Making the cut: Between writer and editor
The emails would initially arrive once a week. Sometimes there would be nothing for weeks. Then out of the silence, would come a solitary word – typed a hundred times over: ‘Alone’.
It was an uncertain often faltering process. But she kept faith with the young woman suffering from schizophrenia whose only commitment had been to send Ritu Menon her thoughts on emails, seeing in them the potential for an extraordinary book. ‘Fallen Standing’ published in the same format as the writer’s mails (of course edited with her consent) by Ritu’s publishing house Women Unlimited in 2015 set the young woman on a different path- her book was a success and she is now a mentor to many others facing similar struggles.
Rita Menon in Colombo. Pic by Priyantha Wickramaarachchi
That process, though not a normal experience was a very valuable one, Ritu reflects. It was one of many where as editor she has played multiple roles- sometimes of midwife, at others, friend and critic.
Ritu Menon is that rare blend – an editor, publisher, activist and writer, perhaps best known as the co-founder of the trail-blazing ‘Kali for Women’ – India’s first feminist publishing house, which she followed with ‘Women Unlimited’, an associate of Kali that continues its mission to give women writers their space. No stranger to Lankan writers, Ritu was the chair of the DSC Prize panel of judges in 2017 when Anuk Arudpragasam’s book ‘The Story of a Brief Marriage’ won that prestigious award.
Here to conduct a workshop on editing for creative writers organised by the Gratiaen Trust, she sat down with a diverse group – writers, journalists, editors and would-be editors at the Open University in Nawala over three days for ‘Making the Cut’ as it was titled. The time being short, she looked to set out the basics, address their questions and go through extracts of unpublished work both fiction and non-fiction to show how editing could help.
“You look at content, presentation, language, digression, how the material has been organised, structure, and you look at overwriting or underwriting- both. That is the first reading. Very often you can see that there is a nugget to be worked on either by you or the author, if the author is agreeable. You can’t force it but you can persuade – and the skill is in persuasion.”
That many manuscripts submitted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri Lanka’s most coveted literary award (founded by Booker Prize winning author Michael Ondaatje in memory of his mother) would have greatly benefited from editing has been a frequent grouse of the Gratiaen judges. There is, admittedly, a reluctance among local writers to submit their work to an editor. For her part, Ritu is categorical that the editing process is crucial to a book. It is only arrogant or insecure authors who insist that their work would not benefit from such intervention, she believes. The mature writer understands that it could improve the work in ways that they may not expect.
“Books are made because of the interaction between a writer and his/her editor. I personally believe that there is not a single writer whose work is not improved by a good editor,” she states. Of course, trust is essential – that is the foundation on which this long-term relationship is built.
“It’s a journey. You work on the manuscript with them and it might improve in phases, it might improve immediately,” she says emphasising that all this happens with the author’s consent and recognition that this intervention is intended to enhance the work- not to be critical of the author. “It’s not a comment or a criticism or a judgment. An editor is not a judge- of course, we judge the work but we are not judgmental in the relationship with the author.”
Times have changed though and now in a market-driven environment, though smaller independent publishing houses are still editorially-driven, the role of the editor and the editorial process in big publishing houses has changed so younger people are not afforded the same opportunity to be trained, which is why workshops like this can be useful to writers, she says. Editors now are more focused on commissioning books, commissioning writers. “They do that part of the editorial work but not necessarily the nurturing part, which role is now the literary agent’s. They have what used to be the editorial relationship- they look at the work and give the feedback and work with the author before offering it for publication.”
If you commission a book for instance, that relationship begins then and can go on till the book is published and even later, as a friend. You can be talking to the author at every stage of the writing, giving feedback, reassurance, criticism, re-orienting it if it’s going off the rails- all sorts of responses, she explains.
Her over 40-year career has had an extraordinary impact -the government of India gave her the Padma Shri award in 2011 and this year she received the Women Impact Women Award by the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Yet she is nothing if not prosaic about how it all came about. After her postgraduate studies in the US, she needed a job. “What does a literary graduate do?” She got a job with Doubleday- in market research and later returning to India, joined Orient Longman. By the time she embarked on setting up Kali for Women in 1984 with a colleague Urvashi Butalia, she had solid experience to back her.
Launching ‘Kali for Women’ was thus not entirely a shot in the dark “we happened to be at the right place at the right time” she says, as there was a very active women’s movement internationally, regionally and nationally with women beginning to start feminist presses to make available the writing that was coming out of the movement, she explains.
Today the climate is politically different from those heady days when the feminist presses were boldly publishing writers tackling subjects that were taboo in society. These presses have been a victim of their own success, she says with the mainstream jumping in. “When that happens the movement is subordinated to the market. The fact that feminist presses grew out of a political consciousness and were informed by that consciousness has no interest to the mainstream. The mainstream believes in the status quo. We believe in changing the status quo.”
“Our work is to continually excavate. Continually push the boundaries, continually find new voices and to anticipate issues that become general and common knowledge ten years later. So you are always at the frontier.”
As an author too she has sought different frontiers. From her first book ‘Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition’ (co-authored with Kamla Basin), to her biography of Jawaharlal Nehru’s niece Nayantara Sahgal and her travel book ‘Loitering with Intent- Diary of a Happy Traveller’, they have all been different journeys. Currently working on another biography of a grand dame of Bollywood, the celebrated Indian actress and dancer Zohra Segal who passed away at the age of 102 in 2014 in between her many commitments, she says ruefully that it’s taking long.
For the Gratiaen Trust, this workshop was part of their continuing effort to actively help improve the creative pool of English writing in Sri Lanka, said Nisreen Jafferjee, one of the members of the Trust, pleased that participants had come away with many misconceptions dispelled and greater clarity about the editing process . Hopefully there will be more such initiatives. As one participant put it, “She (Ritu) opened the mind to endless possibilities and options.”