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7,000 PagesCynthia's Column July 2004 This month I finished my first novel and sent it out into the world. By the time it left my hands it had been expertly edited, polished and proofed by twenty-four wonderful and brilliant people. How did I get so lucky? Here's how. When I had written it and polished it to the best of my own ability, I made a list of people who might read it. Starting with my family. (Dad, two sisters, and my two kids. )Then obviously my writing support group. Six other women who have been meeting with me for the last nine years. Since it's in their job description to be supportive, I was sure they would be. (My sister Laura is one of them, so that makes five. We're up to 10 now. )I also belong to a writers critique group with four other women writers, all novelists. (14 so far. ) Since my book takes place both in the world of television in L. A. and the world of N. Y. theatre, I needed some experts in the field. So I sent it to an actor, two actresses and a playwright. (19) And my 3 longtime best friends, (also known as the Star Sisters) one of whom is a first assistant director on many T. V. series. (22) And last but not least Marc Acito, dear friend, former student of mine and hot new novelist with a major book and movie deal of his own. (If you missed that Column , his book will be out in September and is called How I Paid For College. He'll also be telling his Cinderella Success Story at the conference. ) His partner Floyd also agreed to read. Now we have 24 readers lined up. Next stop Kinko's. The book is 353 pages long. I needed 20 copies. (Marc and Floyd shared. My Dad, Laura and my kids shared. ) This means a coying job of 7,060 pages. At 8 cents a page that would be $564. 80. This is a lot of money. So I called Kinko's and asked them how much per page if I have seven thousand pages. The woman said four or five cents. I said thanks, hung up and did the math again. Then I called her back."Which is it exactly. Four or five cents? The difference is seventy dollars." She came back with a good answer."Four and a half cents."I did the math. That would come to $317. Great. So I headed for Kinko's. Dropped off. And when I came to pick up the copies, the kid at the counter said, "That'll be $564." With complete confidence and calm I said, "I called ahead and was told that for 7,000 pages it was 4½ cents a page." He said, "Oh."Refigured it and instantly knocked $247 off my tab. (The Lesson is:Call Ahead. ) $317 to make copies. This is the cost of doing business. I had to get my son Nick to help me carry the twenty boxes of 353 pages each. Then I began distributing them. With the instructions to my friends to please scribble all over them. They all went out at once, but they came back spread out over time. Thank God. Buying 7,000 pages and actually going over 7,000 pages are two different things. One requires a swipe of an Amex Card (which also saved a bit more at Kinko's, by the way) and the other requires a lot of hours of work. It turns out that I have generous and brilliant friends. And they have varied and complementary abilities. One was expert at spelling. She knew that Whoopee Goldberg was actually Whoopi. And that a straightjacket was actually a straitjacket. One was expert at commas and punctuation. Another at grammar and usage. Knowing the correct usage of "as if" instead of "like" and which is which between "which" and "that". They told me when they had laughed. When they cried. And when it bogged down in the middle and they lost interest. Marc and Floyd helped punch up a few of the laughs. My actor friend had actually starred in The Real Thing on Broadway in the exact theatre I was describing in the book and could give me great insider details on that. One of the actresses filled in details about half-hour calls, dressers and telegrams. One of them used little stars like the system of *** and **** for rating movies. Another used happy faces. Another used plus and minus signs in the margins. Then I started making lunch dates. For all those who live locally, I'd take them to lunch and talk about the book. The other copies started coming back in the mail. Each time I'd get a copy back, I'd go through it immediately and recycle any pages that had no marks on them. Then I'd go through again and do the small changes next. I always start with the easiest stuff. It's how I trick my writing brain into working. Fixing typos, punctuation and spelling, then tossing those pages. Finally getting to the bigger, more difficult notes. I'd keep going through each copy until no pages were left in the stack, or only a few. Occasionally I'd decide not to do the note. It has always been my practice in Hollywood never to do a note if I don't get that it will make it better. I tell my students, "If you don't get it, don't do the note."But amazingly my brilliant friends were right more than 90% of the time. It took five months to write a draft good enough to copy and send out for readers. It took another three months to polish the script with everyone's notes. The cost of Xeroxing, postage and lunches is only a fraction of what I would have spent to hire a professional editor. And he/she wouldn't have been nearly as helpful as these twenty-four brilliant friends were. I'm not just saying this because I love them. They were surprisingly astute, funny, smart and open-hearted. After their notes I cut the book down by 5,000 words, from 93,000 to 88,000. But dropping the Chapter Headings down to mid-page, which is format for novels, somehow it is still 350 pages. When I sent the manuscript off to a book agent in New York, I splurged on the bright white 92 rated paper. Regular white typing paper used to be white enough. But now that we have ultra-white paper, the regular looks dull and, well, not quite white. I don't want to be less white than other manuscripts on an agent's stack. There is this cosmic karmic comic thing that happens to keep things balanced in the universe. It happened (and I don't believe it could possibly be by chance) that while my friends were reading, my three classes wrapped up. (One at WASU Vancouver, one through Willamette Writers and a Master Class) And suddenly I had a stack of scripts from 53 students, around 120 pages each. Yep. While asking others to read 7,000 for me, I had to read more than 6,000 pages for others. Do you think that's funny? I actually do find it funny. The stack beside me is now down the last 500 pages here. And there is another kind of karmic balance to keep in mind. If you're going to use thousands of pieces of paper, you might want to think about planting a tree to maintain balance in nature. I planted three small trees. Lilacs. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |