So That We Might Sing

I have written often, on this blog, about the wonder and power of a truly good editor. Indulge me as I revisit the topic. For yesterday afternoon I received final notes from Balzer & Bray (at Harper)'s Jill Santopolo for my fourth YA novel, The Heart is Not a Size. She'd caught a few things here and there—a time lapse, an apology that needed tweaking, a scene that might fare better early on—and she'd done her line edits, too, noting those places, she said, where "I could feel the writer behind the words" or "when a certain image pulled me out of the story because I wanted to spend time decoding." She'd done all this while on the road with another author, and she'd done it because she cares that the book be as right as we can make it.

It won't be hard to imagine the happiness I felt this morning, then, when I returned to those pages to make them better, to twang and twist them, to sharpen and sear. The sweet second chance is, I think, the writer's greatest privilege: that image we didn't see coming, that story that grows more true, that note in the margin that exhorts us, Try again.

The singing that gets done in the crafting of final prose.