How Words Get Good: Q&A with Rebecca Lee

1. How long did it take you to research and write How Words Get Good?

I was lucky to be able to take a four-month sabbatical from my day-job to get started on writing How Words Get Good. It coincided with the first lockdown; and although in some ways that was a help (nowhere to go to distract me!) in others it made things more challenging. Originally, I wanted to speak with my interviewees face-to-face, so I had to do a lot of the interviews via email or phone. That definitely changed the way the book was put together, but I guess we’ll never know if it would have been better or worse if that hadn’t happened. I managed to get the first draft done in those four months, but after that there was more than a year of editing – first from my commissioning editor, then copy-editing and proof reading. You really do need stamina.

2. What are some of your favourite word related facts you uncovered while researching this book? Could you share a couple?

It’s not a word, but one of the stories behind the asterisk is lovely. As I explain in HWGG, Palaeoarchaeologists have discovered that over 30,000 years and the whole of Europe, just thirty-two signs appeared again and again at rock sites across Europe. One of these signs was the asterisk – the ‘little star’. It’s incredible to think that we’ve been using this notation as a way of emphasis for so long, and of course it tells us something about how people viewed the night sky, as well. I like to think of the glow of a star illuminating something that was truly important, or that needed further emphasis. Ever since we have been writing down stories, we’ve been looking for ways to point out for readers the important, significant or amusing bits – that’s where the speech mark and other symbols originated, too.

3. How did you decide to organise the book? What was your method for breaking down the book into different sections?

This is where a good commissioning editor comes in. My initial proposal for the book ordered it as an A–Z. My first draft went from the start of a book (cover, prelims, etc) to the end (index, printing). Neither of those ways of organising it worked especially well. My editor suggested I re-draft things in a more thematic way, and after a lot of thought I came up with the current structure of ‘How Words Get Born’, ‘How Words Get Good’, ‘How Words Get Free’. It’s tough to be asked to do so much structural work after you’ve written a first draft – it feels as if you are destroying everything you have created! But unsurprisingly, my editor was right, and I think the book works much better this way. As an author trying to wrestle with these structural challenges was tough – it helps to have an outsider’s eye on the text – as I was lost in a wilderness of words.

4. How Words Get Good is your first book. What was it like to experience the other side of the publishing process – being the writer?

It was a brilliant experience in that I was being asked to write about something I absolutely love. I’ve been an avid reader all my life, so I’m fortunate to do this job and to have been able to write a book all about books. My ten-year-old-self would have been delighted. I particularly enjoyed the research part: filleting out stories, digging into things, reading round topics. And writing a book has left me with even more respect than I already had for the authors I work with. It’s mentally exhausting (well, it was for me) and just as you get to enjoy the high of finishing it, your publisher starts coming back to you about editing, copy-editing, proof reading – lots of questions and more thinking – at a time when you just want a break from it. I always try to be mindful that it’s asking a lot of an author, and even more so now I have been through it myself. And while I was quite comfortable with the editing process the marketing and publicity around publication has been a whole new experience for me. As a first-time author, talking about yourself and your book can feel daunting – but I think I am getting a bit more used to it.

5. For those who aren’t familiar with your publishing role, could you take us through what an editorial manager does? What does a typical (if that exists!) day look like for you?

My job is to oversee all the stages of turning an author’s manuscript into text that is ready to go to print. I’m always working on a list of books at different stages of their journey. I spend a lot of my time working with commissioning editors, authors, my colleagues in production, and freelance copy-editors, proof readers, and indexers. So really, it’s project management for words, with no book being like another; tight (occasionally impossible!) deadlines and lots of pressure to be accurate even when there is very little time. My days can involve anything from a start-up meeting about a new book (where the editor will communicate with us what might be involved, any quirks and oddities of the text or author), checking the final revises of a book that’s about to go to print, sending off page proofs to freelancers and authors, paying invoices, booking couriers, re-indexing, checking cover copy, proofreading a List of Illustrations, or editing some captions. As well as that I’m overseeing the relationship between the author and any freelancers working with them, fielding queries from colleagues and doing a small amount of editing myself.

6. What are some of the most common mistakes that writers make?

I’m very lucky in that my authors tend to be experts in their fields and good writers to boot. The best authors to work with are those that approach what we do as a form of collaboration that will ultimately make their words even better (and of course you sometimes work with authors who are such pros that their words are unimprovable). It’s always the author’s book, of course, and everything we suggest to them is up for negotiation. I think sometimes authors can feel as if we’re about to put them through six months of comma boot camp, or that we’re going to argue over every sentence they have written, but that’s not the case at all. The common mistakes that writers make (repetition, assuming knowledge on behalf of the reader) are understandable in that it becomes almost impossible to edit yourself or take the point of view of someone coming fresh to your words without a bit of help from people who aren’t as close to the text as you are.

7. What are some of the most common mistakes that publishers make?

Publishers do of course make mistakes, but that’s not surprising given how complicated publishing a book is. From over-paying for a book to positioning it slightly wrongly in a crowded market, I’m more surprised that so often it all goes right. We look to publishers to be gatekeepers of quality for readers, and we also want to have marginalised voices promoted and recognised. Publishers from the dawn of print have been confronting arguments about who gets to tell their story. They also have to balance creativity, which is the heart of storytelling, with making a profit. Even when we might think that a book shouldn’t have been published, or that a publisher has got everything wrong, it’s surprising how many books get a new lease of life by being rediscovered through a new audience or in response to changing times. Gutenberg would be astonished at the complexities of modern-day publishing – audiobooks, rights, global publishing events, licensing, legal issues, supply chain decisions, market trends – just a few things that publishers must now contend with.

8. What advice would you give to writers who are at the beginning of their journey to publication? How can they ensure that their words get good? Or are good enough for publication?

As Max Perkins (Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s editor) said: ‘Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it’. The blank page is a tyrant, and you should spoil it immediately. As soon as you commit to writing (or typing) you have made a start, and then you can go back, read and re-read it, and as Perkins says, see what to do with it. I think the other thing to bear in mind is to try not to let perfect be the enemy of good. Your proposal or first draft are just that – they don’t have to be perfect; they just need to demonstrate that you know your subject, and that you can follow through and write 80,000 words on your topic. One thing I hope HWGG makes clear is that getting words good is a massive collective endeavour, and you should embrace the process of being published as much as you embrace writing. Your publishers, your copyeditors and all the people like me and my colleagues are your first ‘live’ readers, and we want to work with you to make each book the best it can be. My hope is that HWGG helps to explain what we can bring to help in that journey from the writer’s mind to the reader’s eye.

9. Like writers must deal with difficult feelings – rejection, regret – how do you navigate such feelings from your end? When a project doesn’t hit a deadline, typos in finished books, for example. Working with words is often unpredictable!

It really is! If you think of a manuscript as being roughly 80,000 words long, in my job that’s 80,000 opportunities to make word-related mistakes. And that’s just thinking about the words themselves, rather than the bigger picture of deadlines. A big part of my working life is being pragmatic: judging when we need to give more time to one element of the process, or whether we should be moving things along to meet the schedule. As an author, of course you always want your words to be the best they can be, but sometimes you need some encouragement to let things go. Otherwise, the book will never be published, which defeats the entire point.

In HWGG I mention a play from 1633 called The Bird in a Cage that includes a disclaimer about any errors contained in it: ‘All books are subject to these misfortunes’. Having typos pointed out to you in a finished book is horrible, but it’s an inevitable part of publishing. I think your view of an error is naturally clouded by your position to it: as an author, of course, it’s the last thing you want; in my job it’s an occupational hazard and one you need to come to terms with. I think you must try and keep a sense of proportion about it: all errors are not equal. A typo buried on p.786 is one thing, a misspelling on a cover or title page is very different. Something I talk about in HWGG is that errors are a natural part of publishing and often an illuminating part of a book’s history – but that can only happen with the passage of time. There’s a brilliant book and website called Regret the Error, and I think that sums it up nicely: you always regret the error, although at least in my job you also have the ability to fix it for reprints!

10. Finally, do you have a favourite word?

I’m fond of ouroboros. It’s the name for a mythological serpent that is pictured eating its own tail. It represents the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Or perhaps the endless cycle of writing, editing and publishing words. After all, in storytelling, there’s nothing new under the sun.

Rebecca Lee is an editorial manager at Penguin Random House. She's spent twenty years managing hundreds of high-profile books from delivery of manuscript to finished copies, signing off millions of words as fit to go to print with only the occasional regret.