The news came through as personal news often does, via social media.
Chuck Adams had passed, succumbing to pulmonary fibrosis after a remarkable life. Chuck was an editor, or as my Texan Episcopal gentlewoman agent would put it, "a REAL editor."
I had the pleasure of getting to know Chuck during the process of his acquiring and editing my first novel, or...to be fair...the first novel I'd ever had agented. She'd called him to bend his ear about a few things, among which was trying to figure out what to do with my manuscript. Postapocalyptic Amish fiction isn't exactly the most well-trodden genre, and she wondered if he might point her in the right direction.
He volunteered to take a look at it, which was generous of him. And then, to our great surprise, he said he liked it enough to potentially acquire it. There were committees to go through, of course, because as a Presbyterian there always are, but the next thing I knew, WHEN THE ENGLISH FALL had a publisher. And more importantly, "a real editor," which isn't always something utterly unknown writers have the privilege of experiencing.
When I tell folks about how the editing process went, I usually say that Chuck changed nothing but the beginning, the middle, and the end. This gets a laugh, but it's entirely true.
Chuck's first suggestion was that my opening was too slow. "It's a quiet, meditative novel, and that's its beauty," he told me. "But you need to draw people in. There needs to be a sense of tension, something to show the reader what's coming. Give them a hook." He didn't say what that was, but that direction meant that I shifted some sections around, and all of a sudden, the whole thing was better. All the words were mine, but it was tighter, the plain and deliberate pace woven through with more tension.
The middle? Well, there were things that needed to be refined and focused. Errors of continuity and logic. Those things. He found them, and pointed them out, and helped steer me to fixing them.
The end? It was too short. Barely longer than a novella, when he read the first version. I'd loved the ambiguity of the original ending, but...well...that darling needed to be killed, so to speak. I flailed about in a bog of anxious overwriting for a bit, but he kept gently pushing, redirecting and encouraging. When I finally found something that worked, he told me so.
In every way, the final book was better for his guidance.
It would have been lovely to work with him again, and while he brought a few of my manuscripts before the editorial committee, it was not to be. There are only so many quirky sci-fi manuscripts you can sneak through a literary house, after all.
In life, there are souls who offer up their insights with grace and clarity, who challenge us to be more than we are, and who draw out the best in us. Chuck was just such a person.
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