Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (2 page)

BY
J
EAN
-L
OUIS
B
RINDAMOUR AND
J
OSEPH
M. L
UBOW

Thirty years have passed since
Editors on Editing
was first published in 1962—and seven years have gone by since it was revised in 1985. The book you now hold in your hand is far more than a revision of those two editions of
Editors on Editing
, retaining as it does only one piece from the previous edition of the work. It contains thirty-two original essays especially commissioned for this volume, plus five essays on editing and publishing that did not appear in previous editions. This is a completely new edition of what has become the standard work on the art and craft of editing in our country, used in publishing courses, writing courses, and writers’ conferences throughout the United States.

Because I give workshops and lecture widely at these writers’ conferences, and know how eager writers are to have a happy, effective, creative relationship with an editor, I wanted to focus this new edition of
Editors on Editing
on what a writer needs to know about what editors do. Many writers suffer from a myriad of misconceptions about what editors will or won’t do with and to their manuscript; they are unsure of the ways in which an editor can help them improve their manuscript; they are unclear as to the dynamics of the editor-author relationship: what each can and should expect from the other in the editing process; they are anxious and unsure about their rights to their own manuscript once it is accepted by an editor. Many writers are not aware of what developmental, line, and copy editors do and how they do it. Finally, they often don’t know how and why some manuscripts are accepted and others rejected. The list of myths and erroneous assumptions goes on and on and on. To clarify the many creative, technical, and empowering ways in which an editor works with a writer, I wanted this edition of
Editors on Editing
to demystify for the writer—published and unpublished—that mysterious process known as editing. And I also wanted to reveal the editor as a passionately committed, caring professional who loves
writers and who is dedicated to helping the writer say what the writer wants to say in the most effective way, one that will reach the widest possible audience.

To that end, as I did in compiling the first two editions of
Editors on Editing
, I went directly to the industry’s top editors, the men and women who know their art and craft best and also know how to communicate their excitement and their expertise. Included among them are Ruth Cavin on “Editing Crime Fiction”; Charles Spicer on “Editing True Crime”; Maron Waxman on “Line Editing: Drawing Out the Best Book Possible”; Mel Parker on “The Pleasures and Perils of Editing Mass-Market Paperbacks”; and Scott Walker on “Editing for a Small Press: Publishing the Way It Used to Be.”

These top professionals write with insight and candor about the special demands and skills necessary to their particular areas of editorial expertise. To make their comments as prescriptive, as practical as possible for both the beginning and experienced writer, I asked them to focus their essays on specific examples of the variety of ways an editor actually edits: everything from suggestions for a new beginning or a new ending to ideas for bringing a character to life, or smoothing out a difficult narrative passage, or clarifying a flashback or a flash-forward or dream scene, or a way to accelerate the pace and plotting of the story, and so forth.

Accordingly, the thirty-eight essays in this volume offer the writer solutions to the problems posed by the manuscript, guiding the writer through the various stages of publication from the inception of the idea through developmental editing, line editing, and copy editing to publication and afterwards. The result is, I hope, an informative short course in the editorial side of publishing that should make a writer feel confident, knowledgeable, and effective at any stage of his or her relationship with an editor.

In addition to offering insights into the nuts-and-bolts side of the editorial process,
Editors on Editing
also includes some provocative, even controversial articles on editorial theory and the relationship and responsibility of editing to the society at large. Alan D. Williams gives his own unique answer to “What Is an Editor?”; Marc Aronson offers a brief history of the American editor in “The Evolution of the American Editor”; and James O’Shea Wade treats an important but little-discussed aspect of editing in “Doing Good—And Doing It Right: The Ethical and Moral Dimensions of Editing.” Gerald Howard updates his classic overview of the state of American editing and publishing entitled “Mistah Perkins—He Dead.” Richard Marek examines “How Books Are Chosen: What Goes into Making an Editorial Decision.” The emotional, controversial, and volatile issue of the impact of PC (political correctness) on editors and writers is discussed
from a fiction point of view by Michael Denneny and from a nonfiction point of view by Wendy Wolf. And writer-editor-agent Richard Curtis poses the incendiary question “Are Editors Necessary?”

It was Oscar Wilde who said, “I can resist everything except temptation,” and I understand the wisdom of that epigram more clearly now than ever before as I write this Preface. I have decided not to resist the temptation to reflect on a long career as an editor. For 1993 marks my fortieth year as an editor (it was my first, and has been my only, career choice since 1953, when I went to work as a first reader for Henry Simon of Simon & Schuster after graduating from the City College of New York). And so I thought that I would pause at this watershed in my professional life to offer some comments on the philosophy of editing by which I have lived for these many years.

When I started my editorial career, agents complained that editors edited too much. I remember being told: “Young man, if you didn’t think the book was in good shape to begin with, you shouldn’t have bought it.” Nowadays, agents and authors try to work with editors who really understand developmental and line editing, who care enough and know enough about shaping the theme and content of a book to make it the best possible expression of the writer’s intent and art.

When I was a young editor I was taught how to shape and line edit a book by Henry Simon and Donald A. Wollheim, who took me into their office after the working day to guide me in those arcane but essential skills. It was mentoring at its best. And it was done leisurely and lovingly. Today, the pace of publishing is such that there is little or no time or opportunity for young editors to serve such an apprenticeship. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that developmental and line editing are lost arts, but they seem to be arts less practiced than before. And that perhaps is why critics and reviewers, more and more often, make a point of remarking on the absence of editing, or on the inferior editing, in a book they are reviewing. I would like to see a revival of the apprenticeship/mentoring situation that I enjoyed as a young editor. Everyone would profit from it—publishers, editors, agents, but writers most of all.

Ultimately, though, the best editing is not the least or the most; it is whatever measure of editing evokes the writer’s greatest talent, that presents the writer’s work in the best possible light so that it garners great reviews, enhances the writer’s professional reputation and personal self-esteem, and reaches the audience the writer wrote for in numbers large enough so that
the writer can live comfortably to write again and further develop his or her creative powers.

Much is made of who “owns” the book, whose judgment should prevail in the editor-author relationship. It is regrettable whenever a situation develops that forces the participants into such an either/or dilemma. It seems only right and just that in all cases, the editor must remember that the work in question is the author’s book and that the author’s decision must prevail. Seeing the publishing house as a “senate” in which debates over the manuscript take place, the editor can and should “advise” but the author must always “consent.” For the manuscript is, in effect, leased to the editor until such time as the editor’s work is done and the work is returned to the author. Or put another way, it is the author who gives birth to the book; the editor’s role is that of midwife, whose job it is to bring forth a happy, healthy manuscript into the publishing world.

That said, and said with profound conviction, I would like to propose a revolutionary way of recognizing the midwifery of the editor. Since at least the legendary Maxwell Perkins’s time, editors have been expected to be unsung, faceless, nameless technicians assisting the author in the creation of the completed manuscript. Quite often, of course, the author graciously and gratefully acknowledges the efforts of his or her editor in the prefatory pages of the published book. Quite often, though, the editor remains unsung. But why does it always have to be that way? More important, why
should
it be that way? Book jackets routinely mention the name of the jacket designer, graphic artist, illustrator, or photographer. Why should the editor remain anonymous? Why shouldn’t the editor of the book be named on the jacket or on the copyright page? He or she has certainly made a contribution equal to that of the cover artist, photographer, designer, etc. And if more than one editor has been involved—because of firings, departures, and plain old-fashioned teamwork—then name all the editors who worked on the book. Is this an idea whose time has come because it is right and proper? Or should editors continue to edit “in the closet,” as it were? I have opened this discussion with these words and in the dedication to the book, and would welcome hearing what agents, editors, writers, and publishers have to say on the subject. So please write to me care of the publisher of this book. I suspect it’s time to put this sacred cow of anonymity out to pasture!

Much has been written about the various responsibilities the editor has: to the author, to the publisher, to the consumer, and to the book itself. Too little, however, has been said of the editor’s responsibility to his or her own integrity: the duty to be true to one’s political, moral, ethical, societal, and aesthetic convictions. Without that responsibility to one’s own integrity, I don’t believe the editor can be truly responsible to the author, the publisher, the consumer, or to the book itself. Several times during my long career I was offered projects that deeply offended my political and social convictions. I turned them down, often recommending the author or agent to another editor, one who would be more sympathetic to the theme and content of the work I refused to edit.

I do not for a single second advocate censorship of any kind. I am a devout and unconditional supporter of the First Amendment. Like cancer cells, a little censorship metastasizes into totalitarianism and the inevitable death of democracy. But I know I have to sleep at night and face myself in the shaving mirror in the morning and live with my wife and my children without shame or guilt. If I had to work on a manuscript that was violently in opposition to everything I stood for and believed in, I couldn’t live with myself and couldn’t do a good job for the author on the manuscript, or for the publisher. Remember, life is too short (understand, I say this as I face my sixtieth birthday) to live with self-inflicted intellectual, physical, or psychological pain. And remember, too, that there will always be someone to publish what you have walked away from.

At the many writers’ conferences I attend each year, after one or more of my workshops on editing and publishing, inevitably there’s a question from the floor along the lines of: “What would the ideal relationship between an editor and an author be like?” My answer to that is always some variation of these basic guidelines: that the two parties should work together collegi-ally, not adversarially—symbiotically, not parasitically. Put even more simply: each needs the other; each has much to offer the other.

Writers must realize that editors are really necessary to inspire them, spur them, sometimes push them to write at the top of their form. And that editors have an authentic creativity of their own, one that few writers have: the gift of critical analysis, detachment, and expression that is there for the
writer to make the most of. Editors can diagnose the positive and negative elements of a manuscript and prescribe a possible cure to what ails it in the same way that a diagnostically talented internist can read an X ray and discern the trouble in the patient’s lung or chest and prescribe a course of treatment to eradicate that trouble. The writer should respect this kind of editorial talent, acknowledge its creative quality, and benefit from it.

The editor should always remember that it is the writer’s work that validates the editor’s work, and that all the diagnostic skills in the world are useless without the manuscript on which to practice those skills. The editor must not in any way at any time attempt to edit the book so that it will be written the way the editor would write it if the editor wanted to, or could, write. The editor must learn to edit in the writer’s voice, think the writer’s thoughts, achieve the writer’s perspective. Otherwise the editor faces an unending frustration that could develop into a hostile, unproductive relationship with the writer, and that can result only in an inferior book.

Mutual recognition, respect, admiration, and reliance on each other’s skills makes for the best kind of editor-author relationship, and the best kind of book comes out of such a relationship.

After reading these reflections, it should be clear that I have edited
Editors on Editing
as much to help the editor understand how to work with a writer as for the writer to understand how to work with an editor.

…

I knew that I wanted to become an editor at the age of sixteen. And ever since I have had the good fortune to work with and among some of the most brilliant editors of my time. I respect and have grown very fond of my colleagues, some of whom have become, over the years, my friends as well. A deep and abiding concern of my professional life is to discover and bring along the next generation of editors. The future of the written word, of books that are entertaining, important, and informative (especially books with all three virtues), of aspiring and developing authors everywhere depends on the intuition, talents, arts, and crafts of working editors today and in the years to come. Indeed, I do not think I understate when I say the future of the culture itself depends in great part on editors as much as writers.