November 4, 2013
There are a lot of parallels between moving and the editorial process. I’m taking a month off from my clients to deal with changing location after fifteen years, so I’m in the middle of discovering these.
In the beginning was the raw idea that I needed a better environment. I was having uncomfortable experiences (some due to aging, others to the shifting focus of maturing) – as some stories begin by the urge to clear out and clarify, to name and rectify what doesn’t work. Memoirs seem to grow out of this urge, as do political and social writing – which may turn out to be non-fiction/how-to, or may be fictionalized to carry the point through a more accessible medium. The danger of this in a novel is keeping the urgency from becoming lecture or diatribe and making the river of the story smooth-flowing enough and passing through sufficiently different textures of terrain to hold the readers interest, so the barque of the vision can reach a succession of quiet harbors where it is unpacked before readers’ curious eyes.
The things I see in the old house are like the ideas running around in a writer’s mind. I began to make lists of what would fit and what no longer serves. The new house is much smaller than the old, so the first question is: what is relevant? This is the outlining process. When I’m looking at a new client’s manuscript, I often ask for a chapter by chapter synopsis, a few sentences for each. For some writers this helps them see their duplications, holes, and irrelevancies of their first draft – which allows them a chance for self-editing. For me, in a glance I can view the problems of the structure and whether the writer is achieving the goal of their back cover statement: audience, content, what the reader will gain. For my new home: how will each room serve the new needs I envision?
I began with a floor plan that conforms to the new space (for the writer that’s the marketplace – the audience, as well as the state of publishing industry and its constraints).
Just like writers who don’t or can’t follow an outline, I started pulling things from the shelves and grouping them. That’s the Wild Mind (Natalie Goldberg’s phrase) of writing.
Then the sorting. What goes with me, what goes elsewhere? What will be moved first (cabinets, bookshelves), what later (clothes, books, vases, etc.). There are painful decisions – sentimental value, economic value, practical value. For writers I can say: save it for a short story later if it doesn’t fit where this story is going. For objects that occupy physical space, I don’t have that luxury. Out is out. (The most challenge is where out will do the most good – do I sell it to bring in cash, do I find a worthy, appreciative home, do I freecycle it to have it promptly leave the field of awareness?)
Breathing down my neck and that of writers sometimes: Deadlines! With my writing clients I help them evaluate the reality of their deadlines. Sometimes is it “this year,” or “by Christmas,” or the parents’ anniversary, etc. When an arbitrary deadline starts to make my clients anxious, it is no longer functional, so we look at the cost of not meeting the deadline.
For other clients, there are real deadlines, usually a contract of some sort. Together we review the parts that are incomplete, guess at how much time they will take, and set specific timing goals. Sometimes we have to consider that the work might not be its most brilliant, but there simply is no time to complete a piece of research or conceptualize a vague chapter that seems to be relevant but may not be essential.
That’s where I’m stuck right now. Who wants to move in the rainy season – which is breathing down our necks here. There is also the consideration of pacing the move in stages so the cats don’t freak out and disappear into the huge yard of the old house, never to be seen again. (As I have been known to do with clients, I am pacifying them – leaving a favorite binkie, putting pheromone collars on them and pheromone diffusers in the new house. Unfortunately, I can’t use rationality with them, nor can I curl up in bed with clients to give them assurance. Every situation has its own parameters . . .
Then there are all the emotional nuances:
Pacing – so I don’t burn out, and so the reader is swept along appropriate to the genre.
Atmosphere – the ambiance of my new home and richness of the reading experience. I want writers to be able to convey the appropriate emotional quality to their reader, as I want my new home to feel nourishing, uncluttered (I’m not yet sure that’s possible), calm, esthetic.
Denouement – the reader needs to feel satisfied, stretched, left cogitating the journey they have completed. For me it’s a week in Mexico – which was planned a year ago, long before I had any thought of moving. When I return home, I’ll take up client projects and hopefully find time to tackle some of the writing that’s been accruing with the years and maturing.
These are some reasons I call my business Moving Words.
Until next time, delight in the process.