The writer who makes manuscript revision heavenly

For the last several posts, I’ve blogged about the horrors of manuscript revision. Now I’m introducing a writer who actually loves revision—editor/author Gerard Helferich—who I met two years ago at the San Miguel Writers' Conference & Literary Festival in the historic town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This post is an edited version of two I wrote earlier, shortly after that experience.

The class is one Helferich began teaching at the conference and refined (and expanded) in recent years as a college course. Unlike some (probably many) writers, Helferich considers the earliest drafts of a book the hardest part of writing, editing (with the help of his basic principles) the fun part. 

Lest anyone suspect Helferich of overdosing on the balmy air of San Miguel, let me mention that after spending 25 years as an editor and publisher at such major publishing houses as Doubleday and Simon & Schuster, he turned to writing his own books, including critically-acclaimed works of nonfiction such as Humboldt’s Cosmos, High Cotton, Stone of Kings, and Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin. A long-time instructor at San Miguel, he also reaches at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York and at Milsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.

His secret is to writerly happiness is six-point philosophy of conciseness, precision, structure, vividness, readability, and voice. Writers who adhere to the “pantser” school of writing will be relieved to learn that even a nonfiction writer like Helferich is OK about ditching outlines—at least until after the first draft is completed. Writing, he says, is a combination of “madness and method.” It’s only after the “madness” of writing the creative first draft that the “method”—the editing—can begin.

Winter, San Miguel style

“I find it helpful to write an outline after writing,” he says, “to see if there is a logical order. Everything you write has to have a clear beginning, middle and end.”

Starting with the biggest pieces of the story’s structure first (chapters, passages, paragraphs, sentences), lets a writer place the story in its logical order, adding or moving pieces around as necessary so there’s no time spent rewriting a portion that won't make it into the final story. The question at this stage is: does the structure of this portion reinforce the story’s meaning and help the reader follow it?

With the story in order, we can start rewriting for conciseness and precision. And immediately realize that these principles—one concerned with taking words out, the other with putting words in—can be at odds. Which to favor?

“Only you,” Helferich says, “can provide the answers, depending on your skill and your own taste. This is not a formulaic task.”

Conciseness, he notes, is not a synonym for brevity. It requires a writer to ask the question: Is this (paragraph, sentence, word) carrying its weight, so that it strengthens the overall effect and makes the story easier and more pleasant for the reader.

Precision means writing exactly what the writer means. “Every piece of writing you intend to be read is a performance. You need to have in mind the effect you have on your reader.”

And that requires being both clear and specific. “If there is any doubt about the meaning of a word, look it up,” Helferich says. He urged his audience not to rely simply on the vocabulary of our word processing systems but to use a dictionary and if necessary a thesaurus (online or not). Choose the right noun, not a vague or weak noun you hope to help along with an adjective. As a corollary, don’t use an adverb to prop up a weak verb.

Lest he sound anti-modifier, he’s not. “A well-chosen adjective can pump up your writing (but) adjectives are often most effective when they are unexpected.” He’s not against them, only against their indiscriminate use to prop up weak nouns.

Learning that Helferich’s synonym for the term “style” is “vividness,” which includes techniques such as imagery, metaphor and other figures of speech, helps explain why he thinks of this stage of writing as fun. Why write “yellow flowers” when we can write “daffodils” or “sunflowers” or, since we were in Mexico, “cactus flowers”?

Or why write that a car was “long” when we can you can write metaphorically that it was “as long as a summer’s day”? Or, given that we’re in an election year, “as long as a politician’s speech”?

Unintended repetitions, rhymes and alliterations can be ear grating. But when used intentionally by hands as writerly as Winston Churchill’s, the repetition of “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets” (reinforced by the strong parallel structure) can help win a war.

Helferich’s takeaway question about style is: should I make this (paragraph/sentence/phrase/word) more vivid using figures of speech comes with his also trademark caution against overuse, which is at odds with his next principle of editing: readability.

“What you don’t want to be is so clever that the reader forgets your story and starting thinking more about how clever you are! I don’t the reader to think about the man behind the curtain.”

Winter, San Miguel style

Even more than style, readability is the editing principle he believes is most important in his own work. For Helferich, readability means providing a pleasant experience for the reader, avoiding over-explaining, convoluted language, and excessive detail; relying instead on naturalness and understatement, and trusting in both the material and the reader.

The takeaway question on readability: am I trying to do too much with this (word/phrase/sentence/paragraph)?

Finally, there’s the issue of “voice”. We all have our own writing voices, as unique as our speaking voices. It can reveal us as critical or kinky, as authoritarian, knowing, flippant or intense. The only thing it has to do to be great is to be uniquely our own.

“Voice is an area you can’t fake. You can shape your voice to present your best persona; you can layer on voice, but ultimately, it comes from within you.” Voice is found by choosing subjects we care about, telling the biggest story we can, and being ourselves.

The takeaway question for all of us will be: have I put enough of myself into this piece of writing?

By now, you may be wishing you could hear Helferich for yourself, maybe in conjunction with a lovely winter vacation—the illustrations for this post were taken in February—the next San Miguel conference is scheduled for February 13-17, 2019. See the site for details. And get ready to enjoy revision!

(Tomorrow: Dav Pilkey and the North Texas Teen Book Festival)