Have been feeling a little stir-crazy at home, so I’ve done what I hardly ever do, and I’ve repaired to a local cafe (the Atlas Cafe on 20th and Florida, in case I’ve any stalkers) to drink coffee and try to get some writing done. But then it turned out that my computer was out of batteries, so I am writing this on my phone. I don’t often go out, simply because, well, my home is spacious and light-filled and the coffee there is free, but there’s been something in the air lately. I think just because it’s been so windy–when the windows at my home are open there’s this howling sound, and when they’re closed the place feels very airless.

Currently I’m working on revisions for my second book, We Are Totally Normal, which is due out from HarperTeen sometime in early 2020. My editor gave me a stunningly long lead time on the revisions, and I’ve been taking advantage of that time.

I am a good reviser. That’s a part of my identity. I’m pretty good at setting aside what I’ve actually written and analyzing the book de novo (really hope I’m using ‘de novo’ right) to figure out how it can be put together better.

With revision it’s important not to rush into anything. For any problem there are a thousand potential solutions that sound good in theory but would wreck the novel if put into practice. The trouble is to not lose sight of the heart of the novel. If you make revisions willy-nilly, simply to suit the taste of the market or of a certain set of readers, you’ll end up with a mess.

Ultimately the point of revision isn’t to make the book sell more copies, it’s to revise the book so that it better fulfills its own artistic aims. You revise–or at least I revise–so that the book will be the best possible version of itself. With some editorial feedback, especially if it comes from agents or editors, adhering to their guidance would bring the book further from its artistic aims, and its in these cases that a writer faces his or her most difficult test. It’s easy to say ‘stick to your guns’ but almost always the better choice is to figure out what things are truly worth fighting and which are not.

Luckily, with both my editors and both of my publishers, the edits I’ve gotten have been more or less copacetic, so that’s one writing difficulty, at least, that I’ve been spared.

However even with editorial suggestions that you agree with there remains the issue of incorporating them carefully. You can’t just edit to please your editor; you need to internalize their advice. You need to see what they see.

I generally start off revision very carefully. I digest any editorial suggestions. I reread the book. Then I think, “What is at the core of these suggestions?” Because oftentimes when you read a critique or an edit letter, you’ll see that all the things they’re pointing out are the result of one or two deficiencies in the text. Sometimes these deficiencies aren’t even things that they themselves necessarily noticed or called attention to. Nobody knows your book and your vision better than you do, and for that reason nobody else can really understand the parts of the book that are inessential and the parts that are exactly what they need to be.

It’s usually my objective to revise by changing as few elements as possible. By that I don’t mean that I make small changes, all I mean is that I identify exactly what I am going to do. Usually, I find, the changes are, at their core, changes in character’s backstories. People are their histories, and if you change what’s happened before the story starts (i.e. the stuff you haven’t written), then you change a character’s entire outlook on life. You change their desires, their objectives, and their relationships. Sometimes too I contemplate changes to the setting. Oftentimes I imagine changes that are very large, and then I realize that much smaller changes will do.

I prefer, though, if my revisions make the book simpler. Ideally, I prefer to eliminate things, rather than add them. I also often find that a change, when it is right, serves either to better utilize or to completely eliminate a previously ancillary part of the story.

In early drafts of a book, you put lots of things in without knowing exactly what you’re going to do with them. Later on, these things become your tools. They’re guideposts for you; they are hints as to the real emotional core of the story. I think it’s very easy to revise by adding things, by making the story bigger and more complicated, by in my opinion this is how you ruin books. I always like to either change something or eliminate something.

Oftentimes, the current draft of a book contains, somewhere within it, the form of a much better book, and the purpose of revision is to find that form.

Anyways, I am a big believer in revision as a necessary part of the artistic process, but, oddly, I don’t believe it much impacts the commercial or critical success of the book.

When you revise, you often eliminate elements that are sentimental, untrue, overwrought, or false. But it is precisely these elements that many audiences respond most deeply to. In a revision, you might decide that your damsel, rescued from a monster by a knight, would be too traumatized by her experience to easily trust again. You might decide that they cannot, as you originally wrote, fall in love. You might decide that the best that they can hope for is an uneasy trust. And the hard decisions you put into the book might ultimately, to the sophisticated reader–the one truly on board with your vision–make your knight and your damsel into truly unforgettable heroes who forge a unique and honest relationship. But oftentimes audiences don’t want that. Oftentimes they respond most deeply to the illusion. They want to believe that trauma doesn’t scar. They want to believe that chemistry always turns into true love. They want something that feels like other things they’ve liked. For this audience, your unrevised version would probably do better.

On a less cynical note, I think audiences usually respond to the emotional core of a book. And it’s this core which is usually present even in the very first draft. Nothing you do in revision is going to substantially alter this core, so nothing is really going to alter how audiences respond to it. Thus, revision, to me, is something you mostly do for the benefit of yourself and of your best and most sophisticated readers.