Office Hours - Story Club with George Saunders

My question, (like so many before it) is about editing. You talk about rereading your pieces with a Positive/Negative meter and making micro decisions until the piece has been beaten into the shape it needs to take. But how do you stack these decisions together? Essentially, I struggle with bridging the gap between line editing and structural editing. If I'm rereading my story with my P/N meter, I can only get a fraction of the way through a story, even a very short story, before I have to call it quits for the day. And then the next day, I situate myself by rereading the previous day's section, which means I have more limited time to P/N my way through a slightly smaller fraction, the next day an even smaller fraction, etc. So how do you P/N through a 5000-7500 word story, focusing line by line, without losing sight of the larger piece? Thank you so much, and if the real, impolite answer is that some people simply have more word processing power than others, I'll accept it with grace.

My question, (like so many before it) is about editing. You talk about rereading your pieces with a Positive/Negative meter and making micro decisions until the piece has been beaten into the shape it needs to take. But how do you stack these decisions together? Essentially, I struggle with bridging the gap between line editing and structural editing. If I'm rereading my story with my P/N meter, I can only get a fraction of the way through a story, even a very short story, before I have to call it quits for the day. And then the next day, I situate myself by rereading the previous day's sectio