Monday 09 December 2024
You served as my Katyn manuscript reader. You bore witness when I conceived of the idea of writing a book about the Katyn Massacres and when I revised the manuscript to a memoir, not a scholarly work. You read several different versions of the manuscript: fragments of ideas, working and finished chapters, and complete texts. You are the only reader to have seen it from start to finish. In the publishing world, book writing professionals might call you an “alpha reader,” a trusted person who reads a manuscript, and offers constructive or substantive feedback—revision suggestions, both at the micro and macro levels. Because you also have earned a doctorate and have taught at the college level, in some ways, you performed the task of an university “dissertation mentor,” a college professor who reads an advanced research project, offering guidance and support for the dissertation writer. How would describe the role you performed during my writing process for “Living with Katyn”? What would you call yourself? How would you describe your duties?
Well, that’s a very long lead up to a couple of questions all with a very short answer – I’d describe myself as “a good friend coaching their good friend on how to present their work in the best possible way.”
Have you ever read a written work in progress, working as a manuscript reader?
I have done work on helping review articles that were in progress and have also had the opportunity to work with a number of undergraduate students during the process of their work on an honors thesis.
How did you approach the task of reading a 600-plus page manuscript?
I have to admit that taking on a 600-page work in progress seemed daunting. I asked for a paper copy of the manuscript to comment on and the bulk and weight of it made reading and commenting seem a real challenge. As you know, I reviewed two different manuscripts – the first version was much more challenging as there were suggestions for macro revisions and both you and I were still feeling our way through where things were really going. The second read was easier in many ways –there was a clearer path, I understood the structure of the work, and during our meetings on the first version, we discussed my recommendations. The one thing that stood out to me in the 2nd reading was how important it was to emphasize and develop what I started calling “Mount Everest” moments – those times or incidents in the book that had a tremendous impact on you as the author. I wanted to make sure you were able to convey that impact to your reader in a meaningful way that stood out from the rest of the book.
Did you have a pre-conceived notion of how to go about editing/reading the manuscript?
My original idea was just to put my head down and plow through the manuscript and then provide comments. Of course, that’s not what we ended up doing and that was a good thing. Our process of me reading and commenting on a chapter or so at a time, and then meeting virtually with you to discuss things was much more constructive. Of course, it did take more time, but the result was well worth it.
Did you develop a philosophy of reading a manuscript while reading the manuscript? What is it?
I think my biggest take away from reading this manuscript was consciously realizing my approach to reading someone’s work and commenting on it. Unless you are a paid professional, when someone asks you to be their reader they are doing so from a position of trust in you. What they have written is very important to them otherwise they never would have gone through the struggle to write it. Their work is “their baby” and they are trusting you to help care for it, see to its development and make sure it grows and flourishes. That’s a big responsibility and not one to be taken lightly. Just like everyone has different parenting styles, writers have different styles when it comes to style, organization, and substance and they like their style.
Reading a manuscript requires that you always remember that “the baby” belongs to the author and your job is to help it flourish in the way the author wants while providing your best advice on how to do that.
One other note was that I tried very hard to see how the ordinary reader would view this manuscript. In many places of the work, I asked myself – “What was too much detail? What was too little? Is this an interesting aside or is it “running down a rabbit hole” away from the main thread of the book? Is this interesting to the ordinary reader or is this an attempt to make a particular academic point?”.
Finally, I think that there is a constant need to ensure transitions occur smoothly for the reader – that means from chapter to chapter and para to para. That’s especially important in a manuscript of any real length. It’s even more important in a memoir because the author lived the occurrences in the manuscript and their minds instinctively make the jump from A to B (and sometimes all the way to E) while the reader needs a good bridge in order to stay on the path of understanding and follow the author.
Did you have any conflicts of interest while reading the manuscript? Did you have any misgivings? Did you experience any difficulties while suggesting that I make certain revision changes? After all, we have been friends for a long time.
I think we worked remarkably well together – I gave excellent advice, and you took it! All kidding aside, the only aspect of the manuscript I occasionally struggled with at all were the places in it in which we were both in the same time and place but had different emotional responses to the same environment. I was sometimes surprised about what you were feeling or the depth of it. That all made sense when I read the manuscript, but it made me rethink my own thoughts and emotions. The same goes towards our views of some of the real-life characters in the book who we sometimes saw and still see in very different ways because of our personal or professional relationships with them.
If you were to do it all over again, how would you approach the task of reading the manuscript and making suggestions for improvement?
I would not make any real changes. We ended up doing a good bit of global revisioning in the first draft and that was time consuming but as I mentioned earlier, well worth the effort. Our frequent virtual meetings helped us develop a “common operating picture” of both what this book was and was not and your approach to it. I certainly would not change the frequency or duration of the meetings we had. I also liked our collaborative style – even though the book was “your baby” how we ended up working together made it a little bit mine as well.
I do need to give you a positive plug (surprise!). There were a number of times you made fairly major revisions or deletions to the manuscript after our discussions and meetings. Some of those were hard for you because of your investment in what you wrote and the ideas themselves. The decision to make those changes (in my opinion) greatly improved the overall flow and readability of the work but I can think of several colleagues who would not have been open to such changes either because of being too enamored of those ideas or being a little stubborn. My overall point here is that developing a manuscript like we did is just like any bit of communication with a sender and a receiver. Even if the reader/editor is doing their very best to help the author’s “baby” flourish, the author has to be open to listening, really hearing, considering, and being willing to make revisions. Your willingness and being a good communicator who really listened to my input and thoughts, questioned and considered them, and then made your decision was crucial to making progress and addressing issues.