Editing Raymond Carver

"My friend Herb McGinnis, a cardiologist, was talking."

That was the opening line of the short story "Beginners" that Raymond Carver submitted to his editor, Gordon Lish, in 1980. If it seems familiar but not quite right, that's because when it was published in 1981 under the title, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," the text read like this:

"My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right."

Recently The New Yorker published Carver's original version next to a piece on Carver's professional relationship with Lish. (You can compare the two versions here).

I found this fascinating. As a big Carver fan, as well as someone who is interested in the writing process, I was captivated by this look into the Carver-Lish relationship. When reading a novel, or watching a movie, or listening to a song, we too often never think to ask, "What did the first draft look like?" This gave us the answer.

Carver's widow, the poet Tess Gallagher, is hoping to republish a selection of Carver's work in its original, pre-edited form. I am less enthusiastic about this.

It's one thing to examine a draft in the context of a story on the editor-writer relationship, or for scholars to attempt to glean insight into an author's thought process. It's another thing to publish a selection of someone's first drafts after his death.

Lish was known to cut 30%-40% of Carver's drafts, contributing to the author's stripped-down style. For example, in "Beginners," Lish cut Carver's last page and a half and replaced it with a single paragraph:

"I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark."

The first draft is just that: a first attempt. Few (if any) authors, journalists, or songwriters can whip out a masterpiece on the first try. The first draft often isn't very good at all. (The first draft of this blog entry was unreadable.) The real action takes place in the work-shopping, the rewriting of that original draft. That's where a piece of writing comes together.

People often think of the writer-editor relationship in black and white: the writer writes and the editor edits. But that's not the way it works. The writer edits too. The editor writes. It's a constant give-and-take, a thoughtful exchange between two people aiming for a common goal: better writing.

All of this is part of the process, and the author writes the first draft with that process in mind. He or she is not writing for publication, but rather as a starting point that will hopefully lead to something worth reading.

I hope no one finds the first draft of this blog entry and publishes it after I'm dead.