Whose Book Is It? The Author’s!
As an author and editor (and a student of both disciplines, as well as the fine art of workshopping), a lot of effort goes into focusing: what is the story I’m trying to tell? How am I going about telling it? What’s the narrative? What’s the emotional pay-off going to be, and how do I get there?
Questions, questions, questions! One must interrogate a lot. With me and my writing, it’s easy I suppose, as I’m familiar with my own work, and I’m constantly available in case I have to pose any queries. But to copyedit somebody else’s story — particularly someone who isn’t necessarily a writer — and interrogate their narrative, their subject, the emotional pay-off? That delves into tricky territory.
When my Advanced Editing class was given the task of working with RMIT Diploma of Photography and Photo Imaging students to collaborate on a series of photo books, I realised I was going to have to do just that. In other words, this wasn’t going to be merely proofing.
I held my breath, wondering whom I was going to be partnered with.
I didn’t have to wait long. When my photographer — Renee Coster — was revealed, I was happy, as I was familiar with her subject — Ruby Soho, a young woman who’s well known in Melbourne’s independent music scene as a gifted guitarist, a blistering social commentator, and an intelligent and humorous songwriter.
But the sting in the tale centred on an aspect of the subject I was unaware of: mental illness. Ruby had battled with mental illness for most of her life and was diagnosed seven years ago as suffering from bipolar disorder. In fact, a couple of manic episodes had seen her involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Renee had to leave for a trip to Japan, so I found myself in an interesting position: I received an 80-page rough draft of the book early in the assessment. I had another book to edit, but since this one came so early, I didn’t waste any time breaking out my editing pencil and getting to work.
After my first couple of read-throughs, marking all along the way the bits and bobs that immediately sprang up or that would require more thorough examination, the story — all those beautiful black and white photographs, accompanied by all that text — began to coalesce. The photographer’s major focus, as she had told me during a café meeting, was specifically on the bipolar/mental wellness aspect of the story.
Here is where I made my mistake.
Unbeknown to me, shortly after her arrival in Japan, Renee had fallen ill; she wasn’t able to check her email or respond to my queries regarding the direction she wanted the narrative to be nudged. I was in possession of her book for a couple of weeks, and I began to approach it as the story I myself would have told. The reader, I reasoned, was sure to be more interested in the rock ’n’ roll angle. The mental illness side was important, of course, but I figured that beginning with that side of the story wasn’t as compelling, wasn’t as entertaining.
So I committed the cardinal sin of copyediting the manuscript as if it were my story, not Renee’s — a big no-no.
I set to work reworking the text to tell the story that I thought was more ‘interesting’, more in keeping with what I believed the hypothetical reader might be keen to read.
Luckily, I didn’t go bonkers. I copyedited and proofread in a proper manner, watching out for redundancies, declarative statements and captions that covered territory that had been repeated elsewhere in the text. But I made comments and rewrote sections of the text in separate Word documents with the idea of sharing my vision of what I felt the story could become. In these re-workings, I tried to focus more on the life of a guitarist in a well-regarded local band who’s working on her first solo record and performing a month-long residency at a popular punk rock club.
True, the purpose of the guitarist’s residency — besides showcasing new material — was to share her story of mental illness and communicate the importance of maintaining a healthy mind by inviting mental health advocates to speak with the audience, but it niggled at me a little as the text hadn’t really said much about the music. A reader unfamiliar with the subject who might pick up this book, I reasoned, wouldn’t leave knowing much about the music she performs.
I rearranged and tweaked segments I thought laid too much weight on mental health. I made detailed notes on the sections I thought worked really well, highlighted sections that might work better placed elsewhere in the story, and made my case that the emphasis might be more dynamic if the music were to take (ahem) centre stage.
But, you see, I was wrong; I was approaching the editing job with the wrong idea. It wasn’t my book, see — it was Renee’s. And, in a way, I failed her.
When she returned from Japan, Renee finally had a chance to look over my suggestions and examine the changes I’d recommended. And she explained to me that what I’d gone ahead and suggested she change not only wasn’t the story she wished to tell but didn’t even sound like her.
That was when I realised my error. There was a week to go before her book was due; the two of us went into overdrive. She had a few new ideas she wanted to explore, so when she shared them in a new draft, I knew then the importance of nurturing her ideas, her story.
Her book, Ruby Soho’s Confessions from the Loony Bin, looks and reads bloody terrific. And I’ve learnt a lot: namely, it’s not my book. It’s the author’s. Treat it as such, respect the writer, and a whole lot of time will be saved for everybody concerned.
