Jason M. Jones

So here we are. I got a good night’s sleep, and the neuroses demons disappeared. They’ll return at some point, maybe even tomorrow. I have no doubt of that. But I listened to playback on my book again and made a few edits, and I’m optimistic again.

Then, too, I mentioned that I was waiting on feedback from a friend regarding a short story I’d sent her, fretting, but it turns out there wasn’t any need. Still, I don’t know any writer who doesn’t fret somewhat at the prospect of feedback. Ideally, what we’d all like is to finish our first draft, have it be perfect, give it to someone to read, and have them be so utterly blown away that they have nothing else to say but, “The experience of reading this has changed my life.” But this has happened a grand total of zero times in the history of writing. I’ll wager on it. That, or the person giving the feedback was lying or easily impressed.

In any case, after I got back from my lunch-break walk yesterday, I found the email from my friend waiting. The story was attached with a note that read: “Here are a few comments. Not necessarily what I think as much as what lit mag readers might be thinking about (now that I’ve observed MFA students up close).” I opened the attachment and skimmed through her changes, and it was obvious from what she’d given me why I’d asked her to review it: her notes were on point.

The story, which shall remain nameless here since it’s not published yet, has gone through a few revisions already, as most of my stories do. It’s even been workshopped. But the subjects of the story are family, drinking, and poetry, and those last two are some of the most well-covered subjects in writing history. So in doing the edit, my question to both myself and my friend were: how do I shape this in a way where editors won’t immediately dismiss this as cliche? Because I think I’m approaching this story from a fresh angle. At least, it’s one I’ve never seen before, and not to brag, but I do read a lot. For the most part, I know what ground has been covered on the subject, and I had intended/hoped to write something in the realm of John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” which is ambitious I know. But 50-some years after Cheever, trying to send something that tackles the subject of drinking into the slush pile strikes me as the quickest way to allow overburdened editors to pass it onto the slush pile half-read.

In the initial draft, the characters form a bond over a shared love of poetry, and though I liked this aspect of the story, I wasn’t tied to it, and decided on a second pass to remove it, primarily because that removes one of the elements that would allow editors to write it off as trite. When I took it out, of course, I second-guessed myself and wondered if I’d lost anything, which is where my friend came in. I emailed her because she’d expressed to me that she liked the first version a lot, and I wanted to know what she thought of it without. Now the story begins at a pretty high emotional register, and one of her first notes was, “These two sentences seem important but I wonder whether the piece develops this throughout anyway? After we’ve already had a scene?” The rest of her comments were line edits, suggestions for clauses or sentences to cut (and have I mentioned how much I love cutting text?…the image above is actually a Matisse’s cut-out; yes, lame joke). But reorganizing text is something I find much more fraught. If I’m doing it as a compromise in the interest of being published does that compromise my integrity as the author? Well, that depends on whether the edited piece retains my initial vision. I didn’t want to cut the lines, so the other option was to try moving them around maybe. And I wondered, might moving them make the piece better? There’s only one way to find out:

Let’s try it and see what happens.

I feel like this is a good editing mantra it took some time to work my way to as a writer. It isn’t like you can’t go back to a previous version unless you’re foolish enough to save over previous drafts. Sometimes, it doesn’t work. I got a rejection about a year ago, and the editors said it almost made the publication. They had two problems. The first was they didn’t like the title. The second was that they thought the information in the first paragraph would be better broken up throughout the course of the story. They invited me to resubmit, which wasn’t happening because this was one of those places that charged a fee and I wasn’t paying to submit the same story twice to them (if it was a revise and resubmit and I could send it to them directly, it wouldn’t have been a problem). But I did try taking their advice. I changed the title. I scattered the first paragraph throughout and the resulting version didn’t work at all. I have, in fact, been having an exchange with my friend about first paragraphs. To an extent, I like intensity, a high emotional pitch. I know that an opening doesn’t necessarily have to do this. It’s required to pull you in, but it doesn’t need to assail you. Yet, most of the books and stories I love have this sense of intensity, and I like to try to make my opening lines quotable. In any case, I spent an hour this afternoon making changes, and ultimately, it hasn’t necessarily overhauled the story, but I think it’s made some subtle improvements in the quality. So I thank my friend for that. I haven’t mentioned you by name, but you know who you are.