A Book for Profit and a Book for Fun
Profit
When I was at my last job, I felt ever-so-slightly guilty for calling myself an editor. I wasn't one, not really--I was a manager, an overseer, a busy little bee who moved books from one person to another, making sure things got done. I had some degree of say in how the book looked and just how finely tuned its text would be, but manuscripts arrived at my desk after developmental editing, signed, sealed, delivered, and ready for the technical aspects of bookmaking.
Now, though, I guess I can say I'm an editor for real. I've finally gotten my hands dirty with the artistic aspect of the bookmaking, the putting paragraphs together to make them work, the asking for 2,000 more words in chapter five, and a deeper explanation of how one particular thing is done in chapter eight.
It's a scary but exhilarating thing to be that involved with the process, to be a true partner in the making of a book. I'm concerned about my work sucking, about the author freaking out (not that that would be a first), and, most of all, about letting my secret belief that I could write it better lessen my ability to help someone else write their best.
For the past week, I've been re-enacting that scene from Amelie, the one where she whipped out a pair of gunmetal gray scissors and used flawed old love letters to construct a completely new, perfect creature that would change someone's life. Not that I'll be changing lives. Or that what I'm making from sweat, scissors, and Scotch Tape is going to be perfect. But you get the idea.
The manuscript isn't bad, really; the author did a lot of research and filled it to the tippy-top with fun facts. The problem is that she didn't use the fun facts to any end. All the pieces to the puzzle are there, just in the wrong order, and what she ended up writing was a big, messy, eighth grade English paper essentially devoid of both thesis and logic. These two things are what I've been imposing, baring my teeth at bits of information about taxes until they gather together, trembling, their eyes glued to me. I've snarled at the origin stories of assorted Gods and watched them skitter into place, jumping over any obstacles I choose to put in their path.
These facts behave so nicely because they don't know that I'd never really hurt them. I worry that the author won't know that either, when she gets a look at her Frankenbook. I hope she doesn't cry at me, which I'm told sensitive author-types are prone to do.
For now, though, I'm thoroughly enjoying creating order where there was none. It's like walking into the operating room to find a soft, middle-aged man with a big nose on the table, doing some nips, tucks, and rearranging, and leaving in my wake Jessica Alba in her Oscar dress.
***
Fun
After reading the dreadful Nanny Dairies God knows how long ago, I vowed to never again pick up a talk-of-the-town blockbuster. That particular train wreck made me realize that "the book of the summer!" is almost always a high-concept let-down that will leave me hating myself for wasting my time on it.
I'd like to say that I finally broke down and broke this vow for an amazingly written, character-driven novel that made me want to have its author's babies. Unfortunately, this isn't the case; I broke it for The Da Vinci Code. When the worst Harry Potter fanfiction I've ever read compares favorably to a book published by a major New York house that's spent a trillion weeks on the bestseller list, my faith in humanity is shaken. Every single character in The Da Vinci Code is so one-dimensional, they might as well be on a movie screen already. Nobody has any interior life whatsoever, and the incredibly annoying hero of the novel reeks of Mary Sue as he wanders around, wowing prisoners and disaffected college students alike with his analysis of The Last Supper.
And on top of this, the plot is laughable. When I--a not-incredibly-bright girl who can never guess how Bones is going to turn out on Wednesday nights--am three steps ahead of you, you've got a serious problem. Gee. Do you think the writing might be backwards? Could the five-letter password that means "wisdom" be the five-letter version of your heroine's name, the one that means "wisdom"? Might that character's last name actually be a (not) clever play on the last name taken by the mysterious descendants of Christ?
The whole thing comes off as vaguely sexist (women might be sacred vessels, but damned if they're actually people) and incredibly dim-witted. It reminds me a bit of the YA novels I saw the last time I was at the bookstore, the ones designed by Kaplan to teach valuable SAT vocabulary while "entertaining" their readers. Only instead of a word bank at the bottom of every page, readers of this book have "Robert Langdon" to hold their hands and guide them sensibly away from anything resembling actual thought.
The Da Vinci Code's one upside is its history geek appeal: I love all the talk of Templars and Crusades and the gnostic gospels and women in the early church.
Also, it's short. And when something's this bad, I guess that's the only upside that really matters.
When I was at my last job, I felt ever-so-slightly guilty for calling myself an editor. I wasn't one, not really--I was a manager, an overseer, a busy little bee who moved books from one person to another, making sure things got done. I had some degree of say in how the book looked and just how finely tuned its text would be, but manuscripts arrived at my desk after developmental editing, signed, sealed, delivered, and ready for the technical aspects of bookmaking.
Now, though, I guess I can say I'm an editor for real. I've finally gotten my hands dirty with the artistic aspect of the bookmaking, the putting paragraphs together to make them work, the asking for 2,000 more words in chapter five, and a deeper explanation of how one particular thing is done in chapter eight.
It's a scary but exhilarating thing to be that involved with the process, to be a true partner in the making of a book. I'm concerned about my work sucking, about the author freaking out (not that that would be a first), and, most of all, about letting my secret belief that I could write it better lessen my ability to help someone else write their best.
For the past week, I've been re-enacting that scene from Amelie, the one where she whipped out a pair of gunmetal gray scissors and used flawed old love letters to construct a completely new, perfect creature that would change someone's life. Not that I'll be changing lives. Or that what I'm making from sweat, scissors, and Scotch Tape is going to be perfect. But you get the idea.
The manuscript isn't bad, really; the author did a lot of research and filled it to the tippy-top with fun facts. The problem is that she didn't use the fun facts to any end. All the pieces to the puzzle are there, just in the wrong order, and what she ended up writing was a big, messy, eighth grade English paper essentially devoid of both thesis and logic. These two things are what I've been imposing, baring my teeth at bits of information about taxes until they gather together, trembling, their eyes glued to me. I've snarled at the origin stories of assorted Gods and watched them skitter into place, jumping over any obstacles I choose to put in their path.
These facts behave so nicely because they don't know that I'd never really hurt them. I worry that the author won't know that either, when she gets a look at her Frankenbook. I hope she doesn't cry at me, which I'm told sensitive author-types are prone to do.
For now, though, I'm thoroughly enjoying creating order where there was none. It's like walking into the operating room to find a soft, middle-aged man with a big nose on the table, doing some nips, tucks, and rearranging, and leaving in my wake Jessica Alba in her Oscar dress.
***
Fun
After reading the dreadful Nanny Dairies God knows how long ago, I vowed to never again pick up a talk-of-the-town blockbuster. That particular train wreck made me realize that "the book of the summer!" is almost always a high-concept let-down that will leave me hating myself for wasting my time on it.
I'd like to say that I finally broke down and broke this vow for an amazingly written, character-driven novel that made me want to have its author's babies. Unfortunately, this isn't the case; I broke it for The Da Vinci Code. When the worst Harry Potter fanfiction I've ever read compares favorably to a book published by a major New York house that's spent a trillion weeks on the bestseller list, my faith in humanity is shaken. Every single character in The Da Vinci Code is so one-dimensional, they might as well be on a movie screen already. Nobody has any interior life whatsoever, and the incredibly annoying hero of the novel reeks of Mary Sue as he wanders around, wowing prisoners and disaffected college students alike with his analysis of The Last Supper.
And on top of this, the plot is laughable. When I--a not-incredibly-bright girl who can never guess how Bones is going to turn out on Wednesday nights--am three steps ahead of you, you've got a serious problem. Gee. Do you think the writing might be backwards? Could the five-letter password that means "wisdom" be the five-letter version of your heroine's name, the one that means "wisdom"? Might that character's last name actually be a (not) clever play on the last name taken by the mysterious descendants of Christ?
The whole thing comes off as vaguely sexist (women might be sacred vessels, but damned if they're actually people) and incredibly dim-witted. It reminds me a bit of the YA novels I saw the last time I was at the bookstore, the ones designed by Kaplan to teach valuable SAT vocabulary while "entertaining" their readers. Only instead of a word bank at the bottom of every page, readers of this book have "Robert Langdon" to hold their hands and guide them sensibly away from anything resembling actual thought.
The Da Vinci Code's one upside is its history geek appeal: I love all the talk of Templars and Crusades and the gnostic gospels and women in the early church.
Also, it's short. And when something's this bad, I guess that's the only upside that really matters.