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Authors of Tildes: How well do you know your own book when you publish?
I've spoken with some authors who are working on non-fiction books. I've noticed that some of them know their books intimately and can correct me if I mis-relay a section back to them that I've read. They can do this without checking the actual book and I've then verified that I was incorrect.
Others have told me that by the time they were finished a seemingly infinite number of edits, they can't bear to read their own book again and just sent it to an editor at that point and released it.
I was surprised by the latter but it does remind me of my own experience writing very long papers in college. Is this common in your own experience?
I wrote a short story collection for my graduate thesis, and I worked pretty tirelessly on it for about 6 straight months, on edits, redrafts, etc.
I haven't looked at it in almost two years because I was just so tired of it by then and needed a break. I'm working my way back to it soon and though I know the beats of the stories by heart, I am going to be surprised by the prose itself, I think. I've also been thinking about them a lot without looking at them, to try to work out some issues I have with some of the stories, so I may also be surprised at what state they're in.
I’ve spoken with someone who had to park their book for years too. They say that they simply can’t “see” what’s in it anymore.
I tend to find that I have a very good idea of my book in my head by the time I'm done with it, but that if I go back and read it after six months of not thinking about it I will read a very different book. I think excessive familiarity with the text prevents you from seeing the text properly, if that makes any sense - for the same reason that it's hard to edit something you just wrote. You don't read it insomuch as you use the text to prompt your memory of what you remember the text saying.
This is very relatable. That excessive familiarity has left some people I’ve spoken with at a cross roads where they have to take months, or more, away from it before they can come back to it.
The other alternative is to have someone else check it. But I don’t think an editor can save a book that needs parts rewritten in a big way.
I've written textbooks and textbook companions, TTRPG systems, academic publications, and a few other eclectic things. Most of the time I know them extremely well. I have had a few papers where I completed my section and was pretty sick of it, so handed it off to collaborators to finish without me. Those I wouldn't know the details outside of my own section.
I think if you are writing something fact based, rules based, etc, where you have painstakingly examined what is correct or true, that tends to stick in your mind for a long time.
That’s a broad range of experiences that you’ve had.
Some of the non-fiction writers I’ve spoken with tell me that they are happy with the overall layout, but that they’re so tired of reading their own work that they can’t recall how they conveyed the ideas entirely and whether it’s sufficient. Sometimes they read it and think that they did a good job and other times they can read the same passage and have a lot of doubt about how well it flows from previous parts of the book (which they also might not be clear on).
Were they writing persuasive narratives? Those are what I spend the most time on worrying about flow, though I don't do much persuasive or opinionated writing anymore.
Persuasive narratives could be a good way to describe it, yes. In this case I’m thinking of a self-help book where explanations border on persuasion.
As an author, I’ve learned over the years to make the story flawless before showing it to others. But that doesn’t mean that I commit every detail to long term memory. I think it’s because of my actor training that I am fully taken by a project as it happens but then I don’t store my lines in perpetuity. I move on. That means when I go back to my former fixations I’m often surprised by things I’d forgotten I’d added.
What I’ve noticed as a narrator though is how very many “authors” hardly ever get past the first rewrite of their text before pushing it out the door. I’ve had to learn not to be an editor to hasty writers, and I’ve had to stop my involvement with certain audiobooks after it was clear I was more interested in the accuracy of the writing than the author. Names would change halfway through. Basic grammar and spelling mistakes would be rampant.
I couldn’t imagine presuming on someone’s time and attention with such lazy efforts. Audiences are precious and need to be treated as such.
I can imagine how it could be tedious to correct mistakes like that. How do you see your role as an editor beyond fixing seemingly inattentive output like that?
As a narrator you just can’t be the editor. For a couple friends I’d do some adjustments to keep things consistent but for a few books I just had to stop trying and read only what’s on the page. But we’re the ones who often get blamed for these mistakes and that can affect your reputation. So that’s when I tell the author I can’t work with them. Most are shocked and insist their work is in better shape than it is.
That’s when I tell them the story of the teen spy movie I once sold to New Line. We had to do 54 page-one rewrites before they actually bought it. That number usually convinces them they haven’t done enough work.
I will get very sick of the academic articles I write, and won't want to read them anymore. I won't ever read them when they're done, unless I'm looking something up. It becomes a little difficult towards the end of the process (which will invariably be countless hours), because I know the content so well that my brain starts to fill it in when I read it, instead of actually reading it, and so will become blind to some issues with grammar and clarity. There can also be issues with mismatches between how much I've thought about an aspect of the subject, and how much I've actually put into the document explaining those thoughts. I think these are two problems with the same cause: in which you spend so long with a document, the membrane between your mental model of the document and the document itself becomes permeable. It's then easy to miss that they're not entirely synchronised, and to forget that readers don't have your mental model of it available when they read it.
That’s a really good way of putting it.
I wrote a fiction book, but haven't published it yet, it's mostly finished, I made many many edit passes and got feedback from a few people, but wanted to get more feedback before finalizing it.
I haven't touched it in a few years at this point, and my girlfriend as a Christmas present last year took it and made a one off printed version, but she also made a few edits before sending it. I don't think she understands a few rules about fiction writing like how dialogue for different characters is supposed to be a separate line and stuff like that.
It was a really sweet gift, and I love it, but in just skimming through it, I could find several places where she edited what she thought was a good grammar change or formatting change and I can immediately tell.
There was even a couple sentences she edited the words for, and I could remember the exact way I phrased the sentence and it was a bit confusing, so I saw how when she was editing she changed it to be something else I didn't mean because it was phrased poorly.
So I would say I have a fairly intimate knowledge of my book, if years later I can remember exactly how I phrased something when it's changed to something else.
I have a self published sci-fi novel, and one more in the editing phase currently. With both of them, I needed to give myself at least a month after completing a draft where I absolutely did not look at the text, otherwise I just wouldn't have seen the mistakes that were obvious. Even now, I'm still finding some issues in the first novel that somehow I missed in four different editing passes that took place over a couple of years.
Each time I go back to the stories though, I do find myself sort of rediscovering parts of the story I'd forgotten I'd created. The human brain is weird 😁
This is so common for me to hear, not that I know many authors. Deciding when to stop iterating is very subjective choice to make. The substance of the book is there from the beginning so for non-fiction then I think the cut-off could technically be done sooner once the information is correct.
But overarching flow is a tough one to change. A modification in one area can have implications for many other parts of the book. And in the end, it could well be the case that it was better before the change.
I have to take a break and just not look at my writing for a while. Sometimes that adds up to a year or more before I'm ready to edit them again.
I've lost count of the number of re-writes I've done on each of my books, and I still find issues in structure, punctuation and flow when I dive back in. I've self-published five novels and have completed three more, though I have more work to do on those.
As for your original question, I know my novels well enough to answer questions about any of them. Remembering names of minor characters who are only mentioned once or twice might be challenging, but I'd get there eventually.