Novel Update #1: The Editor’s Draft Olivia Van Guinn, February 27, 2024 Very important day in the history of this novel. The deal for the acquisition was made in January, and the contract was signed in February. March 1st was the deadline for the manuscript. I was at a panel called “Dispelling the Myths on Publishing” done by the Alexandra Writer’s Center, and a statement made that seemed to baffle plenty of people in the audience suggested that a manuscript submitted to a press for consideration shouldn’t feel too finished. More than that, a too finished manuscript could suggest arrogance on the part of the writer. A too finished manuscript suggested that the author simply wanted their work as presented to be inserted between covers and slipped onto bookstore shelves. And indeed, this is what a lot of writers think presses do as their primary service. Really though, the opportunity to work with a press is an opportunity to collaborate, to make one’s book about more than oneself. Thereby, when a lot of writers say that they want to be published, but are stubbornly resistant to revisions and dismiss a publisher’s advice, they really mean they want to be self-published. I had always wanted to be traditionally published. I was so relieved when I was given the opportunity to submit a newly revised manuscript potentially very different from the one submitted for the acquisition. A large part of the relief was in my ability to make professional edits on a manuscript I had written two years ago (two years of growing as an artist are extraordinarily significant). But furthermore, I realized that I could now submit a manuscript that opened up fully to collaboration, a “director’s cut”, a bloated and self-important manuscript written specially for an editor to cut it up. In the first draft, two early characters move to another city and don’t return until the second act. Now, the distant adventures of those two characters occupy two and a half pages. In the first draft, the primary antagonist has a one-on-one conversation with both protagonists before the climax. Now, the elaborately complicated series of manipulations required for the antagonist to lure both protagonists to the site of their talk is painstakingly detailed as if for the reader to execute the scheme themselves. And so on. And I deeply love all the new additions, but the circumstances of their being prove that they are extraneous. Now an editor has the choice to excise the new additions, keep them, or move them somewhere else in the story. I think that as an editor, that’s exactly what I’d want. The choice to declare some moments integral, extraneous, or in need of work, as opposed to a perfectly watertight manuscript. That choice is the fulcrum of collaboration with a press. The edit is finished and will be sent over shortly. More news to come. Uncategorized