Dave Eggers

wayward catholic priest and the next one is a sci-fi octopus mystery you know like if they're gonna give you a long leash which i think is the the way of things in publishing it's a very lucky business because there just was never going to be anyone that tells you what to do or how to do it yeah they might say no but for the most part that no one has any of that sort of nudgy input there's no managers there's nobody in between you and whatever you do

Well, I had a book called The Eyes and the Impossible, which is an all ages book a couple of years ago.

And it was with an editor named Taylor Norman, who I'd known before.

But there's a certain point where they recognize something in it.

You know this as a producer.

You're seeing, hearing something.

And if that artist, or in my case, starts to doubt it,

you have to be like, no, do not touch this.

Don't touch it.

And my wife is a novelist and we both reach a point with each other's books where we have to tell them like, don't touch the keyboard.

You will mess this up.

And Taylor was that kind of editor where she saw what I was trying to do

made everything that i was trying to do better and then she also saved me from some mistakes i took taking out this whole one thread it's like taking out like the one song that wasn't working as messing up the song cycle she took out this thread and made it better it cut 15 pages or so from the book at a certain point i stopped

rereading it myself, and I just completely gave myself over to her vision of it.

It was pretty far along.

And then that person, even after it's published, that person is still your champion.

You know Jamie Bing, he's my publisher now in the UK, and he's that platonic ideal of the publisher that's more excited than you are about whatever you've written.

And so he takes that baton, you're finished.

He takes it and starts telling the world about it.

And that's a really lucky place to be where you have an affirmation from that person that you're done, that it's right, that it's good.