A Spoonful of Sugar

First published Wednesday, March 24, 2010
 

Recently, I had the less-than-stellar experience of editing a manuscript for a first-time writer who believed her every word, every comma, every sentence contributed to her perfect book and under no circumstances should be changed. Emotions ran high, and reason ran out the door. Resistance became the word of the day, every day.

A few years ago, I attended a seminar where we were told that our books are not our babies. However, books are birthed after months, sometimes years, of hard labor. That does suggest a kinship between the two b’s—babies and books.

What happens when our baby gets sick? Do we take it to the doctor? Yes. When the doctor writes out a prescription, do we fill it? Of course. We even get well-baby checks and follow a schedule of immunizations to prevent measles, mumps, chickenpox, tetanus, hepatitis, and other diseases. Why? We want our baby to be healthy, the best it can be.

What about our manuscripts? When they are less than healthy, do we take them to the doctor, a.k.a., editor? When the editor writes out a prescription (suggestion to make the book better), do we fill it? Suppose we don’t think the story’s ailing. Do we still get well-manuscript checks? Do we immunize our book against lack of continuity and flow, poor dialogue, plot and character weaknesses, redundancies, lagging story lines, absence of hooks, telling rather than showing, and a host of other disorders? Do we want our story to be the best it can be?

Most of us agree that the doctor’s ability to ascertain the true state of our baby’s health exceeds our own. Similarly, a competent editor’s ability to determine the well-being of our manuscript far surpasses ours. Yet, do we resist the editor’s efforts to make our book the best it can be?

We writers often love our words and are loath to part with a phrase that epitomizes our feelings or paints an extraordinary (in our opinion) word picture. We may need to be convinced that a few more strokes of the brush will enhance our emotions or add depth to our scene. But if we are resistant writers, we want to protect our words at any cost. Sometimes that cost is very high.

Take the writer mentioned above. Her book has great potential to become a bestseller. However, much of her unedited writing rambles and digresses from her topic. If polished, her incredible story and unique delivery will draw in many readers. But its present state falls far short of excellence and stifles the realization of that potential.

How do editors reach a writer with the needed prescription before the manuscript’s poor health becomes terminal? According to Mary Poppins, “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” We editors—a.k.a., book doctors—prescribe cures for almost all literary ailments. How can we help resistant writers to swallow those cures? What is that "spoonful of sugar” that "helps the medicine go down”? What do you think?

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Linda Lane loves to paint word pictures. For years she has worked as an editor (2 books she edited won national awards and a third on which she worked was accepted for nomination for a Pulitzer Prize) and writer (when she had time - which was seldom). In January 2012 she is changing her focus. Teaching writers to write through hands-on work with their own manuscripts, she will coach them in the skills that will save thousands of dollars in editing fees over the course of their writing careers. How? Well-written, polished manuscripts cost less to edit.