Two Manuscripts, Two Editors

A cou­ple of days after 2020 Christ­mas I sent in two nov­el man­u­scripts to two dif­fer­ent edi­tors. No, this is not the result of being ambidex­trous and work­ing on two key­boards simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. It comes about because of the com­plex ways of publishing. 

Let’s con­sid­er each book in turn. 

About ten years ago I signed a con­tract with a pub­lish­er (there will be no names here) to write a book that dealt in large mea­sure with legal mat­ters. Let it be said right from the start, I am no lawyer. I began my research by inter­view­ing a vari­ety of peo­ple, judges, lawyers, pro­ba­tion offi­cers, legal coun­selors, as well as peo­ple who had been caught up in the law, includ­ing folks who had been in jail.

I soon dis­cov­ered a few things. The law itself is extreme­ly com­pli­cat­ed, that it varies from juris­dic­tion to juris­dic­tion, and is extreme­ly vari­able depend­ing on who is in charge. The law may be the law, but Judge A does not act like Judge B. And that goes up and down the legal system.

In short what I dis­cov­ered was that I could not write a book about legal mat­ters which would be uni­ver­sal­ly true. The read­er in Cal­i­for­nia, the read­er in New York, and the read­er in Iowa would not see the book as “true.” Every legal cir­cum­stance, and out­come, I learned, is different.

I offered to write anoth­er book, and that was accept­ed. I did write the book, but the edi­tor was not hap­py with it. We went back and forth with revi­sions until it was agreed that this was not a book that was want­ed, and I should do anoth­er book, book three. 

I took the book (num­ber two) I had writ­ten (and thrown off) and sold it to anoth­er pub­lish­er, who after we did more revi­sions, pub­lished it. Book­list gave it a star and the review­er said it was “one of my best.” That was cool, as the kids say. 

Mean­while I embarked on new book three for that same edi­tor and wrote a first draft. Again, edi­to­r­i­al dis­agree­ments ensued, so I final­ly asked for anoth­er edi­tor. I got one, an ami­able one. I spent a year work­ing on that book, and it being the pan­dem­ic year, the edi­tor was fur­loughed a cou­ple of times, but we got through. On the last page of the man­u­script the edi­tor wrote: “I love this sto­ry, and it just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter.” And that was one of the books—presumably now done, which I just sent in to that editor.

As for the sec­ond book I sub­mit­ted, it fol­lowed a much more reg­u­lar tra­jec­to­ry. The idea was offered to a cou­ple of edi­tors and they turned it down. After much pre­lim­i­nary talk with a high­ly rec­om­mend­ed (by a writer friend of mine) edi­tor that I had worked with briefly a long time ago, we decid­ed to move ahead. That said, the sub­ject mat­ter is com­plex and per­haps con­tro­ver­sial, so there have been end­less rewrites. Here the edi­tor is very smart and encour­aged me to go deep­er and deep­er into my tale. But that takes time and lots of hard think­ing and writ­ing. It has engrossed me for a full year. 

The oth­er day I read it to my wife—for the first time—and she, a very tough crit­ic, pro­nounced it as very good and even, as I reached the book’s end­ing, cried in sym­pa­thy with how it worked out. That of course, made me hap­py, and that was the sec­ond book I submitted. 

Will they be pub­lished? I believe so. When? I’m not at all sure. 

But alter­nat­ing books seemed to work. 

Mean­while I’ve begun doing research for my next book.

So, it goes.