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4.
AOTW: Once you realized you needed to rewrite your book, how long did it take you to make the changes?
Jennifer Blake: It was the best part of a month before I could work at all, then another month to revise the first ten chapters. Though the book was seriously behind schedule by that time, I went to a twelve-to-fifteen hour work day, seven days a week, and completed it just two weeks past deadline. The manuscript was rough, however, and much work was done later on both the edited computer printout and galley pages.
Jim Fusilli: I'd say it took me about a month, maybe six weeks. The writing is always the quickest part of the process for me. Planning, plotting and research are what takes time, particularly research in the form of reportage. In this case, for me it was obvious what I had to do if I wanted to have a thoroughly believable series that puts the reader in New York City with a small circle of people, almost all of whom live within a half-mile of the World Trade Center --- I had to report on what I felt and saw, and make the writing visceral and alive, and to be empathetic so the reader could feel what the characters feel. And I had to do this without detracting from the crime and mystery components of the book.
Philip Jolowicz: The amendments took one week of solid work to implement. It wasn't simply a question of changing names of buildings and streets, entire scenes had to be rewritten and I found that the behavior of characters changed in all kinds of subtle ways I hadn't expected just because I placed them in different (though not radically different) physical surroundings.
Bruce Feiler: In some ways I was starting from scratch on Abraham, but on the other hand I had spent most of the previous four years traveling in the Middle East, reading biblical stories, and talking to Jews, Christians, and Muslims about their faith. As a result, the changes I had to make were mostly emotional and intellectual --- trying to figure out what questions I wanted to ask and what feelings I wanted to explore. Most of the logistical questions I had a head start on.
Lori Woolridge: It took me a little over six months to rewrite. And of course, the publishing date has been pushed back. Hitts and Mrs. will now be released in 2004 by Avon Books.
Earl Merkel: For me, rewriting is the easiest part of writing; I already know my story, so I'm no longer staring at a blank computer screen until my eyeballs bleed.
For Final Epidemic, once my editor at Penguin Putnam passed me the word that we were back on the pub schedule, all the changes took less than a week to complete.
It was a full week, of course; I seem to recall seeing a lot of sunsets and sunrises, and drinking a helluva lot of coffee. I'm pretty sure my wife left me sometime during that week --- but I guess she changed her mind, because she was there when I staggered out of my office with the revised manuscript in both hands.
William Carman: It took about a month.
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