Things you may observe about editing a novel

Dishes accumulate more quickly than can be accounted for. In fact, all dishes and cutlery are dirty, in spite of the cessation of all cooking. (The most alarming thing about this is how little you are inclined to care.)

Your stomach never stops growling in spite of heretofore-unheard-of (read: confessed) indulgences sanctioned due to state of grievous emergency. (May include but not limited to Chinese takeout, energy drinks, garlic crackers, stale Cadbury mini-eggs.)

Most novels you will think about or pick up are better than your novel in its current state. (Heart-rendingly, soul-crushingly better.) Nevertheless, any momentary self-doubt cannot be given free rein to disrupt your terrified output of what you fervently hope is some reasonable approximation of brilliance.

How to edit a novel

First: leave it alone. For a long time. In fact, if you don't look at it even once for almost eleven months, that's just about perfect.

Then think about all the parts you remember that make you cringe. Resolve to do away with them. Remember how you imagined your novel back when it was something you were excited to start working on.

Next, get notes from a careful reader or editor. Believe them. Compare them to what you already know about problems in the novel. Think carefully about possible solutions.

Last: cut ruthlessly. Experience elation.

I'm kidding about the list (although it doesn't strike me as bad advice), but in my case, this is more or less what has happened. I received my notes from my editor on July 15 (seven single-spaced, 10-point font pages of awesome insight), and after one week of mulling and strategizing here in the city, I took two weeks of vacation in which I planned to make a big push on the edits.

And last night I got home from two wonderful weeks in the country where I had planned to buckle down and edit edit edit like crazy. And editing in this case was going to mean writing whole new sections from scratch, since I decided I wanted to cut about a third of the existing text.

I did a fair chunk, but not enough. There were other commitments and distractions (mostly good ones), and the summer is so short here, I thought I ought to give it its due, which meant hiking up mountains, trips to the water park, stargazing, and cookouts down by the lake. No regrets, but I'm going to have to make a strict plan for how to get through the rest of it.

At the moment, I'm 28,000 words lighter (though this is likely to change), and the novel is finally beginning to be something closer to what I imagined it back in 2007...before I started writing it.

cold days

A cold day is a good day for blogging.

There has been very little writing in my world lately, but a lot of doing and feeling, all of which can only be good for the writing in the long run.

One of the not-writing things I've been doing is running through the entirety of Downton Abbey. It was a nice transition from The Little Stranger, the last novel I finished and which I also recommend. Read & watch back-to-back for seamless immersion in the grand British world of turn-of-the-century failing estates and antiquated class systems.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

One day after American Thanksgiving is as good of a day as any to think about gratitude. There has been a lot of upheaval and sadness and stress over the past few weeks, in every realm of my life, but also excitement and anticipation and elation. I am bursting with news (yes, book news, mostly), and a general sense of unreality that pervades just about every waking hour.

It is not the kind of state that (for me, anyway) is particularly conducive to writing, but I hope to get back into that by late next week at the latest. In the meantime, I am enjoying feeling fortunate for my work (the real work, and, yes, even the day job), the people in my life (who amaze and inspire and provoke me into hysterical laughter on a daily basis), the city where I live (today’s freezing rain notwithstanding), and all of the general benefits that go along with being an independent adult in urban Canada in this day and age (freedom from civil unrest! public transit! hot running water!).

Gosh, I’m lucky! I can hardly believe my good luck, some days. It’s a good thing to remember through the tough times.

Off to knock on wood…

The Incongruous Quarterly

Have you guys heard about the Incongruous Quarterly? Its tag-line is publishing the unpublishable, which initially made me nervous until I found out that "unpublishable" might just mean too long or too short or too weird or too raunchy or too...something. It is still their mandate to publish good writing.

The first issue is available online here.


The deadline has now passed for the issue I'm guest-editing (fiction), but there will be other calls for submissions coming up with other guest editors. Submit! It is online-only, but this is a reflection of budget, not quality.

The way that I got involved is a story that makes me happy: last December I'd shown up at one of Sherwin Tija's wonderfully strange events: the Arcade Choir. From the event description:

Forty singers stand in the middle of a room. They are not professional singers, though some of them might be. They all have iPods, and on every single one of those iPods is the Arcade Fire album “Funeral”. At a signal, they all press play and, the album loud in their ears, start to sing the opening strains of the first song of the album.

Now this singing won’t be very pretty. They’re singing not only the words, but the instruments as well. People are encouraged to hum, howl, beatbox, make any noise that will translate the songs to the audience better.

Not everyone will know all the words. The people in the choir will have listened to the album plenty of times, but not very carefully. They know how the song goes, but won’t necessarily know the lyrics. Or know them correctly.

Because the music in their ears is so loud, they won’t be able to hear themselves, their neighbours, or the sound of all of them collectively. This might result in some very bad singing, but the choir is encouraged to sing their hearts out, the way one does when you’re in the shower and only singing for the joy of it.

I showed up alone, a little apprehensive, but too excited about the event to skip it. I love that album. And singing. So I went in.


I met two other women who had showed up alone -- and both of them were writers, too. (Writers: a curious and fearless bunch.) And one of them was E., IQ's co-founder and editor-in-chief.

Me: striped and singing.

It quickly became evident that it was a lot more entertaining for the singers than the audience (who all dashed out at the first opportunity). But it was really fun and funny (Sherwin recorded it...it is the strangest thing ever) and highly unique. I was glad I went -- even more so when E. approached me to get involved with the quarterly. You never know where or how you might meet someone and where that might take you. This is the thing that coaxes me out of the house on those nights when I'm feeling especially introverted or guilt-plagued about being behind with my writing.

Reading tonight!

I'm reading tonight at Le Cagibi as part of the Taddle Creek Travelling Series of Happenings to promote their Out-of-Towner issue. Sadly, I'm not actually in the issue (now that I've seen the actual magazine, which is gorgeous, I wish I'd known they were doing one, as normally submissions are restricted to writers from Toronto), but I'll be reading with Katia Grubisic, Mark Jarman, and Sarah Gilbert, so I can promise you will not be disappointed! (I am a big fan of Katia's poetry in general and of her excellent Goose Lane collection in particular.)

I'm especially looking forward to Sarah's presentation, which will apparently feature a projector for what I hope is an elaboration of her essay on Mile End. I'm similarly neighbourhood-obsessed, and I was excited to see she wrote about the lemon tree that (bewilderingly) continues to flourish a few blocks away from here in the back lane. I've brought other people to look at that tree, to convince me I'm not dreaming it.

I spent the morning trying to decide what to read. I don't feel like reading from Mother Superior, since I don't want to subject people I know to something that, at this point, they've probably heard before. At the same time, the novel I just finished writing is currently under submission (*fingers crossed* or, as my mother would say, pray for me) and the thought of actually opening the file again to look at it basically fills me with dread. Eeek.

So instead I'm reading from the new-new novel. I'm only about 60 pages in, but I'm still excited about where it's going, so maybe this is a good point to be reading from it. This will be only the second time that I've read from a first, unpublished draft. (The first time, at the QWF mentorship reading back in 2008, didn't go very well -- I was knee-quakingly nervous and more or less breathlessly squeaked it all out -- but I've done a lot of readings between then and now, so I'm going to blame nerves rather than the terror of reading something brand-new.)

But although I have mixed feelings about giving readings (mostly to do with nervousness), I have only one feeling about the importance of reading your writing out loud -- namely, that it is hugely important. No matter how my selection goes over tonight, I'm sure I'll at least get some ideas about things I want to change. And that's great.

If you stop by tonight, come say hi! The doors are at 8 p.m., but the readings will probably start closer to 9 p.m.

Prisoners' Justice Day

One of my favourite things about the new thing I’ve been writing is that it has a discernible topic. When somebody asks what it’s about, I can (and do) say, “The death penalty.” How simple is that? No attempt to penetrate arcane family drama or mumbling, “Uh, it’s about this family, uh, these sisters.” (Yes, that’s the current novel. I will figure out how to talk about that one at some point.) Of course, it’s not really about the death penalty so much as it is about a particular set of characters and circumstances…

…But I’m so pleased about this short-form response. Not only has it saved me some embarrassment, it has also allowed me to talk about it in such a way that I can actually receive useful contacts and information! I mentioned it to another writer when I was at Yaddo, and he immediately encouraged me to get in touch with the Innocence Project. I had also mentioned it in passing to another friend of mine, M., who yesterday sent me some emails about Prisoners’ Justice Day, which just happens to be today.

Since most of my research into prisons has been U.S.-based because of the death penalty angle, I haven’t been as frequent a visitor at prisonjustice.ca as I might otherwise have been. Here is the mandate behind Prisoners’ Justice Day:

...August 10, the day prisoners have set aside as a day to fast and refuse to work in a show of solidarity to remember those who have died unnecessarily -- victims of murder, suicide and neglect.

...the day when organizations and individuals in the community hold demonstrations, vigils, worship services and other events in common resistance with prisoners.

...the day to raise issue with the fact that a very high rate of women are in prison for protecting themselves against their abusers. This makes it obvious that the legal system does not protect women who suffer violence at the hands of their partners.

...is the day to remember that there are a disproportionate number of Natives, African-Canadians and other minorities and marginalized people in prisons. Prisons are the ultimate form of oppression against struggles of recognition and self-determination.

...the day to raise public awareness of the demands made by prisoners to change the criminal justice system and the brutal and inhumane conditions that lead to so many prison deaths.

...the day to oppose prison violence, police violence, and violence against women and children.

...the day to publicize that, in their fight for freedom and equality, the actions of many political prisoners have been criminalized by government. As a result, there are false claims that there are no political prisoners in north american prisons.

...the day to raise public awareness of the economic and social costs of a system of criminal justice which punishes for revenge. If there is ever to be social justice, it will only come about using a model of healing justice, connecting people to the crimes and helping offenders take responsibility for their actions.

...the day to renew the struggle for HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment in prison.

...the day to remind people that the criminal justice system and the psychiatric system are mutually reinforcing methods that the state uses to control human beings. There is a lot of brutality by staff committed in the name of treatment. Moreover, many deaths in the psych-prisons remain uninvestigated.