I was looking at an older manuscript, just a short story, this evening. The project I’d submitted for has apparently folded, since it’s been over a year with no word and the deadline is long past. So, in the interest of finding a new home for it, I brought it out to read over. The first thing that struck me was how much work it needed; work I didn’t think it needed a year ago. The second was that maybe it was a good thing the project did fold if this was how I’d sent out the submission. (Insert self-mocking writerly laugh here.)
However it also brought to mind something I was told once by an editor: you need to grow with each book.
And it got me to thinking about all those series, and I think we all know which ones I’m talking about, where the first book, maybe even the second or third leaves you staying awake late into the night to finish. The next one is okay. Not wonderful, but it didn’t suck either. The one after that, a little bit worse, until you drop series. I know I’ve done it, and with some pretty high profile authors. And even then the reader really can’t say that the author didn’t grow. Sure, it may seem that way, but perhaps the author is moving in a different direction with the series and the characters than from what the readers wanted.
I guess as an author, how do you know that you’re growing? Let’s look to edits. (If you’re not receiving edits, or indepth ones, then that is an issue all by itself.) If your editor is constantly telling you the same things over and over again, then there’s probably more work to be done. The edits done on one book aren’t solely for that single book. There’s information meant to be taken into your next project, or into those past projects waiting on a hard drive or in a notebook somewhere. Before you submit your next project, take a look at the comments on your previous ones. Are you making the same mistakes?
If you go back to your past work, do you see things you should have, or wished you could have done differently? That, too, is a sign of growth. Like in the short story, where I tweaked word useage and added things to layer in depth, those are the kinds changes that indicate an increase in knowledge.
It’s a dangerous thing, though it’s somewhat true, to say that each book has to be better than the last. While very few of us are at the pinnacle of our careers, when someone has a high level of writing, it can be difficult to top it each and every time. It’s something to strive for. A way to put readers on the edge of their seat and go “damn, this was good” when they finish the book.
Authorial growth is an important topic — to authors. It’s something that should be on your mind as you finish a manuscript, and once the line editor pronounces it good, you should be thinking about it again. What did you learn and how can you apply it to your next book?
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November 28th, 2009 at 7:02 am
I know I’ve learned a lot from the edits I’ve been given. Last weekend, I spent some time looking at stories on my hard drive and discovered just how much work some of them need, based on what I’ve learned over the past several months. This is an important entry, Mary, because while I think most writers do try to learn and grow, some don’t apply the information from the edits to future books.
November 28th, 2009 at 8:31 am
I always worry as I finish each of the books in my series whether the readers will like it as much as the previous ones. Part of that stress is that I worry I haven’t shown growth as a writer. I want to continue to give people something better than the last book. I want them to look forward to each of my releases with great anticipation.
I’ve heard of authors who are arrogant and feel that they don’t have to make some of the changes editors are asking of them. They feel that their readers “will know what I mean.” The ones I know with this attitude are mediocre writers. Their characters never come alive for me and each of their books are just as stilted and ho hum as the last. I don’t ever want to be an author like that.
November 28th, 2009 at 9:21 am
::nods vigorously:: Oh, yes! I know this well. In June, I finally got the rights back to my very first contracted book. I promised myself as soon as I could I’d rewrite that story. Now I’ve resold it and am frantically trying to correct all the flaws before a deadline.
However, I don’t think there really is a pinnacle. Every writing career has good, bad, and ugly –when the creative juice slows to a trickle, the characters won’t talk, and the writer feels like a wrung-out dirty dish rag. No one can write perfectly every time.
November 28th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
What a wonderful topic and thoughts…and I can relate so well to it.
I finish a chapter and so often set it aside with pride, feeling I’m the next Pulitzer winner. Time passes, though, and, many chapters later I look at the work and cringe at the errors, the flaws, the weak spots. And get discouraged.
But….then….it dawns on me, and I feel a wonderful, euphoric high because I realize I DID recognize the weaknesses and flaws. I HAD grown enough to SEE these errors. That realization of knowledge accrued is priceless. And the best part? It’s like Christmas, over and over again, because it happens EVERY time you DO look back at what you’ve written.
Hopefully, it will continue to be a learning experience, because the feeling of realizing you have learned and are still learning is just too much of a thrill to ever want it to end.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts.
November 28th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Interesting you should post this. I was thinking of this very same thing just last night. I was editing a manuscript for an author and came across the same mistakes that I had the last time I edited for her and the time before. Over a period of several months and three edits, she had not applied what I had worked so very hard to teach her. I felt like she was lucky to have an ed that would teach her rather than simply point out her mistakes and not give her an explanation as to what was wrong. It was very disheartening. And I’m not just talking about punctuation and grammar either. I’m referring to content as well. Editors, in general, should only have to deal with content issues in a manuscript. No editor should have to deal with rampant punc and grammar mistakes. That is a surefire sign that the author is not willing to study and hone the technical side of their craft. But some of those content problems should disappear as well.
All of us, regardless of how good we think we are, will have issues with content. It’s the job of a good editor to find ways to make our already wonderful prose even stronger. That editor can step back and look at our work with an objective eye and see what we could not. And it’s wrong for an editor to have to continually deal with the same issues over and over again.
You’re exactly right. We should grow with each and every manuscript. And if we ever reach a plateau in which we can’t seem to grow anymore, then all of our work should be just as good as the last one. Resting on one’s laurels is not the way to go. A lot of authors do that and in the end it really shows.
Great blog, Mary.
November 28th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
I agree with everything that’s been said here. Occasionally, I’ll go into my files and see if there’s anything I can salvage from some old WIPs that I either never finished or never did anything with, and I realize for the umteeth time that, although the stories are sentimental to me, they really aren’t saleable and the amount of work it would take to make them so would be nowhere equivalent to the pittance I’d probably get if someone did take them for publication. Similarly to Lena, I do have a story I’d love to rewrite and submit again but the rights just expired and before I could think about it, I’d recontracted the story with my publisher. Ugh. It’s a great little story, my first published, actually, but it was written in first person and I think it would be so much fun to rewrite it in third person. But in rereading it, I can see the differnence in my writing style then and now. I knew nothing about deepening point of view in those days, it was all I could do not to head hop about. So, live and learn, and if you don’t – well, shame on you.