Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (32 page)

The assistants who make the rise successfully to editor are the ones who make the most of their early working years. As parents always say when the chore seems too tedious to bear, “It’s a learning experience.” Even a duty as simple as calling the inventory department to obtain sales figures can enhance an assistant’s knowledge, especially if the inventory controller says something like, “Of course we shipped a lot of copies last week; it was Father’s Day. Too bad Mother’s Day doesn’t sell books.” Bits of information that seem inconsequential one moment may be precious later on, when the assistant becomes an editor and the pub date of the new Tom Clancy novel is being decided.

Authors who enjoy the happiest publishing experience are those who fully realize just how much an editorial assistant can help them. Authors should simply ask the editor and the assistant which of the two handles what domain, and take advantage of the fresh energy coming from two sources. The result, for editors and their assistants, is a dynamic division of labor. An editor must spend an inordinate amount of time acquiring and editing the manuscript and ensuring the proper attention from the publicity, sales, and marketing departments. Assistants … well, they handle everything else. One of their chief jobs is to “traffic.” It is the assistant who knows the exact location of a contract, manuscript, or schedule at a given moment. Will the author be trekking in Nepal at the time the galleys need reading? The assistant will work with the production department to change the galley date. Did the author just receive a fabulous letter from Fay Weldon containing quotable raves about his new novel? The assistant can call the art director and stop work on the jacket before the editor returns from lunch. Later, the three can decide the blurb’s best placement.

An assistant is ordinarily the first reader on any project that arrives in the editor’s office. The arrangements vary, but it’s not unusual for a manuscript to appear on the editor’s desk with the reader’s report already attached. This concept scares some first-time writers. Surely, the writer says to himself, the value of my lyrical prose cannot be appreciated by a lowly
assistant
. But remember the theory of the apprentice. The assistant may turn out to be a former Rhodes scholar (great appreciators, traditionally, of lyrical prose) and, in any case, will already have a pretty good idea of what “publishable” means. Also, this is where an agent comes in, calling an advance warning to assistants and editors to pay close attention to a particular novel or nonfiction proposal. Even without an agent’s call, however, the better manuscripts will catch an assistant’s eye. A great many submissions fall below the mediocre range, or deal with a subject that is not germane to the editor’s area of expertise. The assistant separates the bland efforts from the stellar, sometimes dispensing submissions to appropriate colleagues, thus leaving the editor time to consider carefully the best new manuscripts and work on the books already under contract.

Even so, sometimes the novice writer’s fears may haunt conscientious assistants. The assistants begin to have nightmares of overlooking the next Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, so they knock themselves out reading every page of every bad novel. And then the nightmares really begin, because the same attention can’t, and shouldn’t, be given to each manuscript. Ironically, the same writers who were worried about having their manuscripts declined by an assistant may be the ones—once their books are under contract—who are unappreciative of the long weekend and night-time
reading hours the editor and assistant spend discovering the quality books.

Most writers, however, are respectful of an assistant’s job, and it’s to both their benefits. Assistants are part of the reading public whose opinions about a particular character or plot line may be invaluable. A writer need not accede to every suggestion given by an early reader of the work, but a measure of consideration is imperative. An editor, in a headlong rush to sign up a new novel, or see a controversial book to a timely publication, might overlook lapses in a narrative voice or weak points in a thesis. The assistant, however, buffered from direct pressure by a publisher or agent, is in a unique position to see where the emperor lacks the appropriate clothes.

An assistant can be the second strongest supporter a book has in-house. An editor’s job is to thrust the book into the best possible light against the seemingly dark, cold world of the video-watching public. But between the time the editor demands four-color bound galleys and the author flies off on her sixteen-city tour, smaller, significant events may involve an editorial assistant. Recently, a free-lance reviewer called my office to request a catalog. Answering the phone, my assistant buoyantly lauded a novel we’d been editing. The reviewer was so taken by my assistant’s excitement that she placed the book on her “must review” list and, in turn, called a movie producer friend to tell
her
about the novel. Time will tell whether the phone call amounts to a great review or a lucrative movie deal, but the anticipatory “buzz” has begun. And in the meantime, my assistant has established two new contacts of her own.

Every relationship in publishing, be it writer-editor, editor-assistant, or writer-assistant, is similar to a marriage: the parties come together for a common good, with all hopes resting upon the honeymoon lasting a lifetime. As marriages go, these are passionate unions. The book is, after all, a writer’s creative baby. It is the book—the third, ever-present, all-important entity in each partnership—that must be championed and somehow made better by every move.

Everyone’s career (indeed, everyone’s day-to-day experience) can be made more pleasurable by healthy exploitation and large doses of compassion. Assistants are miserably underpaid for the number of hours they spend working. One of their chief joys is talking with an appreciative writer—an author who respects their opinion of the book; an author who understands that assistants won’t always have the answers at their fingertips but will do their best to find it; an author who acknowledges that he or she is one of many professionals whom the assistant and editor must work with daily.

It helps, too, for an assistant to be reminded, in quiet, friendly conversations
with the editor and authors, that a certain book took five long and torturous years in the writing; that the writer may become anxious and temperamental as the book nears its publication date; that an assistant’s job can, eventually, come to a happy conclusion.

The conclusion, of course, is the promotion to associate editor. The associate editor is no longer responsible for typing other people’s correspondence or answering a boss’s phone. He or she can buy books and shepherd them through publication with a certain degree of autonomy. Although a promotion is terrific public recognition for hard work and talent, it shouldn’t be a jarring move. It’s a gratifying opportunity to shed annoying duties and take on full responsibility for a vocation the assistant has practiced for years. Suddenly, writers may find that the helpful assistant of yesterday is now their editor. And associate editors discover that they did not slave away for naught: they are now on the receiving end of worthwhile submissions from agents and authors who long ago became their admirers.

With experience comes confidence, and confidence allows publishing neophytes and novice writers to finally displace an oft-held but inaccurate assumption: that there exists a huge literary “club” to which everyone who is anyone should aspire to belong. The encouraging reality is that the imaginary club is only the figment of an outsider’s insecurities. Genuine efforts to praise good work, encourage talent, and care about another’s well-being—no matter what end of the business you’re on; no matter what a person’s title is—will always foreshadow a long and fruitful career.

Gerald (Jerry) Gross

J
ERRY
G
ROSS
(as he is known in the publishing industry) graduated the City College of New York in 1953 and began his publishing career in that same year at Simon & Schuster as Henry Simon’s first reader. During his years as a paperback and hardcover fiction and nonfiction editor, he created the gothic romance and gothic mystery as mass-market paperback categories and edited
Publishers on Publishing
(1961) and
Editors on Editing
(1962 and 1985). In 1987 he became a partner in Gross Associates. From his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, he has worked as a fiction and nonfiction free-lance editor/book doctor with authors both published and unpublished, agented and unagented, and with publishers’ editors. When he is not editing or critiquing manuscripts, Mr. Gross gives workshops on various aspects of editing and publishing at writers’ conferences around the United States
.

When should a writer consult a free-lance editor or book doctor? What can a book doctor really do for an ailing manuscript? Why has the book doctor become an increasingly important editor for author, agent, and publisher? When would a publisher’s editor assign a manuscript to be edited by a free-lance editor or critiqued by a book doctor? How can a writer choose and work effectively with a reputable book doctor? Mr. Gross provides practical, realistic answers to these important questions in this comprehensive look at today’s new breed of editor—the book doctor—whose skills could help you improve your manuscript and possibly save your career
.

Working with a first-rate book doctor can be a creative and rewarding career experience. A talented book doctor can stir and free your imagination, enabling you to look at your manuscript in a fresh and original way. Following a book doctor’s advice on structure, characterization, dialogue, plotting, and organization of material can increase your mastery of fiction and nonfiction techniques, not only for the project you’re currently working on, but for other works to come. But, as with choosing a physician, it’s important to find and select a reputable, experienced one and to establish a good rapport in your working, professional relationship. It’s essential to understand that the editor-author relationship should be collegial, not adversarial, symbiotic, not parasitic. Writer and editor must respect each other’s talents, values, and goals.

Book doctors are free-lance editors highly skilled in analyzing the problems presented by a manuscript or a proposal and offering solutions to those problems. These solutions are usually presented in a lengthy, in-depth report to the client (author, agent, or publisher’s editor) that should also serve as a guide to rethinking and revising the manuscript. These critiques often run from fifteen to thirty pages or more in length, depending on the size of the manuscript, the number of problems in the manuscript, and the insight and skill of the book doctor in solving those problems. Many book doctors also critique a manuscript line by line and make recommendations for revision in terms of adding or deleting sections; improving pacing, plotting, ambiance, characterizations, motivations, and dialogue; supplying line editing, etc., etc.

Some book doctors, however, begin the editor-client relationship by first skimming the manuscript to get a sense of it and whatever problems it might pose, and then calling the client or writing a short note outlining what the editor believes has to be done to the manuscript to make it more effective. After the client responds to the editor’s recommendations in a follow-up phone call or note, the book doctor begins the detailed critiquing of the manuscript. My own feeling is that both book doctor and client are best
served by the former approach—the editor beginning the author-editor relationship by writing a detailed report. The latter approach, a more cursory preliminary reading of the manuscript, risks the possibility of misunderstandings developing between editor and client as to how the manuscript should be revised or edited. The editor could critique the entire manuscript only to discover that the client didn’t like his or her approach. This kind of situation often results in the client not paying the editor because of dissatisfaction with the editor’s work, and the editor having to take the client to court to be paid his fee.

Many book doctors—myself included—do not do any line editing until the client receives the detailed critique of the manuscript (containing, as I have said, suggestions for line editing) and approves the editorial approach the book doctor wants to take with the manuscript. In point of fact, the suggestions for line editing in a comprehensive, well-written and -organized critique are often so clear that the author can do the line editing, or effect any other of the editor’s recommendations,
without
the book doctor’s help. In any case, line editing a manuscript should always come
after
the developmental editing (the heart of the critique) is completed and approved by the client. (The actual line editing, revising, restructuring, etc., by the way, are separate editorial services and are not covered by the fee paid by the client to the book doctor to critique the manuscript.)

In some situations, book doctors work from a detailed critique written by the
client
that instructs the editor to do exactly what the client wants done. The editor is not asked for any suggestions or recommendations; he or she is paid only to follow the client’s instructions. In this arrangement, clearly the client loses the benefit of the editor’s expertise by not soliciting the book doctor’s help. And the book doctor’s creative talents are frustrated and wasted. The editor can and should be much more than a red or blue pencil for hire, but sometimes that’s all that’s wanted or needed by the client. Both parties are shortchanged in this kind of arrangement.

Further services a book doctor may offer might include collaborating and even ghostwriting. But if you hire a book doctor for these services, make sure that the editor is also a writer: not every editor is. Editing is very creative, but not in the same way that writing is. The editor’s creativity comes from exercising his or her critical faculties. The writer’s creativity comes from the exercise of his or her imagination. The two don’t always function with equal effectiveness in the same person.