Someone mentioned to me that your wife is your editor?
Yes, she is.
What’s that like?
Interesting. She’s very good. I think she’s one of the best editors in the business, and luckily, she’s been willing to keep editing me, although she’s given everybody else up.
She plays a really big part in keeping track of all your plot lines and characters?
No, no. I do that myself, but she’s the first set of eyes. An editor—the first thing an editor does is tell you when you’ve failed. When you’ve failed to convince her that this person would say or do this thing. An editor is the person who goes in there and says, “You’ve told me more about this than you need to.” Or, “here you didn’t convince me.” She has a wonderful instinct for it and for the whole rest of the editorial job, of course.
I was looking through the manuscript and noticed the words “Revision 5” and so forth.
That’s before it ever gets to her. When I make what I consider a major change in a chapter, I notch up the revision once. Not for small changes, but if you have a manuscript there, you’ll notice that the revisions numbers get to be less as they go further into the book. That’s because I am constantly re-writing, constantly thinking of a way I can do something better earlier on. I often go back and re-write things that I’ve done earlier.
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