Beverley sent me a copy of a letter last night written by a New York editor of a respected publishing house. In it, he details his great admiration for the book, confesses that he read it to the end, and then meticulously enumerates what he feels is missing. It's two pages long and, no matter how defensive I may be to criticism, I had to marvel at the insight he shared and the care he took.
I'm probably not done writing this book.
There simply is no doubt that it can be made better. It has undergone dramatic changes in both form and content based on the heap of comments from my brilliant readers already. I glanced at the first draft, two years old now, and it's hardly recognizable.
I'm a new writer but I'll bet this is true. The closer a book gets to being very good, the more glaring its weaknesses become. And the temptation to punk out is never greater. Beverley and I have yet to decide on a course of action, but I'm leaning toward taking up said editor on his offer to talk with him about how I might bring it home.
Joy's late father wrote, as have many unpublished wannabes, a book that exists in a bound version only because he went to the expense himself. To have come this far and meet that fate would be very depressing.
Whoever it was that first said writing is rewriting was not kidding around.
Contact brockwalsh@gmail.com
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Correction: My dad's book, Confessions of a Frantic Football Father, was never bound. But my father did go to great pains, not sure why, to keep all of his rejection letters in a tidy manila envelope. Your fate as a published author, on the other hand, awaits!
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected. Like him, I'm saving the emails to purge at the moment of triumph.
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