{"id":8511,"date":"2008-10-21T13:18:14","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T17:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8511"},"modified":"2010-07-21T12:07:02","modified_gmt":"2010-07-21T16:07:02","slug":"the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-literary-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=8511","title":{"rendered":"\u201cthe loneliness of the long-distance literary editor\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

A piece that is of great interest to me now in my life (and I had somehow missed it although James Wolcott is one of my regular destination pitstops on the Web): Long-distance literary editors<\/a> and the whole process of editing, in general. Wolcott takes, as his launching-off point, a couple of tributes to editors, now dead, and the magazines they worked for. But I liked, mostly, the thoughts on editing – from Wolcott and the excerpt he chose to share.<\/p>\n

It reminds me of the relationship Maxwell Perkins<\/a> had with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and here is just a brief excerpt of the giant letter Perkins wrote to Fitzgerald after getting the manuscript of The Great Gatsby<\/a>\"\"<\/i>:<\/p>\n

The other point is also about Gatsby: his career must remain mysterious, of course. But in the end you make it pretty clear that his wealth came through his connection with Wolfstein. You also suggest this much earlier. Now almost all readers numerically are going to be puzzled by his having all this wealth and are going to feel entitled to an explanation. To give a distinct and definite one would be, of course, utterly absurd. It did occur to me though, that you might here and there interpolate some phrases, and possibly incidents, little touches of various kinds, that would suggest that he was in some active way mysteriously engaged. You do have him called on the telephone, but couldn’t he be seen once or twice consulting at his parties with people of some sort of mysterious significance, from the political, the gambling, the sporting world, or whatever it mayb be. I know I am floundering, but that fact may help you to see what I mean … I wish you were here so I could talk about it to you for then I know I could at least make you understand what I mean. What Gatsby did ought never to be definitely imparted, even if it could be. Whether he was an innocent tool in the hands of somebody else, or to what degree he was this, ought not to be explained. But if some sort of business activity of his were simply adumbrated, it would lend further probability to that part of the story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Editing is not easy. It is certainly not easy to edit your own work, and I have found that it sometimes takes me MONTHS of stepping away from something before I can even look at something I have written with anything even resembling clarity. Distance is great. Reading what you have written out loud is invaluable. But when that outside eye comes … Boy. If it’s someone you trust, then you had best listen.<\/p>\n

I had written a piece I felt was perfect. I don’t know, the piece just flowed, as far as I was concerned. I worked hard on it, editing, chopping it up, rearranging things – and I really felt that there was nothing more I could do with it. I sent it to my agent just to get her feedback, and we talked on the phone about it. She said one thing, “It feels like the piece has three climaxes.”<\/p>\n

The light broke in on my head. I resisted her words, vaguely, because I fear change, and it would mean totally re-thinking the whole thing … but once I realized that I had been building the narrative to not one, but three climaxes – I realized, well, obviously, three is too many. How about just focusing on ONE, Sheila? So I chopped that poor thing up some more, honing in on just the one. It made the piece infinitely better. Maybe the two other climaxes could be their own stand-alone pieces, who knows. But I honestly can’t imagine I would have, all on my own, realized that flaw in the piece. Maybe I would have – you never know, I have a good eye … but sometimes that outside first-impression eye from someone you trust is the only thing you really need.<\/p>\n

Follow Wolcott’s links …<\/a><\/p>\n

More agent and editor talk<\/a> from my friend Cara.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A piece that is of great interest to me now in my life (and I had somehow missed it although James Wolcott is one of my regular destination pitstops on the Web): Long-distance literary editors and the whole process of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[98,652],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8511"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8511"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24132,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8511\/revisions\/24132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}