Done With Edits!
On letting go and confronting the insufficiency of reality.
This past weekend, I finished the final edits of my novel. For three days I had that nervous ache in my gut, the kind that lingers before a big test. Every few minutes, I’d oscillate between “How on Earth can I let this get published, I’m a total hack, why am I working so hard to embarrass myself so fully?” to “This novel is f’ing good, how the hell did I ever come up with this, I can’t wait to be famous.” This manic emotional journey took place mostly horizontally with nothing but the occasional venture from my couch to my bed.
Ben thinks I’m insane not leaving the house for days at a time and I don’t quite care to figure out if he’s right. I simply repeat my ask: go away, leave me to my process. And though I mean it, I can’t actually say it, nor can he receive it, with a totally straight face.
Whenever I write anything that will live in public, the last 25% of my efforts are—I won’t say wasted—but certainly have “diminishing returns.” I polish to the point of lunacy, needing to feel as if every word is in its place, with three different thesaurus tabs open at all times. Inadequate or deficient?? Exploding or erupting?? Childish or ridiculous??
Because these things matter!
No, no. Probably not.
Because I’m clinging to the illusion of control.
Once you start turning an idea into reality, it immediately disappoints. Kind of like growing up. By the nature of something being a real thing in the world, limitations are invariably born, which is not the case when the something in question is nothing but possibility. With each round of edits, the reality of my book is narrowing in on me. By which I mean the reality of my own limited abilities.
Last week I watched Anatomy of A Fall. The movie has a lot of similar themes to my novel—an interrogation of truth and blame involving the mysterious death of a romantic partner that may or may not be a suicide. I LOVED this movie. Granted, I had to watch it in two sittings because it’s long and my attention span is waning, but that says nothing about how brilliant I thought it was. The dialogue, the complexity of the charters, the subtle implications of the ending scenes! Then I turned back to my book and thought: Oh god. I have to make this better.
My revision process was relatively quick all in all—Oct to Jan. But it wasn’t always clear that I wouldn’t have to change the novel entirely. In my journey to get an agent, many told me they loved the premise and characters but wanted a bigger bolder twist. I am not interested in big bold twists, at least not in my own writing. I am interested in subtlety and truth and creep. Whenever I tried to reorganize the whole story so that it was different—it was the brother the whole time!—it came out horribly.
Thank god I found an agent and, unbelievably, an editor who liked my quieter approach. “It has Promising Young Woman vibes,” she said on our first call, “but more accessible and everyday.” That was the moment I knew she got it.
With writing, as with life, nothing is ever “done.” What does that even mean? There are always infinite ways to improve something because you return to it with a slightly different lens each time. And yet. To make progress is to accept limitations. At some point I have to decide: this is the book I will publish. And now that—thank god—I have a publisher who is actually invested in it, I owe it to them to make that decision. The truth is I genuinely love my book and am proud of it. Of course it could be better, but at this point it’s been fluffed and polished so much that any real improvement would require a major overhaul—i.e. writing a different book.
The point at which I know this book is done is the point at which any change I make, I inevitably revert back to its original form. In other words, I am at the point in which any change I make is only making the book worse.
So… I think I’m done?
Done with this manuscript I’ve worked on for the past three years and has been with me in some form or another for the past eight years??
I guess so?
Print is terrifying. Putting something into the world that cannot be edited or undone is my definition of anxiety. I work in software. Anything we put on the site can be changed. Even in this newsletter, although whatever I write will remain in your inbox, I can edit it (and often do) if something occurs to me that I phrased wrong or need. But the physical instance of this book will live on its own for others to consume at a point in time that is not now (Feb ‘25) in other people’s hands.
Children are like print. Did you really think I’d go a whole newsletter without mediating, at least for a moment, on the question of children? Children are fully formed entities out in the world, on their own, that cannot be undone. Having a child is a transformation from idea to reality and all the thrills and frustrations that come with it, I imagine. A wild and terrifying commitment.
I’m scared to let this book go. But I guess it’s the only way to let other people experience it. And I suppose that’s kind of the point with anything we put this much work into, that lives on its own, separate from us. To make something bigger than ourselves, out of our control.
Recent Recs
I’M A FAN. I linked to The Year of the Female Creep article in my last post, which I loved. But I hand’t actually read any of the books mentioned in the essay, so I bought this one. And HOLY SHIT. I absolutely loved it. It is a meditation on obsession, almost poetic in form, which isn’t usually my thing but she really makes neuroses sing. I listened to it on audio and the author, Sheena Patel, read it, which is rare and awesome for a fiction writer.
SLOW HORSES. I don’t know how it feels as if culture has been sleeping on this television show but I just heard about it and, as a devoted fan of spy shit, I cannot stop watching (the first two eps were slow, but it gets good). Also I’m devastated to admit (bc I rage against age gaps so strongly) that I find the main character—a pointedly smelly, frumpy, old english man—very attractive.
ANATOMY OF A FALL. See comments above. In awe of the talent of the writer / director, Justine Triet.
Finally, I cannot end this newsletter without highlighting this profile of my personal idol, JACQUELINE NOVAK, in the New Yorker. I’ll surely do a much longer post dissecting the facts in this piece and my overarching love for her. In the meantime, do not sleep on her Netflix special, out next week!! (I’ve seen it four times including the live taping, but who’s counting??)
Have you watched / read any of the above? Have thoughts on the concept of “done”? Always curious what people are into—leave a note in the comments! ❤️
I needed this for my mental health, or what passes for same. I have a book under contract that won't be released for, like, two years and my editor won't be sending me the first ask for revisions for months and meanwhile I'm spinning and tweaking and trying to revise Book 2, but what if the revisions to Book 1 make all that meaningless, etc., etc. It's like packing for a trip to somewhere that I know has very different weather, I just don't know what that weather is, so I keep putting things into a suitcase and taking other things out. Who knew this part would be so crazy making? All of this is a tortured way to thank you for this piece. And the viewing tips. I've seen some of Slow Horses and it's brilliant but we desperately need a sound bar for our aging TV because we're having serious trouble parsing the dialogue and my husband can't abide closed captions. I'll put the rest on our list.