A few years ago (four? five?) I attended the very first Tin House Writer’s Conference. Overall, it was an amazing experience, and one of the highlights was attending Susan Bell’s lecture called “The Artful Edit.”
She talked a lot about the editing and revision process for The Great Gatsby. It shows how a book can be transformed during this process, by both writer (F. Scott Fitzgerald) and editor (Maxwell Perkins). It was eye-opening and a real treat.
Bell has since published a book (The Artful Edit), and her essay on Gatsby, called “Revisioning The Great Gatsby,” is also included in The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House.
Mark Sarvas over at The Elegant Variation recently posted the essay in four delicious installments.
Highly, highly recommended. Reading it also makes me want to check out the Maxwell Perkins bio.
Yay! Thanks for posting this, Andrew!
Enjoy, Katrina!
The timing is good for you, especially as you dig back into the first draft of your novel.
By the way, I think there’s an expanded version of the essay in the Tin House anthology I mentioned.