Holly's Reviews > The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself

Bell suggests reading one's own work (or any work you are editing) alternatively with a macro-lens and micro-lens, and she asserts that these two types of methodical reading cannot be done simultaneously; that a too-methodical reading "will force a text into categories too cleanly divided. Character here, leitmotiv there. Theme here, continuity of style there. But narrative parts work in tandem. [...] Try too hard to separate the parts and you destroy the whole." I found this advice interesting, because this is in fact how I read when I index (reading for the big picture - the forest - and also the details - the trees). It can in fact be done, and the whole is not destroyed. But I do, of course, read somewhat differently when I'm not reading-for-indexing, since the methodical reading can be intense and exhausting.

Bell quotes Scott Spencer on NOT reading aloud and I rejoiced because I've been waiting for someone to make this point: I've spontaneously changed things around because it just occurred to me, with the stimulation of people there, how to make it funnier.[...] But a lot of fiction strikes me as having an ingratiating quality that isn't good for the overall book. It comes from how many people read out loud: the professors read at the schools and people read at their writing groups. There is too much of that, because the contact between the reader and the writer is really two people in solitude. [page 144] -- Yes, two minds in solitude-together-silently! The writing has to pass the test of readability on the silent page, without inflections and pauses. I am learning to appreciate audio books, but when listening to a good one I will always wonder how it would be to read on the page.

Regarding parataxis, which I think can be poorly done and cheap: Today [Maurice] Berger no longer writes in fragments, a form that can, he says, become a crutch. [page 174-75] (Hurray.)

I think Bell misuses the phrase "beg the question" in speaking of Perkins's style in editing Fitzgerald: His light touch led Fitzgerald to acknowledge his editor's "tremendous squareness, courtesy, generosity, and open-mindedness." Perkins's treatment begs the question: Couldn't you be as square, courteous, generous, and open-minded to yourself when you edit your work? But it doesn't mean "raise the question" or "beg that the question be asked." It's like a tautological circle, no?