While this is not a problem I've yet had to tackle (but oh I hope to face it in the coming years!), many of you recently-published authors have been very honest about the shock that inevitably comes when you see your work in galley form for the first time. As I dipped back in to The Paris Review Interviews, Volume II last night (after finishing Farewell, Shangai...more on that later), I discovered Eudora Welty's thoughts on the subject and was delighted that her description was so spot-on with what you've all said. Of course, she adds her Welty charm that made me laugh out loud:
A: It's [writing] so much an inward thing that reading the proofs later can be a real shock. When I received them for my first book--no, I guess it was for Delta Wedding-- I thought, I didn't write this. It was a page of dialogue--I might as well have never seen it before. I wrote to my editor, John Woodburn, and told him something had happend to that page in the typesetting. He was kind, not even surprised--maybe this happens to all writers. He called me up and read me from the manuscript, word for word what the proofs said. Proofs don't shock me any longer, yet there's still a strange moment with every book when I move from the position of writer to the position of reader, and I suddenly see my words with the eyes of the cold public. It gives me a terrible sense of exposure, as if I'd gotten sunburned.
Q: Do you make changes in the galleys?
A: I correct or change words, but I can't rewrite a scene or make a major change because there's a sense then of someone looking over my shoulder. It's necessary, anyway, to trust that moment when you were sure you had done all you could, done your best for that time. When it's finally in print, you're delivered--you don't ever have to look at it again. It's too late to worry about its failings. I'll have to apply any lessons this book has taught me toward writing the next one.
