Publishing rests on the shoulders of people who sit alone, hunched over their keyboards, faced with a blank page, often cursed by a gloomy and dismissive voice in their ear. To be honest, I don’t think most people even in the trade really, truly comprehend that. When at Virago we invite authors in to the office to celebrate a prize or a bestseller, I am always amused to see the visible representation of publishing, of how many people it takes to publish a book: the editor, the literary agent, the copy-editor, the proof-reader, the jacket designer, the production controller, the print-run manager, the rights manager, the contracts manager, the royalties manager, the publicist, the marketer, the sales team (home, export, wholesalers), the warehouse people, the van drivers—not to forget the Managing Director and the Finance Director—and then, once the book leaves us, the librarians and the booksellers.
But the book is drawn from the mind of one. However much discussion goes on between author and editor, the idea, the manifestation, the final book is the author’s. One person to create the book and a crowd of us to publish it: all our jobs depend on the author’s. An odd balance. Of course, the author needs us, the publisher, but we can always be replaced with another set of publishing people. The author is unique.
To be one of the first to read what another human being writes from their private self is a privilege and a job that I take seriously. It is an intense relationship, which is why I use the word intimacy in the chapter title; and it’s one that requires trust. There are many editors in the world and I cannot speak for them, but for me the editor’s first job is to understand the author’s vision—to get inside their head—as only then will the author trust and believe the editor is on their side and meaningful collaboration can take place. I remember, with great pleasure, editing the psychotherapist Susie Orbach’s essays. She said what she liked about our work together was that I was able ‘to get into the writers’ mind’. At times, the link between therapy and editing is similar: the job of the editor, like the therapist, is to get the author to fully imagine and then get to their goal—and at intense times editor and author do probably see or speak to each other once a week.
Toni Morrison said of editing that ‘within the relationship if there is some trust, some willingness to listen, remarkable things can happen’.
The ego belongs with the writer—I believe that and have been wary of the editor with the ego. The job as editor is to shepherd, to cajole, to inspire even—but it is a backroom job. And yet . . . and yet I have also come to believe that an editor can be the catalyst for the alchemy in a writer’s mind. The editor has to have the talent, the capacity, the optimism to read through the flaws, the confusions, the wrong turnings, to make that leap of imagination, particularly in fiction: to believe that these thousands of words of made-up people and this story created out of nothing will make a great book. Like the author, you too have to have hope.
Says Linda Grant: ‘There’s a point where the novel, unwritten, exists inside you, whole, a kind of shimmering tangible thing which only requires you to transcribe it.’ The editor has to treasure that shimmering idea with respect; it would be easy to destroy it before it solidifies on the page. The editor has to reach as high as the author, possibly higher!
In editing both fiction and non-fiction I first want to praise the great things and to be able to find the words that can take the author further—as most everyone improves with rewrites and drafts and edits. Rare is the person who writes without that. Many authors are experienced and robust, and expect careful, thoughtful editing, but in my experience the best creativity comes from a feeling of confidence. It’s an editor’s job to keep that confidence uppermost, even while rigorously editing, even while doubts are haunting the project—especially while doubts are haunting it.
An author said recently to me, ‘I can’t write with uncertainty.’ I respect that. The editor needs to keep faith for them both. The editor needs to hold the author, to let them know they have their back—but also to let them know that they will be pushed to their limit to create their best. Like a sports coach, I suppose.
Margaret Atwood takes the sport analogy seriously. She has a team. Though she has hundreds of publishers around the world, her close-knit group of English language editors, in her native Canada, in America, and in Britain, are ‘her people’. She had often called on them all to comment on the near-final drafts of her novels, and in January 2008 she called upon them all again. As her UK paperback publisher, I went along. Margaret wanted our opinion—as a group—on Maddadam, the third and final instalment in her dystopian trilogy that began with Oryx and Crake.
The early part of her manuscript was sent to us in the days leading up to the meeting and then those of us not in Canada flew to Toronto to meet the Canadians, particularly Ellen Seligman, who had been Margaret’s editor at McClelland & Stewart for two decades. Vivienne Schuster, her then agent, and I feverishly read the section we’d been sent just before our flight. Once in Toronto we taxied through the freezing streets to the Park Plaza Hotel and found the others. We would see Margaret herself the next day. We were six—editors and agents—and though we all knew each other, were all experienced editors, and had long worked with her, the feeling of needing to step up, to be good enough, made us all laugh nervously. Of course it was Margaret and her manuscript that were under (willing) scrutiny. But even so . . . we editors had that sense of taking an exam. Never mind being perceptive and articulate—could we read fast enough? ‘I’m a slow reader,’ came from many of us. ‘I’m jet-lagged,’ from both Viv and me.
Margaret’s then US agent, the wonderfully named Phoebe Larmore, dressed in her usual swathes of mauve, gathered us around a table and with Vivienne gave us each a package containing the entire and now completed manuscript in a box, tied with a ribbon. Each was a different colour: mine was a limey green edged in cream. We were also given a very Atwood-humoured endurance goody bag: aspirins, throat lozenges, chocolate, bottled water, and energy bars. We planned when we were to meet again, and then, as if a starting gun had been fired, we rose and dashed to our rooms, and fell into the pages of a dark and witty world. I was immediately reminded of my cover copy for the first of the trilogy: ‘Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered . . . Welcome to the outrageous imagination of Margaret Atwood’, and I was there again. Bliss.
We met later—most of us having read it all—and talked about our feelings and suggestions over supper. Such an impressive, exciting talent has Margaret—I think of that enormous brain—that, as usual, she had pushed out the boundaries with tremendous originality and with terror too. We found ourselves, to our relief, in agreement on suggested edits. We passed our sense of fellow-editor test, or maybe that was comradeship fostered by the wine and jet-lag. It felt good.
The next day we gathered in a suite and rearranged the furniture. The American hardback editor, Nan Talese, could not make the meeting so she was dialled up on speakerphone and placed on a footstool in the centre of the group. Margaret arrived, pink-cheeked from her walk, with a large smile for us all, and sat down. Phoebe felt it would be good to acknowledge the auspiciousness of the event with the lighting of a candle. We nodded and the activity was explained to Nan on the footstool. The candle was lit: immediately the smoke detectors screamed and the fire alarm was set off, and a few minutes later we watched from the windows as fire engines pulled up outside the hotel. Who else could write a book that would bring the fire department running?
Then we focused. We had our notes, and we spoke and Margaret listened, sagely asked questions, nodded, asked more questions, took notes, and pushed for answers. We discussed the title.
After, through snowy streets, for which only Margaret was properly dressed, we went to her house for the supper her partner Graeme had prepared for us all. Ellen Seligman loaned me a scarf as she could see I was cold. ‘I always bring extra clothes when I visit here,’ she said, nodding at the energy-conscious Margaret. ‘They never keep their heat very high.’ Because it
had all gone well, or maybe just because it was an extraordinary collection of women (and Graeme), we had a splendid time. I think Margaret got what she wanted. I admire her for asking for that openness and level of scrutiny: she asked for honesty and we gave it. Never before or since have I been in anything of its like. A seminar, perhaps—but with the author of the book in question leading the discussion. (Extraordinary!)
An editor is only any good to an author if they are honest, but an editor can find positive ways of pushing, positive ways of showing what is working, positive ways of indicating when a writer is heading in a direction that makes the writing lift off the page. Honesty, absolutely, always; but framed in a way that suggests a solution. As Maya Angelou said, ‘When someone feels they must tell you the brutal truth usually all you remember is the brutality.’ Though a challenge can be productive, as proved by the way Maya Angelou’s editor got her to agree to write her memoir.
Sarah Dunant and I have had a long, productive relationship, one that I think both of us would cheerfully characterize as being creatively challenging: we have always really enjoyed an intense and sparky, even abrasive, time together. We’d worked together for years when she began her first Italian Renaissance novel. She decided that she would narrate the story in the voice of a fifteen-year-old girl, but I worried the girl was just too young, too well born, and too secluded to give the novel the scope it needed. Sarah insisted it could be done. Fittingly, we were in an Italian restaurant; we’d finished eating and were still discussing this point long and hard. There was nothing left on the white tablecloth and the restaurant had almost emptied out when I finally said ‘Okay then, prove it!’ Chin up, smiling, she said, ‘I will.’
The outstanding, moving—and bestselling—The Birth of Venus was the glorious result and the beginning of Sarah’s new career as a historical novelist.
How tough one can be with a writer of course depends on the author, but also on the relationship. If the author thinks an editor doesn’t understand their vison then the discussions get mired in defensiveness. Certainly, the editor is not always right about why a book is not working, and frank observations produce results only if there is trust between author and editor. Even then it’s a risk.
Sarah reminds me that after she’d more than won me over with her protagonist I had a final question: ‘What did they eat during the Italian Renaissance?’ She gave me a long, colourful reply about food. I pointed out that the book covers six years and no one has a meal. There was a dreadful pause and then we laughed, and what great banquets she wrote as a result.
Sarah has taught me how to tease out what is in the author’s mind but not yet on the page and, crucially, how to balance ownership of the text with an author. It must be respectful but it must also be a partnership because publishing only works if the editor is as committed to the book as the author.
Though not every author wants an editor’s views. One of our Virago editors once asked an author into the office to discuss her manuscript, which she had printed out and carefully annotated with pencilled suggestions and edits. The author looked at it, then took the entire pile of paper, walked to the open window, tossed it all out into the street, and left.
I once suggested to Nina Bawden, who wrote splendid, taut novels about what goes on behind the façade of happy families, some small edits that she agreed with, and then that I thought one strand of her story could be expanded just a bit. She listened quietly and then said the finished novel was like a wall; if she took out one brick the whole thing would fall down.
So, no. Sometimes the dialogue is drawn to a close.
Sarah Waters, like Margaret Atwood and Sarah Dunant, has more than one reader and editor. She listens carefully and notes when things need fixing. But when I suggest something that doesn’t quite chime with her, she says, ‘Mmm, maybe,’ and I know that’s a polite no.
An editor must draw observations and comments from the text. The editing suggestions and conundrum-solving ideas only ring true to an author when they can feel they are organic to the book. When that happens it’s almost like hitting ‘tilt’ at the machines: you can see the author light up and the penny dropping all the way. So rewarding.
What I have found takes the most courage is to send an author back ‘just one more time’. Many will have written maybe four, five, or six drafts and often taken several years. When an author is at that point they are understandably very tired and even blind to the text. But sometimes there are just a few final tweaks, nuances, shades of meaning that could put the final gloss on the book. I hold my breath and send that email.
Linda Grant and I had been editing a novel together very happily over several months, and when we were nearly finished—in fact Linda thought we were—I suggested just one more thing and immediately got an email in return: ‘ENOUGH!’
The book goes out into the world with only the author’s name. And if they want to include something I don’t agree with, I will tell them but I will respect their decision. It’s their book. And no editor forgets that the history of publishing is littered with editors who got it wrong. Think how many editors turned down Harry Potter.
So when Linda said ‘ENOUGH!’ I backed down. She was right. Though I think—or choose to believe—it was a compliment to be thanked in her acknowledgments for being ‘relentless’ . . .
Joan Bakewell, the redoubtable journalist and now life peer, decided in her late seventies that she wanted to write a novel, and put her very capable mind to that pursuit. When she came into the office to talk through the suggested edits, she revealed herself to be a swot. She would thank us and then happily depart with the marked-up manuscript, which she laughingly referred to as her ‘homework’.
Writing novels is like solving a puzzle you’ve set yourself—then knowing what to withhold from the reader to build drama, working out what to do with your characters, how to describe the scenes that convince the reader. One of the most pleasurable aspects of working with great fiction writers is watching their characters come alive, becoming tangible, human; what Toni Morrison calls moving ‘from the curl all of the way to a full-fledged person’. I know they haunt writers as they create them, but while we are working together I find they inhabit me too. Sarah Waters and I once sat in a café for hours discussing Duncan in The Night Watch, who was in prison. If anyone had listened in they would have heard us talking about why he would behave that way, what was in his background that would make him think the way he does, why couldn’t he see what others could, that he was being naive, not watching his back, and was going to get into trouble. They would have thought we were talking about a real man. And by this time in the writing and the editing we were.
And that is why readers believe that too. Readers also find that the characters inhabit them—sometimes for life—because we are in their very lives and minds and secrets. I have always loved the writer James Baldwin’s quote about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings because in praising his friend’s memoir he shows us how he understands the power of well-drawn characters: ‘I know that not since the days of my childhood, when people in books were more real than people one saw every day, have I found myself so moved.’
To help an author write their life story is another thing again—or actually, maybe not. Writers who create remarkable memoirs are in some ways not far from being a novelist: just like fiction, it has to have main characters, a narrative arc, drama and tension, and resolution. In so many ways, if they are good, memoirs are really not at all truly like life. That is not to say they are not truthful and authentic and real. That, of course, is at the core of autobiography: they must be genuine. But they are, of necessity, an edited life, and editing means leaving people and things out, possibly truncating episodes, and not telling every truth. I am with Oscar Wilde on this: life imitates art more than art imitates life. It’s not the job of a memoir, or indeed art, to record each and every fact, but instead, like fiction, to make a shape of a life. But even if making a shape has a certain unreality compared to an e
xact record of what happened, it doesn’t follow, as he says, that lying ‘is the proper aim of art’.
To me, what must be at the heart of memoir is emotional truth. The facts can be changed, names can be disguised, people written out, and timelines altered: sometimes all of these things must happen to protect the innocent, but the heart must be honest.
But there is honesty—and then there is ruthlessness. Nina Bawden wrote, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, about writers, ‘They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story. They batten on their relations. They are terrible people. They “put people in books” . . . Writers are not to be trusted.’
Novelists, like memoirists, plunder their own experiences as well as those of their friends and family, but at least in fiction the truth is veiled, however thinly. I have had a few memoirists who have written unnecessary, casually cruel things about their family, until phrases are pointed out to them and changes have been made. Where it is more interesting, though, is when an author tells things that reveal more about themselves than they are aware of, and in some cases are far from flattering. My job as editor is to highlight this, to tell them how they are coming across to the reader. When I edited Rosie Thomas’s spirited and exciting Border Crossing, the story of a vintage car rally from Beijing to Paris, I felt obliged to say that at certain points she was showing herself to be a bit disagreeable. I had no problem with that, but I wanted to make sure she was happy with her own portrayal. Oh yes, she knew exactly what she was doing, and so we went to print as it was. I admired that.
Lyndall Gordon’s approach to biography taught me something important about editing autobiography and memoir. When she embarks on a subject she works hard first to find out what that person thought about the narrative of their own life, and only once she has surmised what that was can she write their story. For example, Mary Wollstonecraft, she believed, saw herself as a woman who could reinvent herself: from being victim of a brutal father to finding the brief relief of being a governess, to working with a benevolent editor and writing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, to being a revolutionary in France. Even when her despair after the infidelity of the man she loved caused her to try to drown herself in the Thames, even then, once she recovered, she reinvented herself as campaigner, speaking up for the rights of women. Says Lyndall, ‘I wanted to counter the image of her as veering and wanton. I learned that she saw herself as entirely devoted and serious.’ And it is that Mary Wollstonecraft who is revealed in Lyndall’s biography.
A Bite of the Apple Page 18