It’s inevitable: when editing a longer work like a novel, there comes a point when I have great ideas about edits and additions, but I don’t know if they’d make the story stronger and answer the unanswered questions, or lengthen, complicate, and demystify the story. And I’m using “demystify” in a negative sense, here. You do want to demystify Italian wine labels, just not, always, a ghost story.

But you also don’t want to confuse readers, or leave too many dangling storylines that are never resolved. 

When I’m writing, the most compelling parts of my stories are those which I don’t fully understand. Mostly, I tie these up in the plot or characters by the end, but sometimes, some of them remain undefined. The trick is knowing how much and what, if anything, should remain unknowable and unexplained, and therein lay my editor’s block as I read through my book.

Read the rest of this post on my Substack newsletter: Follow that story.