Author as editor: Ann Patchett revisits her own novel
By going back to a novel written more than 20 years earlier and annotating it by hand with what she liked and what she would now change, author Ann Patchett offers a fascinating insight into the creative writing process.
In February 2025, Patchett was interviewed by Alan Alda on his Clear and Vivid podcast where she explained the genesis of the exercise. Having been asked to annotate a single copy of her most recent book as a fundraiser for an independent bookstore, Patchett wondered what it would be like to go back to her most successful novel, Bel Canto, with the distance of 2 decades.
The result is a new version of the book with the author’s handwritten notes throughout the text explaining some of the thinking behind plot points and editorial decisions, things she likes about the book along with errors and things she would have done differently.
Even for an author as skilled and successful as Patchett, there’s no shortage of self-criticism. When asked by Alda to identify what she hated the most about her original writing, Patchett tells him it was the amount of repetition:
If something could be clearly said once, I said it 3 times. There’s a way in which it feels like not trusting the reader to get what you are talking about.
Perhaps most interestingly, Patchett has not released a new version of Bel Canto as she would write it now, but instead she offers up her annotations as a new way to engage with the book. In doing so, she is providing a masterclass on the writing process. ‘I’m not correcting the mistakes,’ she explains, ‘I’m highlighting them’.
For me, the most valuable lesson was when Patchett revealed her own anxieties with an observation that should serve as a mantra for every would-be writer (and editor):
I had been thinking for years that I was fiddling too much with my sentences, that I was being too precious, but then when I went back to read Bel Canto I thought no, that’s what you’ve got to do, you’ve got to keep fiddling things until you get it right.
Even an award-winning novelist can go back to the manuscript of her best-known work and see things she would do differently if she had her time again. As a writer and an editor, I appreciate this reminder of the importance of editing to the writing process.
