Like sex, you can do it on your own, you can do it with one partner dominating the other, but when two people approach the business of editing with an open minded desire to do nothing but improve on the writing, it can be a truly creative process. Having yet to publish a novel, I don't have a vast experience of being edited and, I must confess, I feel slightly panicked when an editor wants to suggest some amendments to my short story. I don't know why – apart from the fact that it's not so common in the world of short stories – because my experience of this has been largely positive. Someone who appreciates my work enough to publish it has now read it so closely they've thought how to make it better: what's not to like?
Well, bad experiences do linger in the mind: once I chose to turn down the chance of publication because an editor (I've conveniently forgotten the magazine) edited and amended my short story beyond recognition and wouldn't brook any discussion.
I suppose everything hangs on one's understanding of the term editing:
Well, bad experiences do linger in the mind: once I chose to turn down the chance of publication because an editor (I've conveniently forgotten the magazine) edited and amended my short story beyond recognition and wouldn't brook any discussion.
I suppose everything hangs on one's understanding of the term editing:
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the
processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete work.
The editing process often begins with the author's idea for the work itself, continuing as a collaboration between the author and the editor as the work is created. As such, editing is a practice that includes creative skills, human relations, and a precise set of methods.[2][3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editing
That editor presumably understood her role as correction and was probably quite upset that I wasn't grateful for her hard graft knocking my story into shape. But some time later another editor was happy enough to publish my original version, so it can't be all that bad! I don't want to make too big a deal of this – it was only one short story – but it still feels like a missed opportunity: that if we'd been able to really work together on it, we might have been able to come up with an improvement on the original.
It seems I'm not alone in the experience of having edits imposed on me. And it doesn't just happen in the world of fiction. Back in the days when I was publishing academic papers, I once had the laborious task of undoing the work of a copy editor who didn't understand what my text was supposed to be about, and I had to go through all those proofreading symbols to reinsert the meaning back into the piece.
Fortunately, I've been able to work with other editors who have applied their creative and human relations skills to make this a truly collaborative process. It might be sorting out a clunky sentence. It might be nothing more complex than word order and punctuation. Once it was rewriting the story's ending.
I find if I'm free to say no, I'm more likely to say yes to an editor's suggestions, but it's often when I say maybe that it gets interesting. That's when we find the in-between space, the ideas that neither of us would have thought of on our own.
After the isolation of writing, it's lovely to find that connection through getting the work published, but it's especially lovely to have a positive editing experience first. So here's to Annie Rutherford my latest valiant editor, and my short story A Man Is Swinging (it's in The Back of Beyond).
It seems I'm not alone in the experience of having edits imposed on me. And it doesn't just happen in the world of fiction. Back in the days when I was publishing academic papers, I once had the laborious task of undoing the work of a copy editor who didn't understand what my text was supposed to be about, and I had to go through all those proofreading symbols to reinsert the meaning back into the piece.
Fortunately, I've been able to work with other editors who have applied their creative and human relations skills to make this a truly collaborative process. It might be sorting out a clunky sentence. It might be nothing more complex than word order and punctuation. Once it was rewriting the story's ending.
I find if I'm free to say no, I'm more likely to say yes to an editor's suggestions, but it's often when I say maybe that it gets interesting. That's when we find the in-between space, the ideas that neither of us would have thought of on our own.
After the isolation of writing, it's lovely to find that connection through getting the work published, but it's especially lovely to have a positive editing experience first. So here's to Annie Rutherford my latest valiant editor, and my short story A Man Is Swinging (it's in The Back of Beyond).
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