Editor's Eye

Happy Sunday, pals. This week I’m just about halfway through the rewrite of my third book. We’ll call it a rewrite and not an edit because I’ve started afresh with a new word document — I’ve heard about authors who, at this stage, will delete entirely their first draft and rewrite from scratch, the theory being that all the most important material will have been retained and will make it into the next draft, but stripped back, cleaner.

I haven’t gone quite this far; I always keep everything I’ve written. But starting with a blank document certainly has a clarifying effect, and demands a certain level of self-trust that manifests as a kind of writer’s muscle-memory: that what matters will find its place. What is also required is a level of trust in your reader: that whatever dross (there is always dross) has been discarded will not be missed.

Alongside my own rewrite, I’ve been editing others’ work these last few weeks, and what is so interesting about doing both in tandem is that I’ve been noticing how obvious it is when the author is hiding something: when they’re eliding a detail, or not being as honest as they could be about a feeling or an observation, or when they haven’t worked out precisely what it is they mean to say.

Such elisions are not failures, rather they are a necessary part of the process of edging closer to truths that are difficult to articulate, and that is the function of the editor’s eye: to read a sentence with clarity but also generosity. To put a finger on the place where something is concealed, and to say, look here, go further, keep going.

Rereading my book this week, I’ve printed it out two pages a sheet, and turned it sideways, so it looks already like a printed book, and a whole lot different to the document I have on my screen. It’s a subtle shift in perspective, but it’s one that has allowed me to adopt the editor’s eye: I am reading with the established assumption that there is something here that is worth saying, I just need to work out how best to say it. This is a very different from reading with the question of whether there is anything here that needs to be said at all. Now, I can see so clearly all the places where I am trying to hide in my own manuscript, and I can see how obvious it is that this sentence or that is not a truthful sentence. So, I say to myself, or I write to myself (I always write notes to myself in second person) go further, say more, keep going.

The editor’s eye allows me to leave aside questions of worth or value and instead get straight to the how: how can I speak more truly, how can I speak more clearly, how can I say what I mean to say? Whether what I mean to say really matters is beside the point, and is quite possibly none of my business.

And, the editor’s eye, in case you are wondering, is a gaze well worth adopting when it comes to life as well as books. Looking at life, or indeed the world, or other people, with the settled assumption that there is more than enough here that matters and is of value is radically different from starting with a question about worth. The editor’s eye allows you to look at the things that are not right, to see them clearly but lovingly, and to look at the things that are, in fact, just right, and to feel content.

With love, Rosie xxx