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The heart of the heart of the matter

To authors, the editing process must seem mean spirited. Several years ago, the gifted story writer Christina Adam scolded me for adding marginalia to her manuscripts that only criticized and corrected. “Never once a positive note,” she said to me. I apologized.

I still miss her, even though I haven’t forgotten that about every two or three months we’d have a horrible fight over the ether and via her letters. I’d be furious, would stop answering her emails. And then, invariably, my phone would ring, Kim would holler up the hall to warn me, and when I picked up the phone Chris would say, “Enough. Here’s what I think. You tell me what you think and we’ll get past this.” Or something like that.

I’ve never been able to describe Chris’s work in any way but one: that she could turn metaphor into narrative and narrative into metaphor. Her writing is simply beautiful. The most frequent comment I heard after we published Any Small Thing Can Save You was “How does she do that?”

Because Chris had mastered her art, I thought she needed me only to point out where this narrative turn or that phrase didn’t quite work, where her sadness might have been too great or her humor didn’t click. That sort of thing. But even Chris, even sure-footed, artful, argumentative Christina Adam needed reassurance from time to time.

I don’t know exactly why I’m thinking of her again this week — she died four years ago in July. Perhaps it’s because Greg and I are heading to AWP and are about to be in the room with quite a few of the authors we’ve published over the past three years. A few from the BlueHen days, too, people who mean a great deal to us. Maybe it’s because I just came back from visiting Rick Collignon, who is as much a friend now as an author in our list and so am reminded of how close a relationship sometimes arises from the editing process. I’m reminded, too, of how close to the heart every novel is — or at least every novel I’m interested in publishing.

Or maybe I’m thinking of Chris again because I’ve just completed editing one of the books I’ll marshal this fall — Pamela Thompson’s elegant debut, Every Past Thing — and am mid-current in the electric process of working with Marc Estrin again (on a book called The Lamentations of Julius Marantz). When I’m so far along in that course, it rarely comes to mind to make note of a remarkable narrative turn or a polished and surprising phrase. It’s difficult, I think, for any editor to respond efficiently in the margin, in so small a space, when deadlines loom. “Nice!” seems silly. I’m not a smiley-face kind of editor; indeed, I hate emoticons. And it seems indulgent (and troublesome) to insert an electronic comment when we’re working digitally (as Marc and I do).

But I do know that the most moving and important authors are always out there on an emotional limb. And I think that matters. So I’m constantly trying to improve my practice. Those notes in the margin — sometimes they’re only exclamation points — I think I’ll call them christinas from here on.

Fred Ramey
posted 02/27/07

 
 

Comment

  1. Dear Mr. Ramey, from your remarks about Christina Adam you seem to have the gift of learning, and from that a true sense for the human. fred

    — fred sanderlin · 03/12/2007 03:53 PM · #

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