“Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells, From the bells, bells, bells.”
–Edgar Allen Poe
When did I actually start working on this edit? Depending on the day, and the time of day, and the vagaries of I don’t know what . . . hormone levels? Sunspots? It seems as though I’ve been working on it forever–as though at the moment of my birth, the doctor slapped me on my little pink bottom then sat me down in from of a Word file with Track Changes enabled. Other times it seems as though I just started, and I’m experiencing every word for the first time.
I’ve never been one to re-read books. I accidentally read a book by the Dalai Lama one and a half times, having pulled it off my shelf at home forgetting I’d already read it. From the first page I began to experience this odd sense of déjà vu, as though His Holiness and I were in some kind of psychic sync. The fact that it took me half the book to realize, hey, wait I’ve read this already, is a condemnation of my memory and attention span more than it is the relative forgetfulness of this wise man’s prose. Eventually I will (intentionally this time) re-read the first three Dune novels then make my way through the rest of the expanded series by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. But then it’s been more than thirty years since I first read Dune, so the experience will surely be at least a little different.
But it my capacity as an editor I read books more than once, even three or four times all the way through. And this isn’t some kind of speed reading exercise, this is slower than my normally slow reading pace, stopping a sentence, even a word at a time to consider each part and how it forms and informs the whole–and not just the whole book, but the whole Forgotten Realms line.
And that takes time, even if the material you have to start with is as good as what I’m working on now. In the office, people ask me questions, draw me into discussions and meetings, call and email me. It’s a busy place, our little corner of the third floor of the Wizards of the Coast offices. But what cubeland lacks in the way of time and quiet for proper concentration, our management makes up for in flexibility. If I need to immerse myself in an edit, I do it at home. The kids are in school. It’s quiet. There are no meetings. Here, I edit, there I manage. Both are parts of my job–but today, it’s the edit that wins. All other priorities rescinded. Crew expendable.
So this is me now, working my methodical way through Gauntlgrym, the new Forgotten Realms novel by R.A. Salvatore. . . .
Read the rest at the WotC Book Club!
