Edits! [part one]

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from my editor.

I’d been expecting this email for some time, but didn’t have a precise timeline on when to expect it. In fact, I’d been trying urgently to distract myself from the whole waiting game by writing a different book.

I highly recommend this tactic, by the way — sure, I waited a couple of months to get going on these edits, but in the meantime I have 60k words in draft form of a wholly new book, which feels like a great achievement on its own.

As soon as I got the email, I read it. It was a series of editorial notes for my novel All Hell, which is due to come out sometime next year. I read it once, then I read it again, then I put it away until the next day and read it again.

I was half-expecting to have some kind of emotional crisis at that point.

But I didn’t.

The other thing I was kind of expecting was to be able to find a bunch of content from other writers about how to handle editorial notes from your publisher.

But I couldn’t.

I found loads of stuff about handling edits from other sources — beta readers, paid developmental editors, even friends and family.

But it seems like not that many authors have commented on how they dealt with edits from their agents, or their publishers.

So, here we are.

I thought someone in future might be interested in what it’s like as a debut novelist, getting editorial feedback from a publisher from the first time.

Some caveats: I’ve never been through this process with my agent yet, because my publication and agent contract both came from winning a competition with my manuscript. So this is the first time I’ve had edits in this kind of capacity.

So, this is a first round of edits — once I’ve completed a new draft based on these notes, I am likely to be given some more feedback and more to do. Bear that in mind!

Since receiving that first email, I’ve had a call with my agent and a call with my editor, the head of the publisher and my agent, and I’ve actually begun to do the edits.

I’m going to make a few “parts” to this series of posts, to document how it feels to go through this process. But in this first part I think it’s worth talking about the first of the editorial suggestions, because it was a biggie.

They asked me to cut a 15,000 word subplot altogether.

Let me clarify. The initial editorial notes emailed to me only took up like a page and a half. There were some kind words about what the editor loved about the book, and a reminder that everything she’d suggested was up for discussion — so, if I felt really, really strongly about anything, I had full permission to push back and we could maybe work on finding a different solution.

And then the first note was about cutting this subplot.

So, if I’d really wanted to keep it, I probably could have — but I’d have needed to fully justify my reasons, or figured out a way to make that particular story element more teen-friendly (it’s a YA book).

But… I was kind of fine with it. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the character in that subplot. I love the setting he operates in too, but I can totally understand why a parallel storyline about someone who is essentially a middle-manager in a Brazil/Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy inspired office setting might not play that well with the core story, which is about a teenage girl and her adventures.

Also — cutting that plotline left me with some pretty major holes in the story that I’ve had to think carefully about how to fill.

On the other hand…

I’ve kept every word from that plotline in a separate document. If I feel so strongly about my characters and his story in a few months/years/whatever, I could always come back and try to do something else with him.

Also, that 15,000 wordcount means I have a lot more space to play with when it comes to other elements of my edit. Some of the ideas my editor suggested (clarifications of character motivation, or worldbuilding) are actually things that initially appeared in older versions of this book, but had to be cut because of space constraints. Well, now I’ve got space to put some of it back!

And I hope that’s reassuring. By the time your book is with a publisher, it’s worth remembering that they know what they’re doing. In my case, my publisher specialises in fiction for children and teens, and they’ve got way more experience than I do in figuring out what will speak most to my audience.

I’ve also, I think, just been really lucky. None of the edits suggested veer away from what I consider to the the heart of my story. No one is proposing I change my main character’s personality. They seem to love some of the same things I loved about writing it. It feels so much like an enhancement, rather than a diminishing of my work, or the effort I’ve put into getting to this point.

Which doesn’t mean I haven't had an entire breakdown of motivation at any point, but I think I’ll leave that for part two…