Jelte Nieuwenhuis: “The soul of a text lies in its rhythm”

Writers who plan their novel too tightly, says writing coach and literary agent Jelte Nieuwenhuis, often write a book the reader doesn’t believe a word of. He previously worked as an editor at the Dutch publisher Atlas Contact. In this interview, he talks about, among other things, what rhythm does to a text and when you’re better off radically rewriting your manuscript.

You once called yourself a book doctor: people come to you with a manuscript they thought was finished. What makes them think something isn’t right after all?

They don’t always tell me that, but from what they do tell me, I gather that sometimes, after rereading it, they themselves feel that something is still missing, but that much more often, publishers don’t want to publish their text.

Then most writers think there must be something wrong with it after all. And often there is. And I get to figure out what.

What’s the difference between an editor and a writing coach?

There are very few real differences. The most important difference, I think, is a matter of convention: writing coaches who work for publishers are called editors.

And well, if someone is called an editor, you can be almost certain that she/he/they also does line editing, in other words, actually takes the proverbial red pen to the text, marking suggestions for improvement and asking questions.

Many writing coaches can and do, too (I’m one of them, though in practice I usually outsource line editing to people with emptier calendars and a lower hourly rate), but by no means all of them.

You worked for years as an acquiring fiction editor at Atlas Contact and went out on your own in 2018. What can you do now that you couldn’t do there?

I now spend at least ninety percent of my time on purely substantive work: reading, thinking, talking with writers, sometimes a bit of editing. As an acquiring editor at a publishing house, you’re expected to also spend a lot of time on marketing and sales, on writing catalog copy, on meetings with colleagues, but also on scouting and acquisition, which in practice means networking.

Another big difference is that the authors’ starting level is lower on average, which demands more of my skills as a developmental editor.

Put differently: writers who get a contract with a publisher are often already so good that they don’t always need very intensive guidance, and as an editor you often don’t have to think very hard about solutions.

Your website says that writing only begins when someone reads you. What do you mean by that?

I chose that slogan because it brings together my work as an editor/writing coach and my work as a literary agent. The goal of the latter is to get a writer a publisher and, with it, a readership, but in the end, of course, writing coaching is also aimed at making sure at least one person reads you: the writing coach.

And preferably not more than one person, either: when the writing process is still at an early stage, it’s often very healthy to keep the circle very small, to stay sheltered, not to expose your writing to too many people yet.

But writing completely alone is often hard, because in the end a book only really comes to life in the mind of a reader. Beyond that, I hoped to capture the double meaning of the phrase “reading someone.”

In my view, it’s essential that an editor learns to understand the writers she/he/they works with as well as possible, to see them… to read them.

What mistake do you come across again and again, and why do writers make it so often?

The biggest “mistake,” I think, is that writers, in my view, too often approach their novel too purposefully and too methodically, so that their structure may often be adequate, but their narrative tone is bloodless and not “their own” or believable enough, so that in the end that nice structure does you no good, because you don’t believe a word of what the writer is telling you.

Many writing courses and how-to books concentrate on structure, because it’s less elusive than things like “narrative voice” or “narrative tone.”

For me too, it’s hard to encourage writers to find a narrative tone that is better, more “their own,” and more believable, but I do see it as my duty to try. And writers often make real progress in that area, sometimes downright spectacular progress.

How do you tell someone the structure of their book isn’t working without them giving up?

Often a structure doesn’t work because people make things too complicated and choose contrived solutions. I try to get people to see that the easiest, most natural route is often the best one too, and that radically rewriting their book, which isn’t well structured yet, is therefore not only the best solution, but often takes much less time and is much more fun than cosmetically repairing the weak construction that’s already there.

What can writers do themselves before bringing in a writing coach?

Read a lot and write a lot. Every mile you put in as a writer pays off, every detour you take, every “mistake” you make. Pleasure, desire, and fascination are your most important guides: don’t read the books other people say are “good” or “important”; read what you feel like reading, regardless of the status a book has been given.

And that applies even more to writing: of course writing without struggling is almost impossible, but good writing comes about despite that struggle, not thanks to it. If the writer is enjoying herself/himself/themselves, the reader usually is too. Literature is a game! A serious game. But a game.

How much of what makes a text good can be captured in rules?

The person who made ViaScripta is in a better position to judge that than I am. What I mainly know is that the single most important thing about a text, its soul, if you will, can’t be captured in rules at all, and therefore not in algorithms either. And that every rule is an invitation to break that rule.

What does rhythm do to a text?

The soul of a text lies in its rhythm. Its individuality, its authenticity. Written language is an extension of the language of thought, and thoughts have a certain rhythm, a cadence.

Just try following your own thoughts: there’s a rhythm in them, a flow, a cadence that changes depending on your state of being, but that also has a clear consistency, a consistency that, if all goes well, is reflected in a narrative tone.

Some texts are technically well put together and can still feel lifeless. What causes that?

That comes down precisely to the absence of a natural rhythm. As a reader, you want to feel that a text came about on its own, as it were, as if the narrator is sharing her/his/their thoughts with the reader more or less spontaneously and intuitively.

If the rhythm of the sentences feels stilted and unnatural, then that illusion is broken, then you see that the writer has strung the words together very deliberately and purposefully, and then it’s often hard to be carried along into the writer’s story world.

Can you learn that, or do you have to have it in you?

I’m convinced that everyone has a unique narrative voice, simply because every brain is just a little different from everyone else’s. The art lies in letting the uniqueness of your thoughts come out in your writing.

Some writers now have AI read their writing. Where does that help, and where doesn’t it?

I find that hard to say, because I don’t use AI myself and I don’t have extensive conversations with writers who do use it. I believe AI is very good at adding and improving structure, and that it can also recognize and improve a stilted rhythm.

But the uniqueness of your own voice, which I’ve already gone on about at tiresome length above, the thing that for me is the soul of a text, that of course you can’t create or simulate with AI.

And why would you even want to? Surely the fun of writing lies precisely in the process of expressing the unique thing that’s inside you?

A few times a year you teach a masterclass. What do people learn there that they can’t get from a book on writing?

I haven’t given that masterclass in a while. To be honest, I’m not a fan of teaching groups. I find it tricky to cater to several people at once.

In any case, the biggest limitation of a book on writing is of course that it isn’t tailored individually to your unique needs, and that it doesn’t read your text.

You’re also a literary agent. What exactly do you do for a writer in that role, and how do you know a manuscript is ready to send to a publisher?

As a literary agent, I start out doing essentially the same thing as in my role as a writing coach: I read a writer’s work, I talk with her/him/them about it, and together we look for ways to arrive at the best possible book.

To decide whether a text is good enough to send to a publisher, I actually go purely on what you could call my gut feeling. That’s one of the first and most important lessons I learned when I went to work for a publishing house.

If you feel in your gut that something is good, if you feel something like butterflies there, then it’s good enough. Others may of course see it differently, but roughly three-quarters of the authors I bring to publishers’ attention end up with a publishing contract, so on some level my gut feeling must line up with that of the publishers I approach.

So that’s the ultimate goal: to find a publisher for those writers, and with it a potential readership.

That’s incredibly hard, because it’s a publisher’s job to say no very often and yes only very occasionally, and because it’s so hard, I can only do it for literary novels I’ve fallen himmelhoch jauchzend in love with; otherwise I couldn’t bear the rejections you always get (usually at least ninety percent of publishers say no).

With every rejection, I have to be able to feel all over again: fine, that publisher isn’t interested, but I think it’s wonderful, so I’ll just keep going for it.

And as I said: I get there more often than not, and when it works, that’s one of the nicest things about my work… making a writer’s dream come true: her/his/their book in the bookstore!