Writer's Journal: Still recovering from the drain of editing (in fact, almost rewriting) The Adjusters #21 over the last week. I hope #22 will not require that many changes. But I'm putting away my daily 500 words on #23, which is progressing and also somewhat surprising me.
I'm a big fan of Nicholson Baker, writer of Vox and The Fermata. I particularly love the fact that many of his stories are essentially just dialogue, yet they read perfectly naturally. Baker seems to have a reputation as a somewhat kinky writer—Vox is the record of a conversation between two people on a sex chat line, while The Fermata is about a man who can stop time, with the erotic hilarity that ensues—but to be honest, his books are not particularly arousing, at least to me. I read them because they are good as novels, not because they are good as erotica, if that makes any sense.
In any event, the reason why I bring him up is because he has a new book out, House of Holes, which I haven't read yet. But I did come across the copy editor's guide to House of Holes, and I thought it was fascinating.
Let me explain. You're writing a long story. I mean, a long story. For me, I'm thinking The Adjusters, which clocks in right now at about 186000 words, because let's be honest here, I'm a one-trick pony. How do you keep track of everything? And I'm not just talking about the big things here like plot points, or whether you made sure that the taser you want a character to use at some point has been seen before so that it doesn't come as a surprise. No, I'm talking about the stupid little details. Like the fact that Jackson has blue eyes, that Daniel was born in Connecticut, that Jennifer has dreams of being a writer. Things like that. Things that are easy to forget. Or things you don't even know until you find yourself discovering them while writing a passage and then promptly forgetting about them once the passage is written and edited and posted. How do you keep track of those? Well, in my case, I have a couple of files in my working folder that lists all those details—character sheets, personal histories, a couple of maps. The works. A lot is fleshed out, a lot isn't. Sometimes I had to them as I write. And most importantly, I refer to them when I edit—not when I write a draft, because that tends to break the writing spell. (And despite that there are still things I miss, like what Met identified in his comments to The Adjusters #21, that Radhu doesn't say "mate", unlike many of my Indian friends.)
Of course, I haven't invented anything here—it's pretty much the only way to do it, and it goes without saying that other writers have such cheat sheets for their work. What I realized looking at the guide above for House of Holes is that such a trick is also useful for copy editing! By that, I mean keeping track of the even stupider little details: did I spell Jackson Randall's name consistently, or did I let a Randal inadvertently through? do I use non-negligible or do I use nonnegligible? Both are essentially fine, but I better be consistent. Do I use serial commas (Radhu, Serena, and Daniel) or not (Radhu, Serena and Daniel)? Both have their advocates, and again I just have to be consistent. Details very much at the level of language. And the guide above is convincing me that I should start maintaining such a file, at least for the things for which there is a choice and for which I need to make the same choice consistently throughout.
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