Experiences With Editors - A. Manette Ansay

And the series is back, hopefully more entries will be coming soon!

I have had the same editor, currently at HarperCollins, for all but the first novel I published.  That first editor spent a lot of time working on pages and paragraphs, and I responded the way I usually respond when somebody makes specific comments about my work, suggestions along the line of take this out, move that, do you really need this character?  Something in me shuts down, shuts up, covers its ears when confronted with this type of feedback.  Possibly it's because, like questions that can be answered "yes" or "no," I'm reacting to these concrete fixes with concrete defenses.  So I say, I need this here because of this.  I insist, But if I move that, then this won't work.  The thing is, I wanted the book to be better.  I wanted my then-editor’s expertise.  But by then, this book--it was Vinegar Hill--was mine and mine alone. I had lived with it for almost three years.  I'd written another book after finishing it.  And though I could see things I might improve, I couldn't address those challenges using someone else's ideas.  I should mention that I really liked this editor personally.  I enjoyed spending time with her.  She was the sort of person I could image being my friend.  I should also mention that she's gone on to have a very successful career.  But on the page--or rather, with the pages between us--we never quite did click. 

I could never imagine being friends with my current editor.  I find her too intimidating.  She's brilliant.  Her literary ear is pitch-perfect.  She doesn’t suffer fools gladly.  She edits the way Annie Dillard's miner might, working her way slowly through dark and potentially dangerous spaces, tapping with her pick to make sure each step she takes will hold, pausing when she hears something different, something potentially hollow, false, thin.  Of course, these are exactly the places that I've moved through swiftly on tiptoe, hoping that no one will linger here, hoping that no one will notice.  She always notices.  She jumps up and down until the spot caves in and then points, outraged, to the hole.  Look at this sloppy workmanship!  This has got to be fixed!  But she seldom, if ever, tells me how to fix it.  She leaves that up to me.  And I fix it.   Not by eliminating a character or changing a timeline--though this might occur.  But I don’t begin there.  I begin with the work as a whole.  Each change I make is a global one (even if it's only a sentence.)  So the revision occurs organically, from the ground up, rather than the top down.   This is what my editor has taught me.  I am no less awed by her than I was when we first met in 1995.  I continue to learn and grow under her care.

A. Manette Ansay is the author of 6 novels, most recently Blue Water and Good Things I Wish You (due out in paper this July), as well as a memoir, Limbo, and a collection of short stories.  She has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a two time winner of the Great Lakes Book Award, and an Oprah Winfrey Book Club pick.  Visit her at www.amanetteansay.com/wordpress/blog