I would definitely not click the UNDO button, if that were an option in real life.

So the point is: do yourself a favor. Try a little rearranging. Listen to your editor, your critique group, your beta-readers and just give it a try. You may find that you love it. I mean, not that you love editing. Editing is still the worst. But you may love where it gets you.

Short Film and Being a Renaissance Man

I'm thinking about short film lately, because A.) I just read an awesome screenplay written by my boy Ted Kluck, which is in pre-production and will likely star an actor of considerable note, and B.) I just watched a short film called ...Forgotten Detroit, which I helped (at the lowest level) to Kickstart about a year and a half ago.

So, here's specifically what I'm thinking about in terms of short films: their resurgence is one of the many blessings brought to us by the omnipresence of the interwebs and the ease-of-access that we now have to video in a variety of formats. I mean, think about it: all other things being equal, there ought naturally to be at least as many short films as there are features. Because, just as short stories and novels are related-but-unique literary forms, a lot of stories that demand to be told in an audio-visual format would suffer greatly if someone tried to stretch them out to an hour and a half or two hours. (Heck, half the 2-minute movie trailers I encounter today seem like the trailer is a more fitting length and format for telling the story than the full movie).

But, whereas there have pretty much always been periodicals, anthologies, etc. (not to mention early digital forms like BBS's and dial-up connections) as means of getting one's short stories into the waiting hands of consumers, it's taken the very recent proliferation of high-speed Internet to give any real distribution oomph to short films, because let's face it, with few exceptions (Rob Bell's Nooma videos, for example), most people aren't going to shell out enough money for a fifteen-minute film to turn a profit after all the expense involved in producing it. Even in the aughties, the majority of the short films I saw were all at one film festival, all in one day. Now they can be distributed with ease.

This, I think, is a really good thing for people who love (both making and watching) film.

As to ...Forgotten Detroit itself, it's a very solid 17½ minutes of artistic and introspective entertainment. It's making the festival circuit, so you can't buy a copy at the moment (we Kickstarters each got a DVD by way of thanks), but check out this guy's bio on his website: http://rickboven.com.  That's right, he's a filmmaker, an actor, an indie comic book artist (I've got several of his comics on my Kindle and some day I'm going to commission him to give 42 Months Dry the graphic novel treatment), an author, and apparently dabbles in music as well. Until recently, he also ran a small press out of Chicago, not unlike our Gut Check Press.

What's that like, I wonder? Having that many creative outlets and being talented in all of them? Here's the funny thing: it sounds just exhausting to me. I think I'd feel a kind of creative paralysis that would sap me of all energy and keep me from really exploring any of them fully. I love to try and multitask, but once more than two options appear, I suck at getting things done.

This leads me, much like PBS's illustrious Buddy the Tyrannosaurus (can you tell I have a five-year-old?), to a hypothesis: there are, creatively speaking, two different kinds of people...

1. Those for whom each additional medium/outlet just fuels his or her creative potential and keeps the juices flowing. My wife is like this. She's a better writer than I am, and also a talented photographer, musician, painter, seamstress, designer of elaborate gardens, and dabbler in any number of mixed-medium artforms. And she's good at pretty much all of them and continually getting better.  I used to be a bit like this--or at least I thought I was. For a good decade (even while the actual writing and recording of music as a hobby became very rare) I sort of considered myself a creative musician in the back of my mind, and I've tried my hand at illustrating, graphic design, and comic book creation as well. . . but in recent years, I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm one of...
2. Those for whom each additional form of creative expression just divides his or her available creative energy, until there's not enough left in any given area to do anything. I pour a lot of this (creative energy) into my weekly sermon preparation. What remains, I find, must be rationed carefully. I'm not talking about time here or even energy per se, but limited creative resources. 

And so, even if I had the talent, skill, and time to tackle them all (I don't), the thought of making a film, painting a portrait, recording an album, and writing my next novel all at once, makes me just want to sit back and watch '90s sitcoms on Netflix instead. But when I think about one project by itself, I feel my creative energy and passion growing. By the way, my next novel is tentatively called The Outside Man and, along with Demoniac, it is a dime's width away from being contracted by a giant of a publisher (but more on that in a week or so).

So, what do you think; is my hypothesis right? And, if so, which of the two types are you? And have you shifted from one to the other during your life?