I’ve gone over my students’ papers one more time (at this point some of my notes make no sense whatsoever.) I try to be aware of  each student’s unique voice when I edit and not suggest rewriting to the sound of my own voice.

 

I know when you’re edited you often think, oh, no that’s not my voice, and you’re sort of outraged that someone would blithely cross out paragraphs of your beloved prose. (I often feel this way.)  Well, sometimes it is your voice and sometimes it isn’t. One student’s writing is like an incredible garden – everything is bright and blooming and wonderful except you have to hack your way to get to it. When I edit her work I’m pulling the weeds, pruning the branches. It’s all there; I just want it to show. Another writes wonderfully dramatic scenes – action, dialog, powerful stuff. But then she starts explaining what she just wrote, what she’s feeling and thinking. Her writing is so good that she doesn’t need to do this – it’s all in the action and dialog and descriptions. Another student writes his way into an essay, explaining what he was doing before the story began, and he just doesn’t need that first paragraph. The reader gets it. Remember how smart your readers are. You don’t have to spell things out. (But sometimes you do have to write all that stuff that will be edited out later – it's for you, you're finding your story.)

 

The class also  handed in book proposals for their memoirs– a letter to an agent or editor, a list of the competition and why their book is different, marketing plans and an outline. In all honesty I have to say if I were an agent reading their letters I would not go on to read pages of their memoirs. But the good news is when you go off in the wrong direction it helps you to realize what direction you need to head for. You’ve started, and that’s what’s important. Many described their memoirs as humorous or moving or touching – but these adjectives are for the editor to write on your book jacket, not the author in a query letter. Somehow in your letter you need to get those things across yet remain modest and at the same time convey your excitement about the book. And this is hard. But the most important part of the book proposal homework was that everybody started asking themselves what their book was really about, what was the arc of the memoir, where was it headed, the competition it would face and how to help market it.  Sometimes it helps to write a book proposal early, sometimes you need to just write the book and see where it goes. And only you can decide this

 

Please check out the Comment section from the last post. There’s a very interesting comment from “A Reader” who questioned the post and my comment about never being cute or coy in your writing.  Please add your own two cents to the discussion.