Margaret's Column

In 1936, Margaret Mitchell was awaiting the publication of her only novel, Tomorrow Is Another Day. It’s a good title, at once wistful and optimistic. And it’s the heroine’s personal philosophy; she repeats it many times in the story. But right before the book went to press, Mitchell instructed her publisher, Macmillan, to change it to a phrase that’s used once, only in passing: Gone With The Wind.

When does an author know when a book is ‘finished’? When have you stopped making your work better, and are now only making it different? It’s hard to answer that question. I’m getting ready to submit my second book to the publisher. I’ve gone through it many, many times now. I’m not finding any more typos; I think I can say I’ve caught them all (or at least I hope so) If not, I can still make corrections when I get the galley-proofs.

But-I don’t quite like the way I phrased that; let me rewrite it. Does this name suit this character? Can I find a better one? (I recently changed a character’s name back to what it was originally). Am I being tasteful with love scenes, or am I just pulling punches? I should explain more about this plot point; nah,  readers are smart enough to figure it out.

For writers, books are like children. You’ve done the best you can, and you hope it’s good enough. But you can’t resist the last piece of advice before they're out the door. And once they're out the door, for all to see, they’re not yours any more. They belong to any one who will read them, whether that’s a hundred people or millions. Readers have their own ideas of how stories should go and how characters should develop.

Witness the lively discussion of the final Harry Potter book. Everyone had different ideas, only a few of which coincided with J..K. Rowling’s. Yes, I would have liked to see some things fleshed out more, but it’s her story, and not mine. What looks vital to readers can seem secondary to the person who actually has the whole story in her head; as I’ve said before, authors and their readers have a weird relationship. The Hobbit has millions of fans, myself among them, yet on rereading it in the early ‘sixties, Tolkien was momentarily tempted to rewrite the whole thing. Could he have improved it? Who knows.

So, you proofread, or pay a professional if you can afford it. You weed out the typos and the homophones. Then you do it again. And again. You fill in that bit of back-story and change that person’s name. Finally, you must say that’s finished-and let it go.