Okay, I Finally Get It

I don't usually learn the hard way. But the tenacity needed by a writer these days seems to have dulled my previously incisive perception. Or it's simply true that even an editor needs an editor...

As partially chronicled here, although I hit a sweet spot after a year of writing, I had a terrible time figuring out how to start Seven Noble Knights in a way that would draw readers in and do justice to the rest of the story. The version I debuted at the Muse conference session was already the fourth or fifth complete rewrite, so along with the shock, I felt disappointed I wasn't a little closer to right after all that thinking and rethinking and redoing.

Here are the latest facts: I sent the best query letter I could come up with to 144 literary agents. I never dreamed I'd find that many in the first place, much less tap all of them! A few have yet to get back to me, but my record for agents requesting to see the full manuscript stands at a fraction of a percent. I felt a tad like the man with the raised arms in the picture above: those are the heads of his sons being presented to him. (It's an illustration from a nineteenth-century Spanish pulp version of the Seven Noble Knights story: more on that later.)

The most gut-wrenching experience involved my sending a chapter from Part II as a sample. The agent enthusiastically requested to see the entire manuscript. A disturbing silence followed, to be capped off by a severe disappointment when she declined to move forward.

I thought I might have better luck with publishers who accept submissions directly from authors, and while tweaking the query letter for suitability to this new audience, I had something of an epiphany: my synopsis starts at the wedding, my trailer starts at the wedding, the medieval sources I drew from start at the wedding. The only thing that does not start at the wedding is, in fact, Seven Noble Knights, the novel itself.

The problems with the beginning of what is, after all, my first novel, run much deeper than I could have imagined.

How had I gone so far wrong? Why did it take me so long to see it? Shouldn't I have realized something was awry when the agent loved the chapter from Part II and rejected Part I, even knowing that Part II was coming?

Simultaneously with this reeling, I began to forge a new plan. I consulted with Kim Rendfeld, author of two excellent historical novels, refined the plan, and am now following it.

I'm deleting Chapters 2 and 3 and rewriting the important material from young Gonzalo's point of view. This should pick the pace up significantly and reduce confusion as to who the reader is supposed to root for. It will also provide opportunities to develop male egos and make for a convincing Chapter 4, the bloody wedding.

Chapter 4 will become Chapter 3 and will be quite a bit jazzier after the new Chapter 2, but also in its own right with planned additional emotional resonance.

Chapter 5, currently from the point of view of Doña Lambra, will be cut down and redrawn from the point of view of Justa, the long-suffering servant. Chapter 6 will be rewritten. It may be from Gonzalo's point of view to increase reader sympathy, or I may decide to integrate it into Chapter 5 (now Chapter 4) and keep it from Justa's perspective.

Extreme changes will take place in one third of all the chapters in Part I.

Since I'm juggling two other writing projects, taking a class for six weeks, working ongoing editing/publishing projects, and working a full time job, these changes may take a while. Submissions are on hold so I can present the first part of the novel knowing it's the best thing since the printing press. Please bear with me.

In the meantime, that Spanish pulp novel is sure to make another appearance!

Literary Idol Gets Medieval

This is an accurate depiction of what happened to Seven Noble Knights
at Literary Idol. Skewered. (Art by Ayal Pinkus)

As I've described on my author blog, in May I attended The Muse & the Marketplace conference in Boston, and learned a whole heck of a lot at a session called Literary Idol.

In that session, three literary agents and one editor from a highly regarded literary press acted as the judges. Steve Almond, author, “randomly” selected first pages of books to read aloud to the audience and judges. Imagining that the samples were part of a query, whenever the judges heard something that would make them stop reading, they raised their hand. If two hands went up, Steve stopped reading and the hand-raisers explained where the piece went wrong for them.

Literary Idol involved a little forethought: I had to format and print out the first page of Seven Noble Knights. I’d signed up for this session because it seemed like an unparalleled opportunity to finally learn what might be behind all those 100+ agent rejections and non-responses. As the day drew near, of course, I wondered if I was going to be able to handle the abject terror such judgment might cause to well up in anyone.

Because so many writers attended the session, there was no guarantee that my sample of Seven Noble Knights would be read. But it was. I knew it was coming when Steve announced the genre: historical fiction. Although I maintained my outward cool, my heart began to pound so loudly, I was sure someone would notice and take me straight to Mass General.

Spoiler alert: my sample caused two agents to raise their hands. This is how long Steve Almond read before they did so:

Gonzalo González peered between the wild grasses where once had grown someone’s grain. The stone walls of Zamora began to show their golden color while the stars faded overhead. As many as three hundred Moorish invaders had set up their tents and built wooden war machines daringly close to the main gate, which remained barricaded.

That's it. Three sentences. I didn't even make it to the second paragraph. I don't recall whether any other samples got objections that quickly, so, hmm, I was the best at something! 

The agents who raised their hands used words like "boring," "overwhelming," and "stilted." Ouch! I continued to scribble my notes as if I weren't dying inside. My brain has mercifully forgotten most of the attempts made at a running joke using the phrase "grains and gates." The overall lesson was that it was a mistake to put the historical detail before character development. "Tell the small story first," Steve Almond, master of pithy writing advice, said.

Okay, I get that. Now. 

Here I am in an impotent rage. (It's really Doña Lambra from
  Seven Noble Knights. Art by Ayal Pinkus.) 

In the panic that lasted for weeks after the session, I rationalized: neither of the agents who raised their hands reads historical fiction, so what can they know about it? The details I put in the first paragraph weren't part of some bigger story, they were directly affecting the character right now. I thought there was no way the idea of three hundred soldiers with their war machines could fail to strike terror into the hearts of readers, the kind of terror that makes them keep reading. I couldn't tell how else in the world I could develop the character and start the story in medias res without explaining exactly where he was and what he was up against. Informational equity, remember? I'd had this beginning approved by my writers group; a historical fiction author and amazing editor; and none other than Kristen Lamb, a disciple of Les Edgerton, among her other amazing credentials. 

The rationalization gave way to that other writerly extreme, the belief that I could never tell a story anyone would want to read and I should quit trying. Normally I consider myself more stable than such mood swings. The range of emotions is a sign that I care about Seven Noble Knights, my most promising baby.

My deep conviction that this story is worth telling won out. It's full of awesome characters and moments. What I most need to do is get the reader on board so they make it to all those good parts. All the artistry in the world is useless unless someone can enjoy it. 

So I asked that historical novelist/editor and got some awesome feedback: get the characters talking. I would have thought of it myself if it hadn't been my own writing I was trying to edit. So I moved the parts around and got more dialog in the beginning, and along the way, I challenged myself to get a lot more information across by showing instead of telling. I shared the results with my writers group as well as the author/editor. 

The writers group folks were practically fresh readers because it had been so long since they'd seen any version of the book at all. One particularly astute writer reported that the situation was confusing. Zounds! I had edited too much! The clarity was gone.

I went to work again, doing my darnedest to fit all the necessary facts in with some kind of flair, agonizing over word choice, and mending all the holes I could find (with further help from my beta readers).

Here is the latest rendition of the beginning of Seven Noble Knights:

Gonzalo González peered between the wild grasses where once had grown someone’s grain. He had lain in the dampness for so long that his boiled leather back plate and metal mail were beginning to weigh him down. He measured each fingerwidth of sunlight that revealed the golden stone walls of Zamora before him while the stars faded overhead. He had long since lost his sense of amazement at the Moors’ audacity. Three hundred of them had set up their wooden war machines before the city’s main gate, which remained barricaded.

He turned his face to see his uncle through the dewy stalks and whispered. “Why can’t we charge the Moors now, while they’re still asleep in their tents?”

Whatcha think? Would you keep reading? Please let me know.

Snip, Snip

I was seriously considering entering Seven Noble Knights in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. When I first heard about the award, I regretted not having a novel to submit. Last year, Seven Noble Knights was too freshly finished. No way was it ready for submission of any kind, much less a brutal contest.

The thing was, the Amazon contest caps the allowable word count at 125,000. What kind of random number is that? Seven Noble Knights, after the significant cuts I made over the last several months, sat at 129,000.

Maybe 4000 words isn't so much in an epic novel, I thought, and started by looking for the silly things writers do. First plan for excision: most adverbs. If you modify a verb, it's often just the wrong verb to begin with! So I dove in.

It took four days of gruesome, shrieking effort.

But now at least half the adverbs I had are gone. It had to have strengthened the writing. It also got rid of one thousand words.

Three thousand words short.

So I looked at the official rules again, just to make sure, and yes, they're firm on 125,000.

What other silly rules were there? The dealbreaker for me was that if you win the prize, you can't negotiate the contract. You just have to sign over whatever rights they want for themselves. Pretty suspicious. If, on the other hand, you don't win, they may offer you a contract and you can negotiate. It just felt weird to enter a contest in which I would hope I didn't win. So after all this time thinking of the Amazon award as a possible goal or learning experience, I won't be doing it.

I'm glad those thousand words have been removed. It gave me a chance to finesse some sentences and to revisit the entire novel, seeing more clearly what its strengths are.

The picture celebrates that cutting as well as my first civilized haircut. When I first got to North Carolina, I got a haircut, and was unhappy with my hair ever after. So I was determined to have a New England haircut that solved some of the problems or at least got rid of some layers, as soon as possible. It looks similar to my profile photo again, so I think I've found the haircut I belong to as well as the place. Now I just need to find the right home for Seven Noble Knights!

The Cutting Room Floor

Doña Lambra wonders why I cut her intro chapter.

It's been a month of additional words (I'm doing NaNoWriMo on another project) and subtracting of words. Below, an excerpt from Seven Noble Knights which is truly an excerpt in the sense of "taken out of." I've been looking critically at the beginning of the novel (again!) and decided I needed to pick up the pace to match the breakneck speed of the rest of the book. The entirety of the chapter I first wrote is now gone and pasted below for your reading pleasure.

I always called it Chapter II because I knew the first chapter had to be much more exciting. Because it's the first piece of historical fiction I ever wrote, it has a hesitancy about it. You can almost feel me reaching out my senses and trying to describe what I thought it was like to live in Northern Spain in the year 974. It contains a lot of context and sympathizes deeply with Doña Lambra, which caused problems in my critique group later when her true nature was revealed. When I finished the first draft of the novel, I excised the first half, with the silk vendor, and eventually the second half became attached to the latest version of Chapter I. Now, the battle in the first chapter cuts directly to the wedding preparations in the former Chapter III.

Anyway, I've done my duty and killed my darling and now I lay its body out for you to view. RIP, Chapter II. (To cheer yourself up, you can watch the trailer!)

Chapter II

…una duenna de muy grand guisa, et era natural de Burueva, et prima cormana del conde Garçi Fernández, et dizienle donna Llambla. (I put an excerpt from the Estoria de Espanna, thirteenth-century text at the head of each chapter in the first draft. This introduces Lambra, just like the chapter does in more detail.)

The sun began to relent from its long day’s punishment of the estate of Busto de Bureba. The fish in the river sought out the barely forming shadows cast by stones and branches. Inside a stone house, under a thatched roof, twenty maidservants and their lady cleaned up the dinner table, planned a cool evening meal, brought in the washing, and put away the day’s sewing without bumping into each other.

Doña Lambra looked out the open door when she heard a tinkling of bells on the road.

“Good evening, my lady!” cried the peddler, halting his donkey in the middle of the road directly in front of her house.

“What are you selling there?” Doña Lambra wiped her brow, lifted her apron, and headed toward the packs on the donkey’s back.

“I’m not really selling anything yet. I’m on my way to France, where I can get the best price for these Moorish silks and finery. But I might bring myself to part with something for the sake of one so obviously noble.”

Lambra stood a little straighter and felt the heavy wool dress scratch her shoulders through the wicked moisture. She tossed her head and her flaxen braids leapt up before they reached her waist again. “Well, I won’t buy anything before I see it.”

“Of course not, lady.”

He reached high and opened the nearest bag’s latch. The lid popped open with the force of the tightly packed fabrics inside. “This one on top is probably the best I have.” He pulled on a corner of the silk and Lambra quickly appraised its luster and smoothness.

“Green?” she said.

“Don’t turn up your nose at it, my lady. It’s the most popular color in the very caliph’s harem in Córdoba. It’s sure to become the highest fashion, especially if other ladies see you wearing it.”

“Sell it to the French ladies. I’ll have no pagan colors.”

The peddler tugged at a corner of the bolt underneath the green and a mass of azure slid into view with a swooshing sound. He came rather closer than Lambra would have liked and held it under her chin. “Just as I thought! A perfect match for your eyes! Or even the Mediterranean Sea.”

“My eyes aren’t blue,” she said, backing away.

“They certainly are! I must have a looking glass in here somewhere.” He rummaged through three different packs. The donkey flicked his tail and made the bells jingle. Doña Lambra tried to imagine the peddler all alone leading his donkey, loaded high with goods, through the rocky terrain toward France.

“Are you going through the Roncesvalles Pass unaccompanied and with bells?”

“Just my donkey and me,” he replied. “And the bells.”

“You should really pack the bells away before you get into the Basque country. You have no reason to announce your presence among those savages.”

He held a piece of polished metal between his thumb and forefinger up to Lambra’s eyes for her to see. “I’ve traveled through the Pyrenees many times. Don’t you think that blue silk favors you?”

“Now, how could I possibly tell whether the fabric favors me in such a tiny glass?” she said, taking the glass from him. “I can’t see myself and the silk at the same time!”

He considered the fabric, eyed the pack it had come from, and in a great sweeping motion, pulled his dinner knife from his belt and slashed off a square of the silk. He handed it to Lambra and folded the rest of the bolt away, saying, “You see? A perfect match. You could embroider that swatch with your golden hairs and no one would know it wasn’t straight from a treasure chest.”

She held the fabric under her eye and glimpsed two blue shapes in the glass. Maybe it was just the sky. She looked up, and the peddler had already fastened all the packs. “A gift from one so humble to one so haughty,” he said.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, handing back the looking glass.

He stuffed it into a pocket and tugged at the donkey’s bridle.

Doña Lambra turned back toward the door, where she noticed five faces of her maids disperse like a puff of smoke. She sat on the stone bench under the eaves of her house and watched the peddler jingle his slow way toward the mountains. She was glad he hadn’t pressured her to buy, because she had nothing to give in trade for silks. She had administered all her own land since her father had passed away five years earlier, so she knew that maintaining so much land and so many people often meant sacrifice and frugality before fashion. She picked up the end of her braid and set it against the fabric. Yes, her hair almost could pass for gold thread. Maybe she could have one of the girls embroider stars and moons on the fabric and set it into a bodice. Everyone at mass would think she was wearing the latest plunder from Andalusia, perhaps a gift from another admiring knight.

Her maids’ voices floated out the doorway on some farmer’s melody. Always gossiping, joking, and laughing when they thought she couldn’t hear. Well, she’d make them work hard enough tomorrow.

An eagle shrieked across the sky in search of prey. Lambra looked down the road to the west. What could that be? This road was becoming a regular thoroughfare. Two knights in chainmail headed up a twenty-man retinue, all on horseback. As they neared the house, one of the two front men lifted up the standard, a castle on a white field.

Doña Lambra tucked the blue square into her neckline, gathered up her skirts, and ran through her front door shouting. “My cousin’s here! He’s got twenty knights with him! What were we having for supper? How much wine is there?”

All the ladies dropped what they were doing and scurried to their preassigned tasks for just such an occasion: cutting more old bread for plates, clearing out the sides of the hall for sleeping space. Only Justa, who had been born into the household at nearly the same time as doña Lambra, followed alongside her lady as she charged through the great room to the kitchen at the far end.

“You told us to just make a salad: cucumbers, radishes, garlic, some nuts, maybe some quince jelly.”

“No garlic!” Lambra didn’t acknowledge Justa, whose words were merely an embodiment of her own thoughts. “No garlic!” She seized the cloves from the table where the cook was about to chop them and threw them on the floor, where a couple of puppies began to roll them around the packed earth and straw. “No garlic for the Count of Castile! Isn’t there any pepper left at all? Why didn’t he send ahead so we could get some quail or slaughter some hens? Justa! Send the boys for rabbits!” Justa ducked out the side door. “What about the pepper?”

The cook replied, “There’s about a spoonful left, my lady.”

“Stew the rabbits in the vinegar and put the pepper on at the last minute so it’s still fresh and pungent at the table. I’ll trust you to find some cheese to go with the quince, and for the love of God, make more salad!”

The cook tried not to sweat into the stew pot where she set some water to boil and chopped cucumbers as fast as she could. Lambra strode back across the house and paused just inside the front door to inhale and exhale deeply. She smoothed the hair at her temples and stepped outside.

The retinue was already arriving at the house. Lambra saw the Count of Castile in the center, also dressed in mail. His undoubtedly hot and blinding helmet was secured to the back of his horse’s saddle. Resting his hand gently on it, he dismounted in one easy motion. Lambra started toward him, exclaiming, “Cousin García! What fortunate wind brings you here?”

“Now, now, cousin,” he replied, taking her into an embrace, “you know better than to address me like that. It’s been four years now.”

“I’m sorry, your grace, most high and noble Count, leader of all Castile!” She comically bowed from the waist to restore some fragment of their playful childhood.

“You’re forgiven, my shrewd cousin!” He chuckled and laid his hand on the top of her head as if in blessing.

She stood and looped her arm through his to seal the intimacy. The other knights had dismounted, so she said, “Let us lead your noble retinue to the stables to care for their fine steeds.” She deliberately bypassed the door and in hopes that the extra time would allow her maidens to make the hall look as if it were always sparkling clean and ready for important visitors. Maybe by the time they went inside, the boys would have brought and cleaned the rabbits and the male laborers would have arrived to welcome the masculine retinue more appropriately than her maids could.

The Count unsaddled, brushed, and fed his own horse. Lambra couldn’t help but wait for him outside by the river in the cooling breezes. She let the reeds brush against her hands while she inhaled the wet river fragrance mixed with summer blossoms. The eagle cruised across the darkening sky toward its nest.

Her cousin came out to meet her by himself. “I’ve sent the men inside. I have to tell you why I’m here, Lambra, and this might be the best place for it.”

She took his outstretched hand and noticed the way he avoided her gaze. “What can it be?”

“Lambra, you’re such a beautiful woman, and so rich in lands, I can’t think of any man who truly deserves you!”

She squeezed his slippery hand. “Cousin, has something happened to your wife?” Did he want to marry doña Lambra?

He smiled and looked at her. “She’s very well. She’s in Burgos, expecting our second child.”

“That’s wonderful. Praise be to God!”

García looked away again and stared into the sun as it eased below the mountains. “You may have heard about the happy conclusion of the siege of Zamora.”

“Oh, yes! We were all so glad to hear that that beautiful city remains within Castile.”

“Well, Zamora is more of a border outpost than Burgos, or even Bustos de Bureba, but I suppose it has its charms. A good river, and it’s strategic for keeping the Kingdom of León in check… But did the news come with the reason for the end of that interminable siege?”

“There was a name, someone I’d never heard of, from far away.”

“Ruy Blásquez. Ruy Blásquez saved the city of Zamora. I would still be there today if he hadn’t come to my rescue.”

Doña Lambra thought the Earth shifted beneath her as she realized what was really happening. She was being given away. Married off, passed from hand to hand as if she had nothing better to do, as if Bureba could get by without her.

Doña Lambra had not expected to be given in marriage. With both of her parents already passed into the next world, she had been raised principally by dueñas and other servants who could wield no real authority over her. Now well into puberty, she had been taking inventory of all the surrounding noblemen, deciding which lands she might like to administer, so as to arrange her own nuptials. It even occurred to her that she needn't marry at all, but simply govern her own holdings until such time as her Father in Heaven saw fit to pass them on to his Holy Church.

But she was nothing if not shrewd, and if she had considered it, she would have realized that as the cousin of García Fernández, the Count of Castile, she would likely end up as a reward to one of his loyal warriors.

“Some vassal rescued you? I should think he was merely doing his duty.”

“Oh, Lambra, you can have no idea how far above the call of duty he went. He brought one thousand knights and united them all under Castile’s standard. And now we can fly that flag over Zamora! I know you don’t know any other way for things to be, but it was only my father Fernán González – less than a generation ago! – who declared Castilian independence from León and it’s far from a consolidated reality. By bringing so many to rally for our country, Ruy Blásquez has made himself my most valuable vassal. And so, when he asked me to find him a wife, naturally I thought of you, the richest and most noble of all my relatives.”

Doña Lambra let the orange and gold rays spewing from behind the mountain burn her eyes. “But who is this Ruy Blásquez? How old is he?”

“He’s well established.” The Count walked around and tried to face his cousin, but she turned away from him every time. “He’s completed his thirty-fifth year.”

She couldn’t help but wring her hands at the thought of a grey beard and rotting teeth. Well, but maybe he wouldn’t live that long, then she would administer all the territory they had between them.

“Is he landed?”

 “He has a few parcels in the region of Lara, called Vilviestre.”

“A few parcels? I am the lady, practically the countess, of all of Bureba! Thousands of landholders owe their fealty to me and no one else!”

“Thousands? Hundreds, perhaps.”

“Thousands!”

“Lady, you forget yourself. We may be cousins, but I am the Count here. All of ‘your’ vassals ultimately work for me.”

Her eyes found his, but he had to look away. She bowed her head and whispered, “Lara’s so far. I never imagined going so far.”

He caught her as she collapsed, sobbing.

García entered the house first. As Lambra’s eyes adjusted to the firelight, she saw all of her people seated on one side of the great table, knives out, bread trenchers in front of them, with the Count’s men seated on the other side. They had wisely left the head of the table unoccupied for the Count and the lady of the house. She wiped her eyes one last time. “Pour the wine!” she said a little too loudly. “We have much to celebrate! I’m to be wed this year!”

Big Word, Right Word

The mihrab at the mezquita-catedral in Córdoba features a horseshoe arch.

A great debate arose as I shared The Seven Noble Knights of Lara with my husband: reader accessibility. I often wondered during the writing whether my audience was only going to be people who love history. I never wanted to "dumb it down," or go to the other extreme and alienate a reader who might not have picked up a historical novel before, because I believe the story is universal. I'd love to appeal to any reader!

When I brought the book to my critique group, which consists of great writers who happen to lack an interest in historical novels, more often than not, they found it accessible. If there were terms or circumstances particular to tenth-century Spain, I went back and explained them enough to keep an uninitiated reader up to speed without slowing the story down. So that anxiety waned and I pounded out the rest of the book without that internal editor.

Then my husband read it. He's now working in retail, which has shaken his faith in humans' ability to rise to an occasion. He thinks some of the "big" words I use will put readers off and recommends cutting them.

The thing is, sometimes, especially in a historical context, the "big" word is the right word.

The most passionate debate came about because of a couple of architectural terms at the end of the book. Our hero notices a polylobed arch where there was none before. My husband stumbled over "polylobed" and passionately defended its execution. Do you know what a polylobed arch is? If you didn't, did the word's use in the sentence upset you?

A polylobed arch is an arch with many lobes, as seen in this picture. I don't know of any other word that would distinguish this style from other types of arches, so it must be the right word.

Normally I wouldn't put up a fight about something so small, but I want to leave this word in because earlier on the same page, the hero notices a horseshoe arch. That's also a technical term, but my husband didn't reject it because it's more intuitive. It wouldn't be easy to create the same effect without the word "polylobed": "a horseshoe arch here... and an arch over there."

The use of this word didn't bother my editor. My critique group hasn't gotten to the end of the book yet, so their jury's still out. What do you think? Is this an example of a word that's too "big"? Or is it just the right word?

Edits

It was a rough month. Sad and listless more often than not, I wondered constantly about the reason for life on Earth. My novel -- my baby! -- was away in the care of someone else.

I've now received my draft of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara back from the editor. I chose her with the greatest of care, and it really paid off! She's given me the most perceptive comments I've received yet and has a well-reasoned, definite answer about my main concern: what to do with the beginning.

She didn't boss me around, but I made a decision based on all the pros and cons she presented, and I couldn't be happier. Sorry, husband, but the prologue you so love is going in the trash. That prologue sets the book off in the wrong direction while committing all kinds of other cardinal sins of writing (see below), so I'm relieved no more people have to read it! I need to rewrite it as Chapter I from the perspective of a main character. It's so eloquently simple, and it resolves the anxiety I was having because I wasn't sure I introduced the title seven knights early enough.

So, with all these new ideas percolating and tons of other responsibilities in the writing/editing arena, I'm going to be glued to a computer for the foreseeable future.

Some of the cardinal sins encountered in the prologue I'm tossing once and for all:
1. Head hopping. I tried for true omniscient, but it was head hopping.
2. The main point of view character gets killed within the first two pages (thus the need for head hopping).
3. It starts off with a bang before orienting the reader and giving her/him a reason to care what happens.

Don't commit these sins in your novel! If you have, stop right now and fix it! You'll do an editor and later readers a tremendous favor.