They say the real writing is in the editing, and I’m not sure who “they” are, but I think they’ve got it right.
In an era where everything has to be a franchise, there’s a lot of talk about unforgettable characters and beloved universes, and there’s certainly something to that—but it’s always the sharp, pointed execution of the storytelling that sells those things to people in the first place. Whole YouTube videos have been made about how the first Star Wars was “saved in the edit,” and while it’s possible to overdramatize the claim, it’s basically accurate: if George and Marcia Lucas hadn’t worked tirelessly to refine that movie until it made the exact impact on the audience that they needed it to make…we’d all be living in a completely different media landscape right now (y’know, for good or for ill). Content matters, but form matters at least as much—and that, if you’ll forgive the phrasing, is what really turns me on when it comes to writing.
And I know that’s probably a mixed blessing at best.
The genuinely successful writers of the world tend to be novelists who are deeply passionate about ✨story,✨ or pundits with really interesting opinions, or journalists who are really good at getting the scoop—and that’s never going to be me. I got into this game because I love language—diction, rhythm, cadence—and my favorite thing in the world is to rewrite a sentence, over and over, fine-tuning it until it has the exact impact on the reader that it needs to have. Yes, that’s nerdy and dumb, and it means I’ll never be rich. They give the giant piles of money to the Dan Browns, not the Herman Melvilles.
But oh well.
It’s editing season around here, and I’m thrilled. As the leaves fall outside, I’m sitting at the ol’ twin monitors, my work-in-progress (tentatively titled But the Blood Was Alive) open in Word on one screen and an ad hoc outline open in Excel in the other. I’m reading the whole thing out loud to myself, rewriting it, re-rewriting it, cutting stuff, shuffling stuff around, and—for the the first time in years—actually having a little bit of fun with this thing.
A little. Maybe.
This book is still far from the best thing I’ve ever written, but being able to sit with it and get to know it is giving me hope that it might “work.” Someday.
Just like I might work, someday, when this writing thing doesn’t pan out. 🕹🌙🧸
Hey there, stranger! Welcome to my newsletter. If you sign up to receive it in your email inbox, I’ll send you e-copies of both my published books for free, and enter you in a drawing to win a signed paperback copy of each. You can scroll to the bottom of this post for more info, or else just enter your email address here:
Y’know what might be the best thing I’ve ever written, though? This piece. And almost no one read it. 😢
I don’t know why it flopped. Maybe it’s too much of a downer? Maybe people were put off by the stream-of-consciousness vignette format? Maybe I overestimated the number of people interested in Smile (or Slenderman)?
I dunno. If you’re looking for something spoopy to read this October, you could probably do worse:
If you took my phone from me and scrolled up through my text message history with my wife, you would see an exchange from a couple of weeks ago that I’m not necessarily proud of, one that left me more exposed than I meant it to. It started with me innocently sending her a meme, one that—at the time—I just thought was funny. It was one of those Cain-and-Abel memes—well, here, I’ll just show it to you:
“Ouch,” my wife responded. “Try some coffee?”
Leave it to my wife to figure out that my funny meme was actually a cry for help, even before I had.
What was truly embarrassing was that I had no excuse for being depressed out of my head. I had finished writing the book I’d been working on the day before, and I was planning to take the day off, finish the book I’d been reading, maybe go to the movies. I had zero problems, zero worries—but maybe that was why I was depressed, as stupid as that is. Sometimes your brain sees you’ve got nothing going on and just switches the endorphins off. “You won’t be needing these, lol,” it says, and who are you to argue? There’s no appeals process.
Our brains aren’t trapped in here with us. We’re trapped in here with them… (Read more here!) 🕹🌙🧸
Are you at all aware how utterly common gender nonconformity is? For at least the five decades preceding 2015, people managed a stunning variety of gendered expression without undue fanfare or self-obsession. Prince, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Elton John, Boy George, Dee Snider, Joan Jett, Marlene Dietrich, Liberace—all managed to present their fabulous selves to the world without ruminating on pronouns or bankrolling the medical industrial complex.
’s book 18 Months: A Memoir of a Marriage Lost to Gender Identityhere once or twice, but let me say again, for anyone who missed it, that it’s a beautifully written, impossible-to-put-down memoir that you absolutely won’t regret reading.
Shannon, as you might guess from her book’s subtitle, is what’s commonly referred to as a “trans widow”—a woman who was happily married till her husband came out as trans and fell down a pit of self-obsession she couldn’t follow him into. That experience, as she says in this essay, has left her in a place where a lot of other “trans widows” reach out to her for advice, which she’s happy to give—but she also (she says) gets a surprising number of emails from young men (and women) asking her how to “not be trans.” I agree with Shannon that she’s a weird source to seek advice on that from, but the advice she offers is staggeringly good nonetheless:
Your desire to be understood is as old as dirt. Your carefully curated costume is tomorrow’s museum fodder. Your anxiety about your sexual interests is normal. Your dysphoria is utterly common, notwithstanding the modifier that’s been recently attached. Your suffering seems special because it’s yours.
There are things Shannon and I disagree about, but we have in common that we’re both fairly gender-nonconforming people who are more than a little horrified to see failure to line up with rigid gender expectations treated as a medical problem—and said medical problem treated as a “progressive” issue.
This essay is great advice for anyone struggling with those pressures—but also, by extension, for anyone in their teens and twenties (or beyond) wondering “who they are.” Give it a read. 🕹🌙🧸
Reminder: By popular demand, I’ve debuted a new monthly feature, Ask a church receptionist,where I (a real, honest-to-God church receptionist who literally wrote the book on the Bible) answer all the questions you were afraid to ask about the Bible, Christianity, and everything else. Send any and all questions to luke.t.harrington@gmail.com, or just click the button below:
Be sure to tell me whether you want me to use your real name, a pseudonym, or whatever else.
Favorite comment of the month
Just because things are not bound by gravity in space, does not mean you can simply move them around no matter their size or mass (i.e., Newton’s Third Law). They couldn’t have just dragged the ship back because you’d need exponentially greater thrust to tow an enormous vessel. If your proposition were true, and everything were simply “weightless” in space, then a space-walking astonaut’s fart could blow their ship off course.
Overall, I agree that there was a lot of needlessly sacrificed momentum, but when writing a review, you should double-check your criticisms. —Kasen Wally 🕹🌙🧸
Free books, get your free books, right here, etc.
Hey, thanks for reading! If you’re new to this newsletter, here’s how it works: everyone who signs up to receive it in their email inbox gets free e-book copies of both my published books, plus you get entered in a monthly drawing for a free signed paperback copy of each! Why? Because I like you.
So, just for signing up, you’ll get:
Ophelia, Alive: A Ghost Story,my debut novel about ghosts, zombies, Hamlet, and higher-ed angst. Won a few minor awards, might be good.
Just enter your email address below, and you’ll receive a weekly reminder that I still exist:
Congrats to last month’s winners, vauan4979d24g and marbleblackbooks! (If you are one of those people, please reach out to me! I’ve emailed you twice to no response!) I’ll run the next drawing Nov. 1! 🕹🌙🧸
I love writing for the same exact reason. It’s why I was a technical writer for so long. I took linguistics in college and fell in love with verse and manipulating meaning through connotation and speech. It was just so neat to read that you enjoy the same thing. Words are cool.
I, too, love the editing stage of writing and manipulating words to do the things I want them to.
I read the other piece you linked to, and I liked it a lot. It reflects a lot of my own thoughts--particularly how the doomer types on social media, whether driven by left- or right-wing politics, end up in the same place, with essentially the same conclusions about the world, and it just seems so obvious to me (but of course it isn't to them) how they are spending too much time in their own heads and online (which is almost the same thing), spiralling into self-induced despair.
I love writing for the same exact reason. It’s why I was a technical writer for so long. I took linguistics in college and fell in love with verse and manipulating meaning through connotation and speech. It was just so neat to read that you enjoy the same thing. Words are cool.
I, too, love the editing stage of writing and manipulating words to do the things I want them to.
I read the other piece you linked to, and I liked it a lot. It reflects a lot of my own thoughts--particularly how the doomer types on social media, whether driven by left- or right-wing politics, end up in the same place, with essentially the same conclusions about the world, and it just seems so obvious to me (but of course it isn't to them) how they are spending too much time in their own heads and online (which is almost the same thing), spiralling into self-induced despair.
Also the power and importance of metaphor--yes.