Commiseration
One of the things I worried about when I became a teacher was forgetting what it was like to be a student. I didn’t want to be one of those teachers who expected students to just “get it.” I didn’t want to bulldoze my students with excessive information or overwhelming expectations. Because learning can be hard.
I had the same fear when I became an editor. Would I forget what it was like to labor over a piece only to have it dissected and delivered to me in a bag?
I think I kept my sense of empathy while I was a teacher because I had to go back to school myself during that time. So I was on both ends of the red pen. But, because editing takes up so much of my time, I haven’t been doing a lot of writing lately – at least, not the kind that feels like wresting an organ from your body.
But a few days ago, I had an experience that made me a humbler editor.
I used to say that I’m almost finished editing a documentary film, but the critique I received from a veteran filmmaker made me revise my statement. I am now in the middle of editing a documentary film.
I shot the film from 2004 to 2006, gathering 125 hours of footage, and I’ve been editing it ever since. It has been a bigger job that I had originally thought. I made transcripts of all the tapes. I put together story outlines. I logged and captured footage. I put sequences together. I added this piece and chucked that. But after years of work, I finally had what I thought looked like a pretty decent movie. I let a few friends look at it, and they had all said positive things, none really offering any suggestions for improvement (besides things like adding Angelina Jolie to the cast).
So I sent the movie off to this filmmaker for a critique, my hopes high that I could have it in the festival circuit this fall. He was very encouraging, but I could tell from his forthright analysis that I have at least another year of work ahead of me.
A year of work.
Kinda grates on the ears, doesn’t it?
I sat feeling exhausted and discouraged for a while after that conversation. But as I thought over the suggestions he had given me, I could start to see the logic behind them. I could see how they would affect the flow of the story, and I could see that they would make the film better. I was suddenly very grateful for every incision the filmmaker had made into my movie’s body. But I can still see all that work stretching out in the front of me, and I’m not exactly chomping at the bit.
I’m going to do it, though. Seems a waste to spend such a large period of my life on a project without bringing it as close to perfection as possible. For me, few pleasures are greater than crafting something with microscopic precision. It’s almost like creating a self-sustaining life – something that works especially well because it’s rooted in principles that unify the life and vitality poured into it.
I’m not a trained filmmaker. I’m an amateur. I don’t have a strong grasp of the principles of cinema (one look at a lot of my camera work would convince you quickly). I’m glad that someone who has been working in documentary film since before I was born is willing to guide me. I’m glad not in spite of the fact that he points out the weaknesses in my work, but because he does.
I feel a lot like the people from hell in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce who step off a bus that has brought them to heaven, only to find out that even the grass they try to stand upon is more substantial than they are. They all need someone who is willing to help them grow more solid, especially if they’re thinking about staying.
I appreciate my critiquer’s encouragement, but I appreciate his honest analysis even more. He’s right, I don’t want to put out half-baked work. If my life is worth investing in this project, I’m going to make sure the investment pays off.
So, as an editor, I will be more encouraging, because I want people to write. I want them to have faith that their offerings are honored and that they can make a difference in the world. But I will also insist on honoring those offerings to the fullest by insisting that they enter the world as perfect as our combined powers can manage.
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March 31st, 2009 at 4:31 pm
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Well, thank you. Because I’m planning on submitting something to you.
March 31st, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Do you “just” have to go back to the editing drawing board, or do you have to go back and do reshoots or new shoots?
I remember when you critiqued my novel Kindred Spirits pre-publication, you talked about starting the story in a whole different place, something about an “inciting event.” This would have required reimagining whole new swaths of story territory, something I just wasn’t interested in doing.
I was just wondering if you need to do anything that major, or if you “just” need to reshape what you’ve already got.
March 31st, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the pain of revision. No matter how much I believe in it, no matter how many times I tell my students and those I edit that they must do it, when it comes time for somebody to tell ME to face up to my own unholy mess I feel 1. mad, 2. sad, 3. like giving up, 4. resigned to the inevitable, and 5. (usually) willing to get back up on the horse.
I wonder, though if it’s easier to take a critique like this in a genre where you don’t feel quite as adept. Critiques in genres where I feel like I kinda know what I’m doing, like fiction, are harder to take than in those I don’t have as much experience in, like poetry and creative nonfiction. Somebody telling me I need to completely rehaul my fiction is particularly hard if I think I’m done. If somebody has a dozen suggestions for a first or second draft? No problem. But if I submit what I thought was a finished story and I’m told that I need to start over from the beginning, like what Chris noted above? There’s a sense of, “Hey, hands off, buddy, I know what I’m doing,” that comes into play. And to be honest, at some point the artist has the right to say hands off. It’s just hard to know when that point has actually taken place. Is a resistance to changing a work of art stemming from a mixture of ego and exhaustion? Or is the resistance based on a belief in your own vision and a faith that the story as you envision it will work?
Has somebody told you a personal essay you thought was finished is still miles away from completion recently? Just curious. I’d be interested to hear if that was difficult for you.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Aw, Chris. I thought you had forgiven me of that critique.
You’re right, though. I don’t have to go back and reshoot, I just need to massage things (not to mention color correction and sound engineering, which will account for the majority of the year of work I have left). But that’s because I prepared well. When I went into this project I was only a few months away from earning my MFA, so I had already steeped myself in story theory. Add to that the fact that I knew what kind of story was going to unfold because I had seen it happen to someone else; I went in with a lot on my side.
However, contrast with my story the story of a Dutch production company that made a documentary on exactly the same Alaskan island I made mine. They had money (I had to borrow everything). They had a real cinematographer (I learned on the fly). They had a real sound technician (I Velcroed the mic to the top of the camera). They shot on real film (miniDv for me). They had a bona fide editing studio back home (I have my workhorse of a Mac and Final Cut Pro). But they didn’t have one thing: a story. So the film turned out to be a beautiful 80-minute postcard of Shishmaref.
They had all the tools, but no story. If they want a story, they’re going to have to go back and reshoot. They’ll need to find some characters that want something. They’ll need to find a conflict. And they’ll need to see it through to the end.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:26 pm
This is a really good question, Angela: “Is a resistance to changing a work of art stemming from a mixture of ego and exhaustion? Or is the resistance based on a belief in your own vision and a faith that the story as you envision it will work?”
Personally, I believe that the only time you can reject a critique in favor of your artistic vision is when you can show the critic sound reasons why you made the choices he or she is taking to task. Taking refuge in “this is my artistic vision” doesn’t help anyone when it comes to writing better. Good art comes out of communities that have a way to talk about how that art comes to be. This is the reason Gene England was so insistent that Mormonism establish a strong literary criticism. We just shoot ourselves in the foot when we refuse to demystify our art.
Actually, I haven’t had someone tell me an essay I thought was finished was a mess. At least, not since I actually figured out how to write. Before I figured out how to write, I sent out all kinds of crap to my long-suffering friends (including Chris). But when I sent it out then, all I wanted was for them say, “Wow, this is great, Carter” (even though I wouldn’t admit it). Because I didn’t know what was going on. The only way I could tell something was good was if someone else liked it.
It was a terrible way to write. Now I know when something is half-baked. Sometimes I can’t get past that half-bakedness and I either need to set the essay aside for a while to ferment, or send it to a trusted reader (I have only one). But when I send it out, I want nothing more than for the reader to take that baby apart and help me see it new. I WANT it to come back in a bag. Otherwise it’s going to remain in artistic vision land, where it will die ignominiously unless I’m dumb enough to send it out to an editor.
I know an essay is done when I can see how it’s working. When all the gears turn, when all the organs pulse.
April 1st, 2009 at 8:13 am
I totally agree that the writer must have sound reasons. I also agree that good art comes out of communities. Usually. Every once in a rare while a lone genius emerges. Technically that lone genius has been engaging in a community by reading, though, but the conversation isn’t the same as a community of literary critics talking to one another and deciding on specific parameters that constitute artistic meritoriousness. Most of us (myself included) need that community.
I also wanted to clarify that in my own fiction writing, sometimes I resist change because I’m exhausted and/or my ego’s been pricked–and usually, hopefully, I work through the stages of grief and realize that the critic was right and begin again. But sometimes I resist change because, while I understand the reasons the critic is giving, I’ve made a conscious decision to do it another way. To me, art-making is a continual balancing act between understanding and working within conventions, then having the vision and courage to know when and why and how to push the envelope. It’s knowing the difference between half-bakedness and ingenuity that actually works. Sometimes the gears ARE turning, the organs ARE pulsing, and somebody else will still tell you to change it. It takes courage and intelligence to know when to tell that person no.
But it also takes courage and intelligence to tell that person yes.
The truth is, it’s hard to know when a work of art is actually done. There’s no science to it. There’s craft, sure, but not science. In the end, the artist’s just got to trust his or her gut.