How to turn a manuscript into a bestseller

Editors today generally spend less time in editing because time is money. This is the observation that novelist Ken Spillman gave at a panel discussion on "Uncut: Issues in Editing" at "Read Lit District," the Third Philippine International Literary Festival in Makati City's Ayala Museum.

Spillman

Spillman, author of the successful Jake series for young readers and whose novel Advaita was described by Young India Books as a work of "sheer genius" that "gently pushes the boundaries of language," qualified that "the best writers respect and respond well to the editor's work."
 

Because he also accepts editing jobs, he said that as a reader, he first tries to get "a feel of the manuscript. I look for cop-outs or parts where the author is struggling with a point of view or if he is able to sustain it and be effectively consistent if he switches it."
 

A good editor, he added, "becomes a little bit more of a writer, a partner of the writer. He is inside the work already, not outside."
 

Spillman said a good editor always prefers "less is more." He advised writers, "Don't overwrite. Give the reader space. Help the book become the best it can be." This can be done by reducing the original draft by maybe 10 percent without anything essential getting lost along the way as the writer learns to edit himself."

McKirdy reading from his book of poems

David McKirdy, poet, author of Accidental Occidental and former director of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, said the editor's work is always marked by invisibility. He agreed with Spillman that the better writers respond well to editors.
 

Although he said he had limited qualifications since his daily job is editing a motoring magazine, he had been with Chameleon Press that has put out, among others, poetry books. He has worked with poets whom he described as "completely insane but are great souls." He met one such poet who, apart from submitting a manuscript for publication, demanded that when it was in book form, it must be sold with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
 

He said writers who want to be published "must have a clear vision of what you're trying to sell," adding that the trend in Hong Kong is now print on demand. It is also important for a book to be made available overseas for wider readership.
 

Like Spillman, McKirdy was in favor of simplicity where a writer aims to achieve something clearly when he sends a manuscript to a publisher. For example, a writer must not demand that his book be too big; otherwise, it is hard to display it on a bookstore's rack. "Be practical," he said, "and do research apart from keeping everything simple."

Grames

Juliet Grames, a crime fiction editor based in Brooklyn, New York, said writers who aspire to be authors must consider "career curation" or finding the right literary agent. She added that she is one of the few editors who like being one because she enjoys working with authors, saying, "There is a book for every person and a person for every book."
 

She said as an editor of Soho Press, an independent publisher in New York City, she liked to receive manuscripts that tell "multi-cultural stories which is our bedrock." As for the saleability of a book as an object, she ascribed it to "the person who matters--the reader."
 

She assured the audience that "publishers are not evil people," and they, too, would like to find the right readers for their books. For readers, she said, what matters were the intersecting factors of words, story and issue or message, while for writers, the factors involved are passion, message and money. For publishers it's money, cache and ideas or ideology.
 

Grames also said that every writer always needs a good copy editor and critic even as the publishing model is changing with the advent of e-books.
 

Her employer, Soho Press, puts out from 40 to 50 titles a year, and she bewailed the fact that of that number there are "not many submissions from Filipino authors." She said it was time that Filipino writers look around for their agents who could manage the publishing and financial aspects of their career. An agent gets at least 15 per cent of a book's earnings.
 

She said she would welcome crime fiction submissions from authors from the Philippines and other Asian countries. She added that this genre of fiction could carry the issue of social injustice that troubles  countries from this part of the world.
 

She cited the crime novel The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, published by Sohol and a bestseller worldwide, that deals with the issue of child trafficking.--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

First published by Vera Files / Yahoo Philippines, Nov. 24, 2012

How literature heals

Chris Abani

Although the recent Third Philippine International Literary Festival, subtitled "Read Lit District" (a pun to sound like red-light district), gathered the country's literary lights in Makati City's Filipinas Heritage Library and Ayala Museum for three days, it was Nigerian-American author Chris Abani who virtually stole the show.


After he spoke at the first plenary on the subject "Broken: Literature Created from Human Sorrow," many participants flocked to the different sessions where he was listed as a panelist. Journalist Ruel de Vera cited his own favorite Abani quote when he introduced the author of the best-selling and acclaimed novels The Virgin of Flames and Graceland: "We are never more beautiful than when we are most ugly because that's when we know what we are made of."

Ruel de Vera and Chris Abani

Abani, 45, described himself as "a connoisseur of ugly things." In one of his books, there is a place called the Ugly Store that only sells ugly things like Barbie dolls with melted faces. 

He lamented that these days, what is pretty and what is beautiful are "conflated into one."
Pretty, he said, is superficial while beautiful applies to all aspects of things. He joked, "I tried my hand in ballet, but tutus don't come in my size."

Born to Nigerian and English parents, he said he was educated globally, earning his BA in Nigeria, his MA in London and his Ph.D. in California where he teaches at the University of California Riverside and where he and his students greet each other by saying not "hi" but by swear words like "mother fucker."


Although raised a Catholic, he was kicked out early from school for heresy and his "secularized notions" that took some sacred beliefs out of their religious context. He said there were only two kinds of people in the world: the judgmental who shame the self or others, and the discerning who do not attach value to the things that the judgmental do.


He said, "To be Catholic is to lose. Our universe is not a benevolent place. We truly see what is human about us when we are tested, pushed to the abyss. That's when we reach for grace and redemption, for beauty." Loss, in other words, is beautiful.


Abani, a former political prisoner in his country of birth where he was put in solitary confinement in a 10 by 10 feet hole in the ground, said he is "most in awe of people's ugliness rather than their prettiness or their goodness." He teaches his writing students that "stories exist for this reason: to cause change, to give a chance to be better or worse."


He said he was barely 20 when he was imprisoned and tortured for being active in the underground movement. He was put in a maximum security prison and yet allowed to go out to attend school.


He realized that "the human body can withstand tremendous physical torture but the mind can be elsewhere. You can forget the torture, you float mentally." He also said, "The body holds all kinds of memory. The highest is ecstasy, but it can also contain the worst trauma. Prison makes you realize how hard it is to be a good person. Good literature offers a confrontation to the reader to see the liminal space, see everything that is sublime and base about ourselves without judgment."


When asked why the protagonists in his books are people in their teens, he said, "Everything I write is about becoming." He added that teenagers are at an age when their brains are not fully formed, "when they are forming a conscience." His books work on the theme of slippage where the characters go through the grotesque to reach the sublime.


The prose of Abani has been praised for its inner music, its poetic, dreamlike quality. He said this is because he came from a multi-racial culture. He had Indian, even Filipino, teachers and was exposed to both Hollywood and Bollywood and heard a lot of patois as he was growing up so he has been, as a writer, "assembling and re-assembling languages."


He observed how developing countries with a history of colonization have been doing the same with language. In the Philippines, "adidas" is a form of street food--chicken feet. He said he likes living and setting stories in Los Angeles because it is a place where "you can buy anything: a loaf of bread, a person."


He acknowledged Filipino-American author Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters as his model for Graceland. He could see how living in the Third World "could beat the shit out of you early," but he managed to keep to a high ethical standard.
 
He said he always tells his students, "Don't open a door that you can't walk through. Do it well."--Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

Originally published online by Vera Files / Yahoo Philippines on Nov. 20, 2012.