David*Macinnis*Gill.com

The revi­sions for Soul Enchi­lada were sim­i­lar to ones I’ve done on nov­els in the past. Every nov­el­ist who has writ­ten a book that didn’t sell knows the feel­ing of chang­ing a novel in response to an encour­ag­ing but “not quite” rejec­tion. The same is true of work­ing from cri­tiques by your crit group. The dif­fer­ence between this revi­sion and oth­ers was the real­ity that the words in the man­u­script are the words that will be in a book with my name on it in a few months. I’ve been writ­ing to make a sale, not nec­es­sar­ily to make a book. The dif­fer­ence in intent made the dif­fer­ence in the mind­set I had for this revision.

The notes arrived from Amaz­ing Edi­tor V. on March 4^th via the iconic brown truck. AEV’s edi­to­r­ial let­ter was brief. She addressed some global issues that she’d marked on the pages of the ms. She also included pages of ques­tions that AE M. and AE S. had. There were dozens of ques­tions, all of them excel­lent, all of them scary.

Pass #1:
The styles of the edi­tors was obvi­ous from look­ing at the ques­tions. One edi­tor asked broader ques­tions. The other made very spe­cific sug­ges­tions about plot, sub-text, and world-building. Both styles were inter­est­ing and both were intim­i­dat­ing. I held their ideas in mind as I worked through the line edits, which hon­estly, were light. At the time, I thought it was because the text didn’t need so much work. Soon, I real­ized how fool­ish that first thought was. The edits were light in some places because those places, which I began to call ‘soft spots,’ needed to be cut or com­pletely recast.

Pass #2:
I con­cen­trated on the line edits. I high­lighted all of the copy edits, as well as the com­ments by AEV. Any page with­out com­ments got checked off. I put small sticky notes the pages that needed work.

Pass #3:
On this pass I decided to respond to the copy edits. I had been awhile since I looked at the text, and I needed to get back into the flow of the nar­ra­tive beyond read­ing it. When I was able to sat­is­fac­to­rily fix any small prob­lems, I checked off the pages and removed the sticky note tab.

Pass #4:
By now, there were about fifty pages need­ing work. Some of the fixes were sim­ple. Rearrange a para­graph for clar­ity. Delete a trou­ble­some pas­sage and knit the scene back together. Check page off. Pull stick tab. Move on.

Pass #5:
The remain­ing sticky-tabbed pages needed seri­ous work, so I decided it was time to respond to the ques­tions from AEM and AES. As with AEV line edits, some of the ques­tions were eas­ily addressed. A change in a sen­tence here, a dele­tion of extra­ne­ous infor­ma­tion there, and I could cross them out.

Pass #6:
But not all of the ques­tions were eas­ily answered, so I decided to rewrite pas­sages in order to inte­grate the infor­ma­tion more seam­lessly or more obvi­ous, depend­ing what was needed. At the end of this pass, about 90% of the ques­tions were answered.

Passes #7a, 7b, and 8:
What remained of AEM and AES’s ques­tions weren’t really ques­tions. They were things such as “Can we see more of X’s job?” The only answer that doesn’t require a lot of work is, no, you can’t, which would be an incred­i­bly stu­pid response. This pass took the longest time, sev­eral days, because I had to write three new scenes to show X’s job. The scenes then had to be woven into the nar­ra­tive and then edited for voice. Crat­ing these scenes answer all but two of the ques­tions. I didn’t answer them because they moot: I’d deleted the offend­ing pas­sages to make room for the new scenes.

Pass #9:
I returned to AEV’s notes and global con­cerns. She had iden­ti­fied sev­eral soft spots in the text where the action slowed or char­ac­ters mis­be­haved. I cleaned those out and ended up rewrit­ing a whole chapter.

Pass #10:
AEV noted that the sec­ond part of the novel had less sen­sory tex­ture than the first. I had stripped some of the tex­ture out in early drafts because the males who read the novel com­plained that the action slowed too much at the cli­max. I put those sight, sound, and smell details back in. To add more, I went to the local super­me­r­cado to do some research on tastes and smell. I walked out with pages of notes, bags of dried spearmint and hibis­cus flow­ers, a colatino (coconut milk and pulp), and a lot of blank stares. I was also inspired by the great mem­o­ries of my cri­tique part­ners, Linda and Jules.

Pass #11:
Copy-editing and shap­ing. I reordered chap­ters and com­bined others.

Pass #12:
Copy-editing while let­ting the com­puter read the text aloud. It was very effec­tive until Microsoft Sam’s dron­ing voice put me to sleep. Also made notes on dan­gling or con­tra­dic­tory plot points.

Pass #13:
Fact-checking and plot details pass. I inserted 34 plot points I’d overlooked.

Pass #14:
A final copy-edit and pol­ish­ing. Half-way through, I began to fear that I was clean­ing up my first person-narrator’s rough edges too much and decided to fin­ish with a light copyedit.

Pass #15:
I passed the man­u­script on to AEV via email. I was sorry to see my lit­tle man­u­script go.

Before I received any notes, I told AEV that I loved to revise. After this process, I under­stand bet­ter why. Writ­ing a first draft cre­ates a sense of eupho­ria for me. I get a sus­tained rush learn­ing about new char­ac­ters, explor­ing new set­tings, and think­ing of really bad puns that never get past the third edits. Well, some do. But the cre­ation of a first draft has a dark side. While I’m draft­ing, I won­der if the germ of a story can sus­tain itself for 300 pages. Can the main char­ac­ter become and remain some­one I admire and like? Will I be able to find a fresh way of say­ing things? Can I increase ten­sion and stakes? Will I ever stop overus­ing metaphors? A deep revi­sion like this one uncorks the feel­ings of eupho­ria that were bot­tled up after the first draft. I wake up ready to dig into the text. I go to bed with pos­si­bil­i­ties swarm­ing in my mind. I wake up five hours later ready to go again. But because I know some­one likes the story, because I know for cer­tain it will sus­tain 300 pages, and because I adore the main char­ac­ter and love hav­ing her around, the expe­ri­ence is more delightful.

And then, like a great sugar high, it comes to an end.

So Soul Enchi­lada is back with its edi­tors. The gears turn at the desks of the book mak­ers, while the writer starts the neglected laun­dry, speaks to the attention-starved chil­dren, cleans the grungy bath­room, and goes in search of a bowl of pra­line pecan ice cream and a really big spoon.

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PS. Here are some pho­tos of the process. I blurred the text to keep evil spam­mers from index­ing the drafts.

AEV’s note on the man­u­script. The com­ment about need­ing for set­ting turned this page into four pages.

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After Pass # 9. This is a com­bi­na­tion of my notes over AEV’s notes. There are four col­ors of ink on the page. I think I worked on this sequence five times before it felt right.

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Brain­storm­ing for Pass #10. I started with a long list of pos­si­ble details. A half dozen made it to the text.. Only three sur­vived copyediting.

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This is the fiesta scene after the Microsoft Sam read­ing. Because it was the last scene I revised, it required more shaping.

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This is the sec­ond page of the revised fiesta scene. I put many details back into the text here and added many sen­sory details. I took some of them out on the last pass because I felt the action slowing.

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After the last pass: This is the cur­rent state of the man­u­script. You can’t read it well, but I think the page only has one line from the ver­sion AEV returned.

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None of this was in the ver­sion AEV returned.

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This photo shows how I often revert to my comic book past to block out the phys­i­cal move­ment of a scene. I fol­lowed this badly drawn spread by writ­ing the scene in screen­play for­mat. I added the dia­logue, scene tex­ture, and inte­rior mono­logue after­wards. This is not the way I nor­mally draft, unless I’m hav­ing trou­ble visu­al­iz­ing a scene. I know, you are totally in awe of my mad draw­ing skillz.