In late January, I hit a couple writing milestones. I published my first essay of 2024, an ode to the humble, analog labelmaker and its powers of redefinition in stellar pub DIRT (slip behind the paywall here). And I began to work through edits on my book manuscript from Beacon Press's great Catherine Tung.

One reason I'd chosen Beacon as my publisher was the expectation that I would actually get edited in a rigorous way—that my arguments and sentences would be challenged and refined via collaboration. Before undertaking this project, I think it's accurate to say I had done more professional editing, largely at Urban Omnibus, than writing. So, naturally, I hold editors in high esteem, and think every writer benefits from working with one. Prior to submitting my manuscript, I'd had a number of close friends and colleagues review it. Their comments and suggested changes had undoubtedly strengthened the draft, as did my repeated honing as I read each chapter aloud. Despite all my convictions about editing, though, I couldn't help but gasp when I opened that file I'd been awaiting.
 
The manuscript I'd labored over for months bled tracked changes. I tried reading through, only to be halted by my indignation that some overly subtle reference had been missed or sorrow that some clever construction (more often than not previously recommended for deletion by another reader) had been excised. It was a rough day, one full of my ego and my attempts to wrangle it. 

The next day, and the weeks that followed, were better. I'd settled down and could see the vision, could recognize myself and my arguments in even clearer form through the changes that Catherine suggested. My wife Haleemah sent me a tweet that I would go back to as a humorous reminder to heed my editor's assessments, and not to always explain why I had structured something the way it had previously been written: 

"Kill your darlings" is a standard piece of writing advice, originated by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, reiterated by Stephen King, and often attributed to William Faulkner. I take it to mean: cut those passages that you hang onto because you think them particularly well-written or have some other attachment to, even when they don't really serve the passage. In looking back through some of my darlings that have now met their end, I find many of them to be (a) extended metaphors that distract from the actual action or argument or (b) moments of playfulness I enjoyed while writing, knowing even then that they probably wouldn't stick. They served a purpose in the writing process, but no longer do in the book.

I still love these darlings. So I'd thought I'd honor one here before letting it go, a description of the Americanness of housing commodification:

I love minor league baseball games. My going-away party from New York took place in Coney Island as the Brooklyn Cyclones took on the Lowell Spinners. I'd wrangled enough friends that we all got hats and our names on the billboard during the 7th inning stretch. That stretch also included the scene above, and only after reminiscing about it over half a decade later in Nairobi did a friend clue me in to the pun inherent in a come-from-behind Ketchup win. 

The Ketchup parenthetical was stripped out of an early draft long before the rest of this sketch was too. To this snippet: good night sweet prince. Thanks for the good times in all those read-throughs, and may you live on down third-base lines the US over. 

The editing continues, and more darlings will necessarily fall. Another end—of the manuscript sent to the printer—is also in sight. Stay tuned for a publication date and the final title in future editions. And for those of you who read my last newsletter on printmaking, you can now find my aforementioned print response to Mariame Kaba's We Do This 'Til We Free Us on Reading Work.