Ali doesn’t like change, my mother told my then-boyfriend years ago when my family was tearing the barn down.
The barn was old, it was true. And collapsing. And my family couldn’t afford the massive costs of restoring a 150 year-old, rotting barn to ensure it was safe, I see that now.
But at the time, I saw only a part of my home being destroyed.
Turning in line edits on a book under contract is lot like watching the barn come down. The lumber carted away by strangers, the land forever changed. Or, worse: it’s like when my family eventually sold that house and farm where I had spent the last years of my childhood, and my son spent the first few years of his life. I grew up there and he got started there. And then we had to watch it go.
Traditionally publishing a book is a series of endings that aren’t really the end.
Why do I dread line edits so much? Traditionally publishing a book is a series of endings that aren’t really the end. It can trick you, lull you into believing nothing is final. That you have time and can delay your parting.
You send the manuscript to your agent—you’ll make changes. You send it to the editor—you’ll make changes, including at least one round of content edits, where really big scenes can be shifted and added or subtracted, and then those line edits, where smaller stuff can.
The end comes, in many regards, with line edits. The changes after that round are only really on the level of typos and grammar, copyediting and proofreading.
Is there a more perfect time to finish a project than early fall?
I have a hard time letting books go because I want them to be perfect. Also, I miss them. I mostly miss the community I make with books. This was especially hard with Trashlands where I had an entire, loving and weird town in a junkyard to keep me company (and at the first part of the pandemic too, with loneliness abounding). When I write, I think of the characters behind me like the scene at the end of Labyrinth, with Sarah’s friends in the mirror.
Remember fair maiden, should you need us…
Well, I need you Trillium and Foxglove and Mr. Fall. And I miss you. And with the new book, Dust? I will miss you Sam, Elmer, Louisa, and Thea.
I love to write ensembles best. I have learned that about myself, likely because I love and value community so much. That love stretches back to when I was a child, performing in community theatre. We would form families with each play and musical. And then, when the run ended, that family would go our separate ways, only to come together in a new form, at a new time, expanding to include different people, with the next show and the next.
I don’t perform anymore. I miss it, but my situation as a parent just isn’t set up for it right now. Maybe it might be possible for me once more one day. But the experience of putting on a show, the structure of the set build and tear down—that replicates in my life again and again with every new book, every project taken from idea to holdable object, when I have to let it go.
A book has to end so a new one can begin.
Is there a more perfect time to finish a project than early fall, when summer has ended? The brief lives of leaves are ending and warmth is too. And the season of darkness, my favorite time, is coming. Apples and pumpkins are ripening. I’m darkness too. I don’t like summer so I don’t really grieve it, I think in part because I know the long cold months are for growing things deep under the ground. For burrowing into yourself and discovering your depths. And making yourself ready for change.
A book has to end so a new one can begin. And that’s the best cure for line edits. Making it final, having the last say, saying one more goodbye to your story is so you can start writing a new story.
Already, I have another book drafted and in my agent’s hands, and an even newer one just barely beginning. The way to survive the cycle of publishing (and artistic production is general) is to move through the wheel.
Something’s in the oven, something’s boiling on the stove, and you are just starting to gather ingredients on the counter for another new creation.
So, goodbye Dust. The word will meet you next October. In the meantime, I raise my eyes to meet the next thing.