How I actually edit (IV)

University creative writing courses absolutely have their place. Plenty of people get a huge amount out of them. If that’s you, I’m genuinely pleased. Writing should be joyful, and if a university course lit that fire for you, brilliant. 

But they’re not for everyone — and they’re not for me. 

Here’s why I’ve always struggled with the university model (with all due respect to the exceptions out there): 

• They often overlook genre fiction, which is where the vast majority of readers (and many writers) live 

• They’re often run by people with slender commercial track records 

• They don’t tend to focus on the business side of writing — things like agents, submission, and marketing 

• Self-publishing is often ignored entirely 

• It’s rare to get feedback on an entire manuscript, start to finish 

• They don’t properly grapple with plot (because that’s not something you can do by workshopping a couple of chapters) 

• The focus leans more toward earning a degree than getting a damn book published 

Now, none of that makes university courses bad — it just means they have different goals. I care far more about getting a book published than I do about getting a degree. Your preferences may vary and it’s perfectly OK if they do. 

But the reason I raise this is the workshopping phenomenon. Here’s how it works: 

A university gathers together a bunch of people who care a lot about words and writing. They set a challenge: you’re going to write the kind of book that might get published by a cool literary imprint somewhere. Then, they ask Anna to read out 1– 2,000 words of her draft novel, so that Brian and Ciara and Dan and Ezzie and the rest of them can offer their thoughts. This whole process is overseen by an Author of a couple of works, often not even full novels, (whom two of the students secretly fancy) and it’s important to all of the students that they have the approbation of the Author of the two SLNs and so Brian and Ciara and all the rest of them get stuck in and try to show off how cool and literary they are as they give Anna her feedback. 

And look: there are worse things in the world. In fact, what I’ve just described is among life’s better things and loads of people who go through one of these courses will enjoy one of the most rewarding years of their life. So good. If that’s your thing, then go for it. (Though, uh, read the PSes below before you sign up for anything.) 

My reason for telling you all this? Because of the phenomenon that is the Universal Workshop Voice. It’s a thing. I’ve given classes in the past where someone reads me a snatch of their work and I can identify – immediately and accurately – that this has been through the university-style workshopping process. 

A paragraph might start out like this: 

A fly, a fat one, landed on his forearm. Ulf stared at it for a moment, then swatted it with his free hand, killing it. Leaving a fat purple stain, and nothing else. 

I don’t know if that paragraph has any merit. I just made it up now for the purpose of this email. Whether it would ever find a place in one of my books, I don’t know. Probably not. But if you ran that paragraph past Anna and Brian and the gang, it would turn into something like this: 

A fly, fat and freighted with the alien armaments of its kind, landed on his forearm. The blow, when it arrived, shocked even Ulf with its ferocity, a blow born of some dark ancestral killing field, a rapid-fire conversation between neurons that left Ulf himself a mere bystander. Where once there had been insect there was now only pulp, grapey and softly dripping. 

And I don’t even hate that. I mean: I can’t quite imagine wanting to read that book, but maybe someone would. 

Really, my concern here is that Anna’s piece, Brian’s, Ciara’s, Dan’s and Ezzie’s are all sounding pretty damn similar – and they’re sounding similar because the workshopping process exerts the same basic gravity on them all. 

And from my personal editing process, that’s not what I want at all. 

I want to sound like me. I uncover what my tastes are by just going at my manuscript, again and again, sentence by sentence, page by page. I don’t know if that produces the best book. It probably doesn’t. I mean: if Hilary Mantel or Sally Rooney or Gillian Flynn were to edit one of my first draft manuscripts, presumably it would start to take on their particular genius-level shine. 

But sod em. I don’t care. This is my book not theirs, and I don’t want their tastes interfering – and I definitely don’t want the Author of two barely-novels to exert any weight at all. And Ezzie? Nice girl and all that, but she can shove off. I don’t want her tastes (or Anna-Brian-Ciara-Dan’s) anywhere near my word-choices. 

I suppose I could justify my attitude in commercial terms – agents and editors prioritise authors with a distinctive voice. Readers probably do too, if only in the sense that those books wind up more memorable. 

But that’s kind of fake. My motive isn’t really commercial; it’s just my personal version of bolshiness. I don’t want to write like Ezzie. I want to write like me. 

And the way I do it? Editing and editing and editing and editing. And yes, using my knowledge of craft to shape my decisions. But mostly working with my own taste. What sounds like me? What do I think is funny? What atmosphere feels right for this scene? Is this sentence better as 10 words or 8? Or lose it completely? 

And flies freighted with alien armaments? Yes gods. Spare me. I’m pleased the damn thing got splattered. 

Til soon, 

Harry 

FEEDBACK FRIDAY

This week, it’s Assignment Four from Debi Alper’s Introduction to Self-Editing course. (It’s FREE to Premium Members! And if you’re not a Premium Member, you know what to do: join us here, or buy the course as a one-off for £99 here.)

So, Debi wants you to:

• Find a short paragraph from your novel and experiment with different POV’s. If you’re working with multiple characters, ensure each voice is clearly different. Post in the forum (remember to log in first) and share which POV you’ve decided on and why. See if others agree with you.