Editing - 29th July 2010

The last post raised the question of editing again, in a rather round about way.

I can remember, not long after receiving my first contract as an author, by God did that feel good, the publisher had told me the edits were a couple of weeks away. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I’d never been professionally edited before. So, on my next visit to my writing group, who were quite useful in many ways and I strongly recommend new authors get as much exposure to such groups as possible, I tentatively asked the question.

There were two published novelists among the group, and one self-published one. The self-published author hung his head and looked a bit sheepish; it was a few months later that I began to understand why. Of the other two, one went on to expound, at length, on just how important the working relationship between him and his editor was paramount. It had to be good, there needed to be two way communication and an understanding that both jobs, yours and your editor’s were vital before a book could be published.

The second author took an entirely different tone. In fact, if I stop to listen I can hear her quite plainly in the deepest echoes inside my skull.

“The editor is the Devil incarnate!”
“All they want to do is destroy your crafted prose with some fiddling for no reason!”
“Best thing to do is ignore them and tell them to b***er off!”

She was so vehement I was really taken aback, in fact the entire group, about fifteen if I remember correctly, were stunned into silence. A rare thing for that particular group.

I have never had cause to agree with her, and I have never yet knowingly met an author who thinks along the same lines and treats the editor as their enemy.

I’m not saying you need to show the editor zealous affection but a thank you doesn’t go amiss.

If you don’t really get this, then I suggest you try doing a story edit on someone else’s book for yourself. Not a critique, a proper story edit. List all the things that are wrong with the story, the logical fallacies, the times someone accidentally changes sides because they’ve used the wrong family, group, unit or even species, the way it only takes 2 hours to go from breakfast to supper on page 123. The list of possible issues is endless and has to be done at a more concentrated level than a writing group or WDC can. Now try adding in the copy edit at the same time – getting the commas in the right place, correcting the odd spelling or word use etc. etc.

Now try to do both of those things without attempting to rewrite the story in your own style.
It’s hard. In fact I find it so hard (my own grammatical limitations not withstanding) that I make a very poor editor. So would most authors, and probably so would my vociferous friend above.