Where have all my editors gone?
It used to be that my favorite thing about writing was getting published. It excited me to no end to think that thousands of people would be reading what I had written. As time has gone on, however, I’ve discovered a new pleasure: I’m becoming an editing addict. Not as in editing other people’s stuff, but as in being edited myself.
I used to consider being edited a necessary evil, especially when it came to my creative work. It seemed to me that I would labor to create something beautiful, only to hand it on to people with meat cleavers for brains. They would often overstep their bounds by rearranging paragraphs, revealing what they thought were holes, even suggesting entirely different beginnings or endings. They would hand me back what looked like Frankenstein’s monster.
I hated this, because my goal was publication, and every time someone edited my work, he or she was pushing me away from my goal. Why didn’t these people just recognize the good in my writing and let me get on with things?
There was a reason; and it was a good one. But back then, I was too ill-versed to understand just how deep and wide the complexities of writing are. In fact, I’m pretty sure I still have only an inkling of that vastness.
Now that I’m an editor, I’m beginning to keenly miss having an editor to work with. I’m not saying that none of my writing friends will touch my work anymore; I actually have one writing friend whose judgment I trust completely. I could hand her anything I’ve written, confident that she would inevitably improve it by at least 100 percent.
I’m talking about missing working with an editor whose reputation and salary rides on the quality of the work in his or her publication. Someone who is personally and professionally invested in making sure my work is as good as it can be. Someone whose organization is going to pay real money to print my work. I really enjoyed working with Dan Wotherspoon when he was Sunstone’s editor. He has a fine, incisive mind that could cut to the heart of an essay. But he’s off doing other things now, and I wouldn’t expect him to be willing to pour that kind of time into me anymore.
So, the editorials I write for each magazine work just fine. I’m not displeased with them. I just want that thrill of watching a piece of writing surpass my original expectations. And I can’t do that alone.
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July 1st, 2009 at 10:58 am
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Speaking back to the MFA question, I would much rather have an editor than an instructor.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Perhaps it’s time for you to work with Deborah Treisman or David Remnick.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Reading biographies of favorite authors, I have have always been impressed to learn about decades-long working relationships with certain editors. I do envy that.
July 5th, 2009 at 10:34 am
So its lonely at the top, is that what you’re saying?
GUILT:”It seemed to me that I would labor to create something beautiful, only to hand it on to people with meat cleavers for brains. They would often overstep their bounds by rearranging paragraphs, revealing what they thought were holes, even suggesting entirely different beginnings or endings. They would hand me back what looked like Frankenstein’s monster.”
Ug. I did this this week. And its torturing me. I’ve been working w. a really great author on a story (not for Irreantum) that just wasn’t working. Something was missing, off, lost, and yet the story itself–the concept, the prose–is wonderful. I suggested this person try developing some ideas, and those ideas became paragraphs of beautiful prose that, in the final analysis, slowed the start. There were time shift issues that made the story confusing. I cut an entire scene–a flashback–because, once I began hacking parts off, it became apparent that the remainder of the story implied each of the ideas that the flashback showed. But cutting all this required moving paragraphs to new locations. So I’m totally, completely guilty of every aspect of Stephen’s complaint.
But there I sat w. a “final” version and, while the author had improved it, the story still had a limp. I hadn’t helped this person in the right way right away.
It was a real conundrum for me. Should I continue working, possibly for weeks, hoping to nudge the writer into recognizing that the story needed to be condensed, or demonstrate how to condense it and get it ready for press quicker? Should I just send it on to Stephen,knowing he’d likely have at it himself–maybe even say no to publishing it, or should I pull out the meat cleaver?
I chose the cleaver. How could I show the writer what I saw if I didn’t cut away the excess? So paragraphs fell like long locks of hair. It all seemed perfectly logical to me, but it killed me to hit that send button and return the “final”. I’ve been on the receiving end of these hatchet jobs too many times. I live in fear of having a writer feel like I’ve destroyed their story.
I wish everything that came in was polished and ready for print. But it sometimes doesn’t work that way. I hate being that meat cleaver editor, but, at times, I am. It’s like Stephen said: I feel an “ownership” even if my part as a fiction editor is small. I don’t think I like feeling responsible for stories that aren’t my own.