Lovers and Strangers RevisitedAnother Revision, Another Look

Youre revising it? I thought you just send them the book? a fellow American writer in Borneo replied, when I mentioned that Ill be busy the next two weeks revising all the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited. I had just told him that it was confirmed that ditions GOPE will be translating the collection of Malaysian-set stories into French.

Yeah, you could do that, I couldve replied, but instead, I told him that I saw this as an opportunity to improve the stories for future markets. I want the best French translation out there and the best English version, too. Now that Im getting the book into Europe, other readers might recommend it to other publishers in other countries, especially those with an interest in Southeast Asia, and they might be interested into translating, too.

Plus there are plenty of English speaking countries, including the US, UK, and Australia, where the collection is not yet published, and I do hope to get this collection into those markets. As I writer, I believe in giving myself a helping hand (even playing salesman). If I can improve the stories by tweaking them some more, shouldnt I do that?

I remember several people took offense in the comments when Sharon Bakar blogged about the Booktalk that I gave at MPH in 2008 when the new MPH edition came out and related that I had been revising the stories! < span lang="EN-US"> all along since Lovers and Strangers (Heinemann 1993) first came out to improve them in order to get them published overseas; then I ripped them apart for Lovers and Strangers Revisited (Silverfish 2005), and revised them again for MPH, and this was even before their editors offered their own input. One Australian published author said she would never do that with her collection, but then she added that she sort of wished she had because she knows she couldve improved them.

For me, that first version back in 1993 was the best versionat the time. But I grew as a writer, and after I began teaching creating writing and grammar and revising all of my students work I became a better writer. Now it was merely a matter of applying what I was teaching, and being honest with myself. Is that the best you can do? Cant you rephrase that better? Do you really need that clich! That expression is rather trite or that metaphor doesnt seem to be working. Can you fix it? How about that beginning or ending, can you make it more effective? Do you really need all that back story? Can you trim it?

For this latest revision process, I asked myself similar questions. The more questions you ask yourself, the more answers you find. In Home for Hari Raya, I found myself changing the name Ida to Rina; it just didnt feel right for a university student, and in Transaction in Thai, even though the story wont be in the French version since it wasnt set in Malaysia, The French editor mentioned that the name Jek was derogatory, so after finding a website that lists Thai baby names, I came up with Daw.

I also changed The Watcher from past tense to present tense as I had done a few other stories in previous revisions. I changed the ending to Smooth Stones after getting a lot of close calls on the story in! the US. They always cited the ending.

For each story I went on a dash hunt, cutting two-thirds, a passive hunt, converting most into active, and cut out what can easily be implied.

Now I feel satisfied, and the revised versions may even do better as I sell them as individual stories to literary journals and on-line magazines. More importantly, I feel more confident about the collection as I pitch them to agents and publishers. The stories are good, and theyve come a long way since 1993 when they first got compiled into a published collection, but this is far from the end of their journey. In fact, I have a rather strong feeling, as they finally break out of the Malaysia/Singapore market, that this is merely the beginning