The Mad Magpie

Novel Editing: Killing Your Darlings Written by Emily X.R. Pan on February 21, 2012

Topic: Creative Writing MFA, Writing

I’ve been learning so much from the process of editing my MFA thesis (which is a whole novel, in case you’re new to this blog). Sometimes I’m still amazed that I managed to finish a whole draft of this back in November. Sometimes I feel like success is just a couple turns and a few mile-long hallways away. Sometimes I feel like I have voluntarily placed the heaviest box in the world on my chest and it’s slowly crushing my heart and lungs.

Sometimes I sit here in my tiny apartment, in my messy living room which functions as my office, staring at my favorite books and wondering: How the hell did they do it? How did they edit that monster of a novel and make it good?

I spent a solid 22 hours editing my thesis this past weekend. I know it was 22 hours because I used the magic turn-off-your-internet Freedom software and I’m OCD about tracking things like that. I made great edits. I finished the second draft. And I realized that a section in my B storyline wasn’t working the way I’d originally wanted to. So I cut it. And that took out about 8000 words. 8000 words. My novel dropped from about 80,000 words down to 72,000 words.

It was so painful that before I decided to go ahead and do it, I spent three hours obsessing over whether I really needed to toss all that material. I asked my boyfriend what he thought. I even called my dad for his opinion. Which is ridiculous because neither of them have read the novel and both of them have been purposely avoiding hearing anything about my characters and plot so that when they finally read it they can do so with clear minds.

They both said, “You know best.” And of course I did. I knew those chunks had to go. So I brought out the axe and hacked away the weeds and tried to forget how beautiful they were. It was kind of like when you were a kid and your parents insisted on killing the perfect buttery dandelions in your yard. Afterwards I went and lay down on the bed and chewed on the insides of my cheeks and thought about all the reasons why it was a good move.

I’ve turned into a 24/7 workaholic, which means that subway rides are prime editing time. I try to work on parts of my novel right before I leave the apartment so that they are fresh in my mind, and then I spend the train rides mulling over the latest problems. I whip out my iPhone and type like crazy with my thumbs to record notes, restructure and re-outline whole sections of the plot, jot down sentences and dialogue.

Yesterday I did some fantastic work on my commute. I realized that even though I resolved all the conflicts, my protagonist still hadn’t achieved one major thing I really wanted for her. I realized the climax of my novel needed a new treatment. I tore apart the end of the novel, restructured it, outlined two brand new scenes to insert. I came home and looked at my latest draft and realized that the edits I’d written out for myself implied about 20,000 words’ worth of changes. 20,000 words’ worth of scenes that I’m tossing out and completely rewriting.

But it’s worth it. I have to make the story as good as possible, and that won’t happen if I only ever coddle what I’ve birthed.

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
- William Faulkner

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All Writing Is Derivative Written by Emily X.R. Pan on February 18, 2012

Topic: Publishing, Reading, Writing

Yesterday I was talking to David Lipsky, who is my independent study advisor and thesis advisor. We were examining the structures and characterizations of books that might help me with editing my current novel project, and at some point he said something along the lines of: “Every book is fanfiction for some other book.” And I thought, huh. That’s actually pretty true.

We all know that pretty much all new writing we see these days derivative — every writer is inspired by books that already exist. Every idea and plot and structure you could possibly conjure up in your brain probably has a 99.9999999999% of having already been done. It ends up just being a question of whether it can be done again in a fresh, interesting way.

Just now I started rereading The Chronicles Of Prydain because I wanted to examine how all the major arcs are set up. I kept pausing to read parts of it out loud to my boyfriend and laugh at how much it Lloyd Alexander was influenced by Tolkien. I read these books way before I ever knew what Lord of the Rings was, so I never made the connection. And of course we knew the material was derivative to begin with because it explicitly draws a lot of stuff directly from the Mabinogion – but also SO MUCH is clearly taken from Tolkien. Dallben is pretty much Gandalf’s cousin. Gwydion basically IS Aragorn. The Gwythaints are not far off from being Winged Nazgûl. The description of Annuvin pretty closely matches Tolkien’s description of Mordor. But even with all these derivative components, the series overall is still very different from Lord of the Rings. It’s a coming of age story. It’s targeted at a much younger reader. It’s packed with short, economical prose.

Often when I have conversations with writerly friends, we talk about books like those. It comes up that X ”is totally ripped off of” Y. We always discuss it with irritation and condescension — but then I think: why? If it’s published, if it’s successful, if it’s an enjoyable read, then ultimately, does it even matter that we can easily see what inspired it? Especially when we’re all still trying to become published authors ourselves…who are we to sneer at someone who has already achieved that goal? Can we really expect ourselves to write something totally new and original?

Maybe when we feel the urge to be snobbish about derivative material our only real takeaway can be that, based on our tastes, we find writing to be most successful when it’s not immediately apparent where it’s derived from.

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