RIDING A WILD STALION

 

Having just completed the fourth draft of my work in progress (=WIP) and with two beta readers’ feedback to help navigate the last two drafts, I can now assess what an anomaly this current WIP has been.

 

I was never a true planner. I have a writing friend, a published novelist, who not only fully charts all the details, plot points and characters of her stories before she begins typing the first paragraph, but if she finds that her writing has so much as begun to stray off the planned course, she deletes those pages and gets back on the road she had marked.

 

I can’t imagine writing this way. Too much like the homework back in school days: I know I must do it, I have a feeling of satisfaction when it’s done, but the work itself is torture, if you find extreme tedium torturous.

 

I know two writers who are complete pansters, (=writing by the seat of their pants) no plan whatsoever. They sit down to a writing session with no idea what will appear on the screen/page. Stephen King claims to be one. He sits to write in order to find out what will happen next. This is successful only for those who have so ingrained story structure in their creative mind that it turns out brilliantly, or at least not a complete going-nowhere-mess.

Panstering is very much like a flying trapeze without a safety net.

 

I had attempted this once a few years back and gave up after the first chapter. I then sat down to make a rough chart and proceeded as I usually do. I follow the chart loosely, discovering some surprises along the way but basically staying the charted course. Some call this “discovery writing.” It’s a plan that is not detailed, and the details are spontaneous and immensely enjoyable parts of the process.

 

I started my current WIP this way. But this time, right after the first chapter, the story went its own way. I had so completely lost control of this galloping horse that I didn’t stop to glance at my charted plan. What was happening on the page bore little resemblance to my plan.

 

It was as if I attached the reigns of a trusted old workhorse to a carriage. Once we left the carriage house, the horse began to gallop. To my horror, I discovered it was not the horse I thought I had attached, but a wild stallion. I was driving a carriage that a young wild horse I'd never met before had taken over. I had no control.

 

I’d start every writing session dreading where it was going. I had no idea where it would end.

 

Well, it did end. A second draft surprised me, because it sort of held together.

 

What’s next? Who knows. But it’s been an experience.

THE (mostly) UNSUNG HEROS of PUBLISHING

 

A writing colleague who had beta-read for me (and I for her) and who, like me, had been on occasion paid to freelance edit, let me know one of the books she had edited had won an important award.

When she mentioned the title, I gasped. It’s one I had read because it came recommended and it is an exquisite literary novel for middle grades. Aside from the mentioned award, this novel had garnered accolades from all the sources that matter in publishing.

 

The glory, rightly, goes to the author. The financial gain goes to the publisher. But what goes to the editor who guided it to the mature version the world got to read?

 

No glory, or even a smidgen of recognition, will attach to this all-important arm of the publishing journey. Some writers will mention their editor’s name in the acknowledgement page. But the public at large only knows editors when the latter write their memoires, and this they get to publish only if they had edited well known writers, plural.

 

Try not to chuckle as I confess this reminded me of intelligence officers as part of national security. Few know what battles they fought so we won’t have to. Editors are like the CIA field agents whom the public will never know.

 

Unsung heroes are a special breed. They work for the job at hand and not for a pat on the back.

 

To the editors: