JR: Hi Mary. You always seem friendly and sociable so I’m curious what exactly is an urban hermit??

MR: It’s a person who feels called to a life of silence, seclusion and stillness as a way of being able to pray for the world. So it’s puzzling to people because they think hermits become un-social because they don’t like people. And probably many do.

But a person who is a hermit within a religious tradition, whether Buddhist or Christian, it’s the way that person lives the life they feel called to live at the highest level. Highest meaning the level that they are most suited for and have always been designed for.

Urban hermit means you do it in a city. The early hermits in the Christian tradition left the city and went into deserts and desert caves. And many hermits do that now. But there are also urban hermits throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and throughout the world. We have urban hermits in other faith traditions You can find them in a simple Google search, videos on Youtube etc.

The bigger thing is in most world religions, certainly in Christianity, which I most familiar with, everything that is super important always ends up being formulated as a paradox.

There are attempts to define something that is kind of beyond our horizon. So one faction stresses part of it.  Another faction another part.  And then everyone realizes both aspects are true at the same time.  And the result, in the particular faith tradition, is we affirm both parts.  We affirm the paradox.

This paradox is deeply authentic to those who are called to it.

JR: When you accept editing jobs I know you block out a certain amount of time, but I don’t really know what your process is. I mean do you start editing at the first page or do you read the whole thing first? Could you explain the process?

MR: I’m happy to. When I get a manuscript, I flip through it because that’s how I read books. So I just look around in it maybe for a half an hour. When I have the time to begin seriously editing I read it from beginning to end because that’s how most readers read books. I never read books that way, but I’m trying to be a service to the author who will be trying to interest normal people!

I mark things on the page with a black pen. These are large issues like developmental things: Is this a believable character? Is this dialogue working? But it’s also kind of microscopic.  Like, You’re using the word banana five times by page 14. I notice and consider it is likely meaningful at some level and not just an accident.

So I do both developmental and line/ copy editing at the same time.  This is because it’s how my mind works.

It would be way harder for me to do just developmental or just line.  Because the language of a manuscript is crucial.  Line edit is like the clothing on a person.  And developmental is the person.  Clothing matters. It is chosen. It speaks about the  person. It’s why no 2 people, by nature, dress identically. And I do what I call a “Combined Edit” from beginning to end.

I’m taking notes in a notebook and writing on the pages. I write on the back of the pages when I have longer suggestions. Then I read it a second time and I do markings in green ink. Sometimes I cross out an earlier black ink comment but mostly it’s new thoughts now that I’ve read the whole story.

The third step is the most important and the reason I take a month with a manuscript. I put the manuscript away. I don’t look at the pages anymore. I’m thinking about it all the time. I’m thinking about it when I’m at church, when I’m at the grocery store, when I’m working out. It’s just in my memory and I notice how it resides in my memory.  This becomes a profound distillation.

Those comments and insights are the most valuable thing I offer to my client. The comments come from watching how the story distills itself in memory.

What I’m trying to do is, primarily, to deeply listen to the client.

I firmly believe that each person on the planet is entirely unique in how they perceive reality. Three people looking at water in the bay are receiving the data in  very distinct ways. So I want writers to notice what they notice. Then at the additional level, people organize their perception in very distinct ways.

So we have to notice what we notice and notice how we organize what we notice. And that’s the book we need to write.

The reason the time away from the manuscript is so powerful is that I come to get a grasp of the uniqueness of this writer’s way of being in the world.  How he or she or they create meaning inside themselves.  And then how much this profoundly individual activity is brought out onto the page.  That’s the goal.

I firmly believe the way to write a good book isn’t to follow all the rules. You can make a book that way.  Anyone can make a book that way.  And you can publish that book by this weekend.  But all you’re doing is making more stuff.

Our world does not need more stuff. But the worlds desperately needs art.  And the only way art can be produced, whether in choreography, composing, architecture or even mathematics, is to pay attention to what we notice and how we organize what we notice and to faithfully put that outside ourselves in some form.

For writers, to write the story only they can write.  To have the courage to do this.  The courage to give to the world the story that will never, ever exist on planet Earth unless they write it.  That’s the job. That’s the goal.

JR: So Mary, what do you like best about working on a manuscript?

MR: I like best by far when a client sends me a card or an email and they’re crying because we’ve hit the gold mine. I’ve helped them see the story that they’ve been carrying in most cases for a very long time. The story that maybe they were afraid to write. The story that the world really needs to hear.

And this happens very frequently with me. That’s why my practice is built primarily by word-of-mouth. I don’t do social media. I’m a hermit. I do work at a conference once a year but most of my clients are from word-of-mouth or returning to work on a second or third book.

I would feel zero satisfaction if I just helped someone write by the rules, get a book together, publish it themselves and sell 1 million copies. I just don’t care about that.

But I feel great satisfaction when I’ve helped someone make art.

JR: What do you like least about editing a manuscript? I’ve never thought about that. Let me have a moment?

Okay… so it can be that the writer has worked very hard and very responsibly and has turned in a very organized manuscript but it only comes alive in one paragraph on page 182. And that paragraph jumps out and calls attention to itself in a way that’s singular and huge. And I have to tell the writer that that’s where they have to begin. And I don’t know how they’re going to respond.

I was told in the writing THE MEMORY ROOM the first 50 pages needed to just be cut. I was attached to those 50 pages and I had them printed out and I never threw them away. I put them in a box. But I also don’t even remember what they were about. And I wrote a beautiful novel because I had this group of 10 writers in Los Angeles who were so deeply committed to each other‘s work that we never held back our honest feelings.

For that reason, we all went onto publish and to get literary awards, fellowships, residencies and things like that. So it’s uncomfortable when you’re giving critique sometimes. But it’s a deeper form of love. So we do it.

Perhaps I can say one last thing.

When I edit it, it is always a collaboration in this sense that I’m trying to listen deeply for the story that the client is carrying inside. I give a lot of suggestions big and small. And the client’s job is then to pay attention to their reaction to my suggestions. Each suggestion.

Because their own reaction will tell them if they should use my suggestion or not. Because if their reaction is one of “O, Mary’s right. I should do this. I’ve heard that novels should be like that,” etc., that feeling of “should” then my suggestion should be totally ignored.

Ignored because if I have listened deeply enough, if the suggestion touches the story that is carried by the client, then there is a deep and immediate sense of joy. Like, “Right!  That is sooo perfect!” It’s a feeling of delight.

This is the collaboration.  For me to honor the client’s reaction as greater than my own intention.  Because the writer is the one carrying the story. The writer knows the joy of recognition. It is a collaboration that, to me, is not only necessary, but in some hidden and real way, is also very noble.