A good editor will quickly discern the strengths of the book as a whole, and then the writing in general. An editor can suggest restructuring the book, changing the ending, or strengthening a subplot. They can suggest the addition or elimination of minor characters, a change in setting or time-period, and offer ways to heighten humor, suspense, or other emotions. Or they can just go through and “line-edit,” which is basically cleaning up the writing, tightening the occasional paragraph or scene, and checking for character consistency and plot strength. (A copy-editor corrects the grammar if appropriate, fact-checks, and fixes typos and punctuation.)

A good editor is of primary importance to every writer. A good editor is another set of eyes, after you’ve rewritten something so many times you can’t see it anymore. A good editor will help you strengthen the work that’s there, steer you in the right direction if you’ve wandered, and even brain-storm with you if you’re stuck in an unworkable plot. They encourage, cheer up, and offer honest feedback if something isn’t working. Every writer everywhere needs a good editor. There are no exceptions to this. Even great, great, obsessive, perfectionist, brilliant writers need someone as smart as they are to read their work and give feedback. 

When I was an editor, I did everything from light line-edits to almost rewriting the entire book. It was the nature of our business, where we were producing many books each month, and working sometimes with inexperienced writers. The ideal is to respect the writer’s work and individual voice, and yet end up with a book that is actually readable and worthy of its cover price. But it’s always a sensitive thing; the nature of writing is intimate, and writers either intentionally or unintentionally put their true emotions and thoughts on the page. Having someone rework that, or even change its form drastically, can be really upsetting.

I’ve been very lucky with my editors, in general. There have been times when I was at the end of my rope, sent off a huge mess, and had an editor say, “You know, what you need to do is . . .” and suddenly the light dawns, all is clear, I slap my forehead, and busily rewrite, ending up with something ever so much better. I’ve called editors moaning and whimpering, and gotten great pep talks. Then I straighten up, light dawns, and I get back to work. Editors have suggested brilliant plot twists that hadn’t occurred to me, eliminated scenes or moved them somewhere else, and had me rewrite half a book, all the while convincing me that I’m incredible, talented, fabulous, and their favorite writer. 

But I’ve also had editors who were frustrated writers, and really just wanted to rewrite a book to make it what they want it to say or be. I’ve known editors who change something whether it needs it or not, so that they can feel they put their “stamp” on it, that they’ve done their job. That can be really unbearable to deal with. I tried very hard not to be that kind of editor.

I’ve found that once someone is an editor or copyeditor, they can’t really escape it, for the rest of their lives. I can’t help finding typos and grammatical errors in everything I read. It’s annoying, but I can’t not notice them. I continue to be shocked by the writing of professional, educated people, though I’m not as bad as my daughters’ dad, who has been known to red-ink a teacher’s note and send it back to them. I’m sure they love that. 

But it’s kind of a curse–even quick notes to my children, letters to my friends and relatives–they all get edited and rewritten. So you can imagine what a collaboration is like for me, with someone like Jim. He and I write very, very differently. We have very different sensibilities. We both have strong voices and strong opinions. I’m all about emotion, description, character. He’s all about strong plot, building tension, moving a story forward. I’m a logic nazi. He believes most people don’t really worry about a lot of stuff like that. Judging from his success, I’d have to say that he’s right–he really knows his audience. I’m much more egotistical about my writing than he is. Once I needed to do a quick prologue, and I just couldn’t get it right–it didn’t accomplish what he wanted it to accomplish. I tried maybe five or six versions. Finally he wrote it himself, just as he wanted it, and said, “Here. Put this in.” It was first person, in the character’s voice . . . but to me it didn’t sound like the character that I had fleshed out and given voice to. So I  . . . fixed it.

He called me. He said, “I saw you rewrote the prologue.” I said, “But I kept it just as you wanted it. Only changed the voice a bit.” Silence. I’m biting my fingernails. Finally, he said, mildly, “I just want to point out that I’ve accepted hundreds of pages of your writing. Hundreds of pages. And you can’t accept four paragraphs of mine.” He sounded both exasperated and amused. I was cringing. I said, “But it didn’t sound right.” Amazingly, amazingly, he let it stay.

It’s a careful dance.

Yet somehow it has not made my house tidier or my children more eager to do their homework. And I keep having thoughts like, my scuba instructor seeing it and thinking, “Oh my God! That’s the woman who hurled over the side of my boat in front of everyone!”

All the same, knowing that it’s doing well and actually has my name on it (and despite the fact that it was Jim’s idea, plot, premise, and characters . . .) is quite a thrill, and I’m proud of it. I’ve gotten nice notes from my family and friends, which is really sweet of them. My mother-in-law loved it–she’s a huge JP fan.

Yep–now if I could just slap the name “James Patterson” on everything I do, I’d be golden . . .

G.

People always ask where I get my ideas, how do I come up with stuff, where does it all come from. In one of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s books, there was a character who was a writer, and when someone asked him that, he was horribly tempted to say, “A warehouse outside of Tulsa.” The short answer, for me, is: I sit around and think a lot. I just think about whatever I’m writing or need to write, and think about how it has to go. If I’m really stuck, I go do something mindless, like fold laundry, clean the kitchen, or lately, spread a huge amount of double-shredded hardwood mulch. That repetitive action does seem to help clear my mind and let my thoughts flow. But often I’m just in my office chair, head back, eyes closed, and if a child comes up, I say, “Shh, Mama’s working.” And then I go back to my nap or whatever. Being a writer is also useful if I’m at an important, meaningful lecture, or in the middle of a deep and relevant film, and I’m thinking about what I should do with my backyard, or remember that one of the cats has to go to vet, or suddenly think of a favorite article of clothing and wonder whatever happened to it–and then someone asks me something and I have no idea what just happened. A self-deprecating smile and a few mumbled words about working out a difficult plot point just does wonders. 

A longer answer is that just about everything I do, see, read, experience, hear about–it all informs and shapes my writing. Everything is an influence–bits of overheard conversations (I love to eavesdrop in public–it’s actually kind of a problem), movies, magazines, stuff my kids say, my own reactions to stuff my friends and family do–everything gets thrown in the old psyche, and then it gets woven into my writing, whether I want it to or not.

There are things I read just to get into a certain voice, to get my mind working in a certain rhythm. Different blogs, different books–I reread them over and over and then my own writing is shaped a bit by their rhythms or humor or structure. But when I read my stuff, it still all seems like me. 

I reread Sundays at Tiffany’s a few days ago. I hadn’t seen it since I’d had one last chance to work on the final draft, which I finished on the morning of my wedding last year to Paul the Wonder Husband. It was very interesting to read it again. It all blends together nicely, I think, but there are certain sentences and paragraphs, certain turns of phrase and ideas, that I recognize as being solely Jim, 100% Patterson, and very familiar and similar to how he talks. Especially the male characters, their voices and thoughts, because everyone always thinks my male characters are not very guylike. Jim had to guy them up a lot. And there are little chunks I recognize as being really me, my voice, my thinking, my turn of phrase, especially some of the humor or snappy comebacks. (And then there are a few sentences that I would swear were put in by an editor, because they don’t sound like either of us.) What’s odd is that there’s a great deal of the book where I can’t tell if it’s one or the other. I sort of remember writing it, but not exactly, I think it was Jim’s idea but maybe I did something with it–it’s really a blend. I don’t remember who did what. It’s both weird and kind of neat at the same time.

And now I should really get back to work.

Gabrielle

We got him when he was eight weeks old. He looked like a fuzzy red bear cub. Look at that face.

Our last dog was a bit–indulged, let’s say, so we wanted to start off on the right foot with Copper. We watched The Dog Whisperer and tried to be the leaders of the pack from Day One. 

But he was just so cute. Plus, he’s a boy dog, which I’ve never had before. He seems more headstrong than our last poodle, the lovely Gigi. Gigi was completely housetrained by the time she was ten weeks old. She was fastidious, and I think had only two accidents in the house, ever.

Copper is now seven months old, and while he’s really very good most of the time, he still has an accident about once a week. I don’t know if it’s a Copper thing or a boy dog thing, or if it’s all my fault. All I know is that I have to get all my carpets steam-cleaned, and soon.

This is what Copper looks like now, as an adolescent:

You can see he’s a handsome lad, and it’s hard to deny him anything. Though I try. God knows I try.

Copper is essentially one big snuggly Mama’s dog. But he’s willing to take attention from wherever he can get it. He can get very enthusiastic in requesting attention. This is what he looks like when he’s enthusiastically requesting attention.

You can see he still looks like a bear. One of those godless, man-eating killing machines.

At least, he likes to think so.

Well, okay, not really. Sundays at Tiffany’s pubbed on April 29th, and though thousands and thousands of people have now bought a book with my name on it, my life is remarkably unchanged. I’ve seen my books in bookstores before, of course, and have pretty much had something for sale consistently for the last fourteen years. My alter ego, Cate Tiernan, currently has a shelf full of Sweep books in just about every Barnes and Noble and Borders. But seeing Sundays in stacks at Costco, as I fill my cart with kitty litter and bagels and butter and kids’ socks–it’s different. However, when I walk by the book, no neon halo appears over my head, flashing “cowriter” to everyone, so I’m still anonymous me. It’s a thrill though, seeing it–today my daughters and I were in a grocery store, and Jim’s book was there. We pointed it out to each other and giggled conspiratorially. A fun secret we could share.

A couple years ago, the Dutch company Elf, which has stores and a fantasy magazine, flew Cate (me) over to the Netherlands so I could speak at their yearly Fantasy Fair. I had gone two years before also. It’s just about the biggest Fantasy Fair in Europe, and tens of thousands of people come. The first time I went, Cate had only a small group of hard-core fans, and my audiences ranged from about eight people to about twenty-five. The last time I went, Cate filled the tent–there were hundreds of Sweep fans (Sweep is called Wicca in the Netherlands), and the line afterward to get autographs took kids about forty-five minutes to get through. It was amazing. Cate’s very popular in the Netherlands.

The Dutch publisher (Boekerij) had set up a “handler,” someone who would walk around with me and make sure I showed up at interviews on time. She was a lovely, incredibly sweet girl–the young wife of my former editor at Boekerij. Anyway, Caroline and I walked around, and every once in a while someone would shyly come up and ask for an autograph or to have their picture taken with me. Sweep is a YA series, so these fans were mostly young teens. Since they were Dutch, they were all about a foot taller than me. But people treated me like a celebrity, and even asked things like, was it hard for me to go out, at home, like to the grocery? Implying that I would be mobbed by eager fans whenever I stepped out the door. It was surreal. I kept explaining that no, back at home I was a nobody, no one ever knew who I was or recognized me, and they seemed surprised. Then I came home and had to go back to work, and make dinner, and scoop cat boxes, and mow the lawn, and it was like having two worlds collide.

Now I’m wondering if partnering with such an incredibly well-known and huge-selling writer like Jim, having my name on the cover, will change anything. So far I’ve determined that it will not make my children cut me any more slack, nor be more eager to do their chores, even for a semi-famous author. They’re still asking if there’s any clean laundry, and do we have Beanie Weenies for school lunch tomorrow, and to referee about whose turn it is to take a shower first.

I bet no one’s asking Jim that.

G.