The
Legless fighter pilot, Douglas Bader, is credited with coining the phrase, “Get
it right, old boy, otherwise don’t bother.” He was talking about flying, of
course, but I figure the same maxim applies to writing. That’s one of the
reasons I welcome as much editing and critical scrutiny of my manuscripts as
possible. I don’t claim to get it right on a first or even a second draft, that would be arrogant, but
I do claim to spend a lot of time trying to
“get it right.”
I have
read the advice of writers who caution against too much editing, and I
fully understand where they come from. There is a real risk of losing the crisp
spontaneity that is usually inherent in a first draft. But I tend to weight up
that risk against the other risk: that of getting something painfully wrong. It
happens, even to the most successful of writers. I recently re-read a top-selling
novel I thoroughly enjoyed thirty years ago. This time I found myself
muttering, “He’s got that hopelessly wrong,” and it spoiled my enjoyment of the
book this time around. In a more recent novel by a well-regarded writer with a
major publishing house I was surprised to read that Aldermaston and County
Louth are both in Northern Ireland. They are not. A year or so ago I threw
away a Dan Brown novel because I figure a millionaire writer can afford to hire
proof-readers able to spot glaring errors. It’s not only errors of fact that
tend to stand out. More and more these days I find that errors of grammar and
poor sentence construction can creep in and spoil the enjoyment of a book.
All of
which explains why I get welcome the value of belonging to a weekly class where
there is an opportunity to test out salient parts of a novel before they are
cast in stone. I make a note of whatever the critics say and go home to mull
over every single point. I usually find that eighty per cent of them are valid
criticisms or suggestions and I make changes as a result. And it happens before any paying
reader gets to see the text and mutters, “He got that wrong.”
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