Category Archives: Bill Riley Author

Editing is like dish washing

Editing is Like Dish Washing

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“You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you, and we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”

Arthur Plotnik

Editing is running dishes through a dishwasher.

This is what I think about when I should be ACTUALLY writing and editing. Yes, the creative mind is a tricky place, but think about it.

Dish washer safe doesn’t mean well thought out, or not annoying. We’ve had dishwashers for a while now. In fact, according to the US Patent Office, “Josephine Garis Cochran invented the first useful dishwasher in Shelbyville, Ill., and received patent # 355,139 on December 28, 1886.”

That means we’ve been using dish washing machines for going on 134 years. So, why hasn’t any engineer taken a moment during the glass, dish, or Tupperware design phase to say “how could we make these so water doesn’t pool in all the nooks and crannies?

I know it’s crazy talk, but my dishwasher has a DRY cycle, is it really too much to expect my dishes to actually be dry when I use it?

In your writing and editing process, you are that engineer. In writing, we have a series of editing processes that go beyond just cleaning up our prose.

Think of your reader when you edit like how the dry cycle on your dish washer should actually work. Your prose has to be clean shiny, whatever that means to your reader, with nothing standing in the way of them and your story.

When your reader cracks your book cover you want that rush of steam and a story that warms their touch. You don’t want excess words spilling out all over the reader, pissing them off, and delaying each page turn while they struggle through your figurative dish load to empty standing water before they can even use a plate or turn a page. So how do we do that?

Editing, like writing, is art and science.

First of all, this post is about what we as writers need to do before we engage an Editor. Good editors are specialists, subject matter experts, and honest brokers. Great editors can help draw the best out of us like jewelers sorting, cutting, and polishing stones until even our flaws are part of a beautiful arrangement. But the better the quality of writing we turn over to an editor, the better the product we’ll get back.

Three easy editing techniques for writers

Editing is expertise. The individual parts aren’t hard to master, but you can’t do what you don’t know. The classic reference is Strunk and White’s elements of style. But in terms of engineering your editing process, here are three easy places to start:

Read what you’ve written aloud. Most of us already have a good ear for what sounds right even if we can’t specifically cite a rule or say why. I can’t diagram a sentence without wishing I was mucking out horse stalls, but I do have a pretty good sense of what rings true. Odds are you do too. Use that to your advantage. After you’ve written a passage, read it aloud. You will likely catch things you didn’t on previous passes. This is particularly important with dialogue. So much action, motivation, and context are driven by dialogue, if it doesn’t sound right when narrated by you, it won’t read true.

Read it backward. This was a technique our Flight Commander taught me when I was a young sergeant writing intelligence summaries and Soviet activity reports that had to be quick-turned and sent to headquarters. This is an example of looking at a problem from a different angle and forcing your brain to focus on what’s on the page rather than what’s in your head. Whether it’s a scene, chapter, or short story, read it from the end to the beginning and you’ll be amazed by what you missed. And finally,

Editing is iterative. I wish writing and editing were one and done, but the reality is, all craftsmanship comes alive through talent and layers of detail. This means multiple passes. I like to disconnect the writing and editing parts so I can better focus on each. You’ll figure out what works for you by writing and editing. In our craft, we learn as we go. I write a scene until it feels right, then move on to the next, and the next until I have a chapter. Before I break for the day I reread what I wrote and tweak it until it flows well (try it and test drive the first two tips). The next day I review what I wrote the previous day, edit until it’s actually clear and flows well, then I write that day’s scenes and repeat. Once I have a draft done, the big editing begins, but that’s a topic for another post.

BONUS. But Bill, what about problem editors? (Asking for a friend)

Yes, there are also bad and difficult editors out there, just like there are, shock, bad and difficult writers. Don’t be that writer, you have to be a professional to work with the best professionals in the publishing industry.

Here are three articles about issues and editors I found interesting and useful:

Don Vaughan’s inkwell article, The Writer’s Field Guide to Editors. You can find it in Writer’s Digest, March 2020.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Novelists (According to Editors)

The 7 Deadly Sins of Editors (According to Novelists).

Leave a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts and any techniques you’d like to share.

Burning Unborn Books

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Writers have magical powers. They can turn their dreams into a reader’s reality. It’s an intimate sharing, and great stories become a part of us.

I spent a lot of time in bad places growing up, and writers like Tolkien and Silverburg, Heinlein and Hemingway, LeGuin and L’engle spirited me away to big bright worlds I got lost in. All I had to do was wipe away a tear, turn a page, and for a little while, I was someplace safe.

I wanted that kind of power. Now I write, and stories are still magic to me.

There aren’t many stories with handicapped heroes. When my oldest was little he was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. There weren’t any superheroes like my son, and I looked hard. He was wired differently than other kids and in many ways, he lived in a different world. But he was honest and indomitable and funny and other kids rallied around him even though he was different. Raising kids isn’t easy, and different can be wonderful, but it’s hard to be an outsider to the tribe. Degrees of hate and mistrust can come from surprisingly unexpected places.

A writer whose work is well-loved and who I respect just experienced hate and a campaign of censorship because she shared the first draft of a story about the magical adventures of a girl with Down Syndrome to a friend who betrayed her trust in the vilest of ways, directly and through a social media mob, to threaten the author and her publisher if they didn’t immediately stop work on this story. They didn’t want discourse, or to inform a point, they wanted to burn her unborn book.

This philosophy of “if I don’t agree with a person or like a thing then no one can like it” is an arrogant disease spreading throughout our culture. It’s the opposite of freedom of speech. It’s nothing short of intellectual fascism.

Truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll like the final story after rewrites and editing, but I want the opportunity to read it and decide for myself. I love the idea, the author is a powerful storyteller, and I think the world benefits from different kinds of heroes. Particularly for children who don’t have many protagonists who look and act like them. Especially if she reframes our perspective or shows us an insight we might have otherwise never seen.

That’s a place I’d like to go as a reader, and a story I would have liked to have been able to share with my son when he was little and first became aware that he was different.

I won’t be told what books I can and can not read, and I’m glad the author and her publisher stood their ground against the digital torches and pitchforks of that angry mob. Ideas and differing views can be frightening, but where would we be today if we never challenged our assumptions.

Let me know what you think.

Perception is Reality

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Perception is reality was a valuable lesson the Air Force taught me in Officer Training School. It seems like a long time ago, but we now live full time in that world. I learned that perception was reality as an object lesson in integrity and how our perceived actions would impact our ability to lead. It was a constant reminder that the world would view our efforts through many different lenses.

War is never clean. It’s terrifying what it takes, it leaves scars you can’t always see, and our masters are often ungrateful. Even if we did everything right, our integrity and actions would be our only shield against opinion.

People have grown increasingly sequestered, and reality’s become the news and social media that people choose to see. And those realities blur even more when influencers are monetized to give the people only the most sensational and polarizing things.

Not long ago I was interviewed by the Military Writers Society of America. One of the questions I was asked reminded me of a media experience I had in Iraq. I thought it was timely, and this is the unabridged version of that interview question. You can read the whole interview at billrileyauthor.com. Let me know what you think:

MWSA: Baghdaddy provides a firsthand view of war; what are the most common misconceptions held by many Americans?
Bill Riley: We see war mostly in snapshots, and not everything gets the coverage or the attention or focus it deserves. There’s been a terrible war in Yemen for years, but the media barely covers it. The same was true of the atrocities of Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait and the campaign of rape and terror employed by Slobodan Milošević during the Bosnian War. Few were interested in investigating and reporting until the world couldn’t continue to look away.

The first time I was in Iraq was just after President Bush declared victory. We absolutely met and exceeded the first phase objectives of the war, but even at the highest levels of power, there were misconceptions over what “victory” meant, and unfortunately, an agenda often drives what gets reported and what the public sees.

I was with an army signals unit on the outskirts of Karbala, about fifty-five miles southwest of Baghdad. There was a friendly village just off the major supply route, and we encountered a news crew at the burnt and twisted remains of a blown-up semi-tractor-trailer. People from the village were rummaging through the blast field, looking for salvageable spoils. We waved, the Iraqis waved back, and the reporters were busy setting up their shot.

We pulled over, and I went to touch base with the news crew just as they were assembling a group of men and boys with slung Kalashnikov rifles in front of the still-smoking vehicle for a picture. Back then, if a supply truck fell out of a convoy along the route, the driver detonated the vehicle and cargo so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. The vehicle in front of me, and the reporters, was one of those. We knew it, they knew it.

The title that ran on the picture, in a scathing news story was, ‘Insurgents Destroy Military Supplies.’ It was a good picture, and insurgents did destroy military supplies, just not that time. If you look closely at the picture, you can see all the boys smiling for the camera.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still great reporting. Unfortunately, we’ve also reached the point where we’re saturated in manufactured and skewed news. Where opinion is reported as fact, and where “likes” and outrage drive how events and topics are spun. The difficulty in separating the truth from the lies has more than anything else, led to many misconceptions.

Cocaine and Cowardice

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I was a coward once. A teenager with a fake ID I made myself, in a pony car I raced windows down that perfect Long Island summer night. The club had closed, I was dropping off Joey, and the breeze tugged my permed hair. Joey was a good guy. Everyone liked him and he was my friend, but you never really know people.

We wore parachute pants, and Rick Springfield pined away for Jessie’s Girl. It was a good night. We had some laughs, met a few girls, and I was still feeling all warm and rosy. Mostly over a petite brunette whose number I could feel crumpled in a zippered pocket.

I stopped. Joey said, “Later dude.” Then he was ripped from the car. It happened fast and it took a few heartbeats to register. We were joking, then he was gone.

I was out after him, but a guy with Grateful Dead hair stopped me. He reeked of onions and stuck what looked like a cannon in my face.

He growled, “Get the hell gone. Now.”

My friend was on his knees, arms locked behind him by a heavy-lifter who made Joey look like a toddler, and Joey croaked out, “Bill, just go.”

I was pushed back, the gun barrel deep in my cheek. “Listen to your friend Bill. We got business with him, don’t make it business with you.”

I did what I was told. Big pistol-guy slammed the door, and I raced away, overcompensating and shaking. Glancing back, they were laughing and dragging Joey away. But I was gone, still quaking, too scared to even piss my pants. I didn’t know what to do, so I drove. I left my friend and I ran away.

Another mile away

I felt like shit, but that was an improvement. It felt better to be angry than scared. Another block and I spun the car around.

I screamed back into that parking lot, Joey was a pile of twitching something, and they were still laughing as they walked away. They tried to run and jump away, but I was on them with a thud and shudder. The big silver gun went flying. I fishtailed and spun around.

I expected to get one of them. Both going over my fenders was a surprise.
I expected to get shot, but I got lucky, they were down, and I stopped where the big gun had landed.

They got up bleeding and cursing. But now I had a gun.

It was heavy, and they lurched at me.

I lined up the shot, they stopped, then I had a better idea.

I tossed the gun into the car and locked myself in. I looked at the apartment and started revving the engine like I was trying to rip it apart. I figured I could hit them again if I dropped it in gear.

Lights came on all over the apartment, angry people shouted out windows. Onion-man and heavy-lifter spit and yelled. I couldn’t hear them. I didn’t stop, and people came out of the apartment swinging bats and hockey sticks.

While everyone else yelled at me and smacked my car. Heavy-lifter and his pal limped away. When they drove off, I stopped. Then his neighbors saw Joey.

It was over just like that. I was behind the wheel, ignoring everyone, shaking and gasping and soaked in sweat. When they picked Joey up, I raced away again. I didn’t feel like a coward anymore, but I still didn’t know what to do. I ran two guys down with my car, maybe I was a criminal, but it felt better than having a gun in my face and running away.

I parked by a playground in Patchogue, sat my ass on a cold pier, and stared at the bay. Breathing salt air, my heart hammering my chest, still wondering why he didn’t shoot.

The sun came up

I waited for the police to come, but they didn’t, and I couldn’t understand why.

I should have been relieved, but what could I tell the cops? I ran two guys down. They’d say if I’d just kept running, it would have turned out just the same.

When I caught myself thinking it was only a matter of time before those guys came after me, and I had a gun, and I should figure out how to shoot it, eight fat bullets went down a sewer, and the cannon parts went to the bottom of the Long Island Sound. I’d figure out a better way.

There were police in the hospital ward when I visited Joey. I walked straight into them, sure this time I’d really piss myself, but all they wanted to do was check my bag. I brought Joey a bunch of Zagnut and Zero candy bars, because they were his favorite. And after the cops went through it, they tossed the bag to Joey a few bars short.

I glared, they laughed and said they’d give us some time.

Joey grinned and called me a crazy bastard. Then he unwrapped a Zagnut and said, sometimes it’s good to be a little fish.

Turns out the guys I hit didn’t make it far. Heavy-lifter banged his head too hard when I hit him and rolled his car a couple of miles away. When the police responded they were covered in coke, on parole, with other weapons and a lot more cocaine in the trunk.

They were in Jail, and the police attributed their injuries to the roll. Maybe Karma called. All I know is I got lucky again.

I think I did the right thing, but doing the right thing is complicated.
Since then I have been afraid, and even terrified, but I’ve never felt like a coward again.

I learned how to pound dents out of fenders and parts of my hood. A few months later, Joey got on a Greyhound bus, I left for Air Force Basic Training, and we never saw each other again.

Elk Rasberry

Drive-by Elking

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Friday, I drove through a mountain pass, late at night, in dense fog, thinking, this must be what limbo is like. A low beam, peephole view of the chipped stripe and the monochrome guard rail framing a windy road where everything else had faded to a quiet white. Threading a needle in that dreamscape of fog, I wasn’t making good time. The road wound around, the scene looped again, definitely limbo.

No one else was on the road. What wasn’t black or grey was lit flat white. The first shimmer of color in what felt like forever came at mile marker 17. The sign reflected green, 17 glowed like pearl in the night. Then the road switched back, I climbed out of the fog and nearly died.

An elk was galloping beside my truck. It’s huge rack, and chestnut shag with white marks, rippled alongside me, and it was massive. I usually see elk at a distance in the mountains, and I forget how big they really are, and that the early settlers decorated their antlers, balanced carefully on their backs, and rode them into town like elf princes.

The bull elk brushed, my side mirror, it groaned, and I jinked into the oncoming lane as waves of elk washed over the road. I held my breath; made the smallest adjustments. I was surrounded. We were a herd. My heart raced. My eyes darted. Their hooves clattered on the blacktop, and their exhales chuffed. I was hemmed in. We raced in formation. It was surreal and frightening, and wonderful, but I didn’t know how to leave. Would my horn spook them? If I slowed down, would they? If I nudged over would an elk bigger then my Ridgeline yield, would his friends?

I was a stampede. Then two bucks in front of me clattered and veered off the road. I took the opening, a wall of elk filled the rearview, and I accelerated away. Then the road dipped, and I was back in the fog.

Snaking through quiet limbo, breathing hard, calming my heartbeat.

Seven mile-markers to go. Almost there.

Funny Word Pamplemousse

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I like silly words.
Doozy.
Lollygag.
Brouhaha.
And my personal favorite, snog.

When I find silly words in unlikely places, it makes them hysterical.
My oldest, Xander, calls sparkling water static. And as it sizzles down the throat and plinks it’s can, it really does drink and sound like static. It’s a funny word that fits.

Today I restocked our static stash. You can buy it in pure fizz or flavored varieties that, depending on the mix, taste refreshing, or like Pledge or a bad imitation of something good that went very wrong.

I bought La Croix Apricot, Cran-Rasberry, Mango, and Pamplemousse flavors. Why was Pamplemousse not in English like the others? Great question. But it is a silly name. It could be a sidekick in a YA Mystery as in, “Pamplemousse, it’s time we tell the widow Jenkins who murdered her husband.”

It could be a good guy or a bad girl, or part of an incantation, or Grapefruit in French. Who knows?

I ponder the possibilities while I gulp down the last tittynope of Pamplemousse still in my glass.

Ice cubes clink, and I wonder.

Bill Riley