Editing is like dish washing

Editing is Like Dish Washing

“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

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.

Funny Word Pamplemousse

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

Wild Blue Yonder – July 2018

A Newsletter for Books by Bill Riley
July 2018
Welcome to the first ever Wild Blue Yonder Newsletter!

 

Thank you for all your support and encouragement, and for sticking with me on this weirdly awesome carnival ride that transforms ideas into novels.

This edition includes updates on Baghdaddy, Cypher 1.0, and a trip to Hollywood.
Baghdaddy, a Memoir is scheduled for release Spring 2019

It’s been a crazy summer. I signed with Brown Books, met with my novel’s creative team, and brainstormed with my editor.

I’m excited to work with Brown Books. I started talking with Tom Reale, their COO, a year ago at the Idaho Writer’s Conference, but since my manuscript was still under review by the intelligence community I only had a limited amount of approved material I could talk about. When ODNI finally approved Baghdaddy for public release, Tom was probably as excited as I was.

My creative team at Brown not only includes talented editors, but also experts in Public Relations, Marketing, Graphic Design, and Multimedia Publishing. I love saying “I have a creative team.” But, truth be told, publishing a book requires so many artistic and business skills, I’m happy to be part of such an amazing team.

My lead development editor for Baghdaddy is Mike Towle. He’s not only an Army veteran and accomplished author, he’s an amazing editor. After meeting him, I know my story is in good hands. I get his first edits 1 August and by 1 October Baghdaddy will just need a little cleanup and then it’s off to the cover artist and printer.

So far, we’re go for an early Spring release.Cypher 1.0 Ashur’s Tears will be finished and out for feedback September 2018
Their father’s jet was shot down in Northern Iraq. They buried what the Air Force found in the wreckage. He was gone. They did the best they could. Cypher’s are smart, Cypher’s are strong. That’s what Dad always said, but in their grief, they discover a transmission. Their father was betrayed and captured, but he’s still alive. His message said, trust no one. But Cypher’s are smart, Cypher’s are strong, and they will do whatever it takes to find him.

This novel is a wild ride in the near future that tests the limits of science and magic. I love how the story is coming along and I hope you love it too. I’ll be halfway done with the second act early next week. I’m racing to finish the second act before my editor sends me his changes and comments on Baghdaddy. It’s going to be close. I’m shooting to have Cypher 1.0 to alpha readers for feedback in September.
So, I’m insanely busy. But this is what I always dreamed about. For as long as I can remember. Writing stories. After this, I’m on track for writing a book a year. Next year’s goal? Finding readers who dig my stuff.

I was in LA last week. Not because I had a book event in Hollywood. Not even because I love LA, I don’t. I promised my wife, Jo; we’d do whatever she wanted for her birthday. And she wanted to go to the LA County Fire Museum Grand Opening.
I offered to take her and all her friends to Iceland, but she grew up watching Emergency, the TV show and when she heard the original cast was getting back together with their original equipment, we had to go.
Promises being promises.
To be fair, LA can be a vibrant, exciting place. After all, the promise of the premise is if you go there all your dreams can come true. But for me, it’s a little like Vegas used to be twenty years ago, but without all the cigarette smoke. A lot of glitter, a lot of sad. Some amazing parties. Everyone working their next big deal. Now instead of cigarettes people vape their way to cancer. But now they smell like potpourri.

In the end, LA was fun. We met some great and interesting folks and the Fire Museum opening was pretty spectacular with parades of some of the original horse-drawn fire equipment ever made and static displays of more fire engines than I could imagine.

The EMT concept we use today started as a dream in LA to help save lives and that dream grew into the core of all EMT programs used around the world.

Thousands and thousands of lives have been saved from just that one expression of California dreaming.

Thanks again for reading my newsletter.

Bill

More information on my books and events will follow.
Also, the first 50 people to sign up for this newsletter will be invited to the Baghdaddy launch party at a place still to be determined somewhere in or around Boise Idaho.

I Really Wanted Catgirl Maids…

My wife found me sitting on the floor in the kitchen, drinking coffee — sighing.  

“What’s wrong?” She said. 

Looking around, things weren’t terrible.  The house was in good order, dishes were done, everything was clean, and mostly picked up.  I couldn’t really complain.  We have a great housekeeper who takes care of all the big things every other week.  All we have to do is clean up after ourselves, but…I was in the middle of a new book, and at that weird point where I start fixating on things that, truth be told, no one else really notices. 

It’s a sickness that straddles the backs of both writer’s block and procrastination.  One where I find myself walking from point A (anywhere) to point B (the scene I’m in the middle of that I already know how to finish), when “Bam!”  I have to immediately stop and do something completely random, inconsequential, and stupid — that’s, for no reason,  sudden the number one thing on my to do list.  And I can’t look away, or stop.

“Cat hair.”  That was how I answered my wife’s question.  “Cat hair’s everywhere.”  We have two cats and some was, and the dark hardwood floors we have were a little dusty, and bits of garlic parchment — forensic evidence of the dinner I’d made the night before, clung hidden from sight against the cabinet baseboards.  In a place that only I could see, while sitting on the floor, drinking my coffee, and sighing. 

This wasn’t an unknown problem.   It was a simple equation I didn’t even have to solve for “X.”  Animals + dark wood floors = more vacuuming/more tolerance toward hairy floors.  I wasn’t either, and my teenagers weren’t consistent enough to make the problem I was fixated on go away.  

“What do you want to do about it?  I could call one of the boys to vacuum?”  My wife asked, pouring herself a cup of coffee and pulling out a kitchen chair.  It disturbed the undergrowth and I watched a dust bunny chase after her chair followed by a clump of cat hair pursuing the bunny.  My wife sat in the chair, sipped her coffee, and split her time between updating Facebook and watching me.

I sighed.  “No.  That won’t solve the problem.”  I thought about it.  “What we really need are catgirl maids.”  I said it without really thinking about it, or their care and upkeep.  A brigade of cute, semi-furry professionals.  Well versed, and experienced, in cat hair containment.  

What I was thinking of was something like this:

I was still lost in thought thinking about finally getting up off the floor, and getting another cup of coffee, when Jodi said. “Catgirls aren’t really a thing.  If they are, you can’t buy, adopt, or enter a service contract with them, even with Amazon Prime.  So, sorry babe.  Plus, even if they were, you’d be too distracted to finish your new book.”

I couldn’t argue with that.  Sigh.  

“How would you feel about a robot?  And stop sighing.”

“I would actually feed good pretty good about a robot, if the right technology is finally here.” 

I had warm childhood robot memories that looked something like this:

Five minutes later, Jodi ordered me a robot.  I was actually excited enough about it to get up off the floor, and get back to writing.  The next day a small box arrived, and my wife gave our robot it’s first charge.  It was nothing like the maid-bot I was looking forward to, but my son Xander took an interest, programmed it, and set it loose:

Xander named my new robot maid; Steve.  So, from Catgirls to Robo Steve.  Sigh. 

Well, that’s what I want to say.  I was skeptical, but Steve actually does a great job.  He’s no Rosie the robot.  He’s a mostly autonomous dust-buster, floor polisher, and carpet vacuum.  He cries for help if he gets stuck, but otherwise he does the job, quietly everyday.  My cat hair problem is gone, the floors are never dusty, and even when I sit on the floor there’s no under counter cooking debris.  Really, they look great.  So great I returned to my office to write a blog.  But worry not.  I’m getting back to my book, after I hit post.

If you’re interested, there are now a lot of robot floor cleaners on the market.  For us DEE BOT seems be working well, for not a big investment after holiday discounts.  I don’t get a commission, but I do think the technology is pretty cool.  

I’d rather have Catgirl maids, but Jo’s right, when that time actually comes, I probably won’t write as much.  So, until my next ridiculous fixation, I’m back to work, and I’m really happy with how my new story is coming along.

Thanks for checking out my blog.

Bill Riley

Check out what’s happening at www.billrileyauthor.com

 

Baghdaddy Pre-Pub Review Update

Signed IlluminatiMy first book, Baghdaddy, is now edited and approaching the second to last phase of its pre-publication review with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  

I’m a big fan of pre-publication review.  Even though it can be a pain in the ass and they do take time.  I work hard to make sure my story locations and descriptions don’t compromise important mission details, trade-craft, or individuals.  So, a pre-pub review is a vital cross check to make sure that nothing compromising is inadvertently missed.  Compromised classified information can absolutely cost the lives of people working to protect us.  Inadvertent compromise can and does negatively impact sensitive negotiations and our relationships with other countries.   Compromises can cost us taxpayers billions of dollars by tainting methods of collection or the sources we use to maintain our edge and protect our citizens.  Our sources and methods are rare, often irreplaceable, and put in place at great risk and expense.   

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