Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (58 page)

Primary goals in any serious reference work are comprehensiveness and balance: making sure that all dimensions of the field or topic are covered thoroughly, with an apportionment of space to various subtopics that accurately reflects their relative importance. In a typical arrangement, each editorial board member develops a list of entries within his area of editorial responsibility; the individual lists are then amalgamated into one master list; and the overall coherence of the list is then assessed by the editorial board through successive revisions. The advisory board is also periodically called on to point out afresh any gaps of coverage, imbalances, or other deficiencies. During this time, the editorial board will also research and nominate prospective contributors, who will themselves be recognized specialists.

A central challenge in any multiauthor reference work obviously comes from the fact that, instead of one mind at work on the project, there are many. The kind of coherence that grows organically out of the work of a single author—one perspective, one narrative, one voice—here must be imposed from outside, beginning with the development process. In order to approach their individual tasks with any uniformity of purpose, future contributors will need to be informed about the project’s overall organization and content, and about the unique substantive roles their own articles will play in the larger scheme of the volume—that is, what will be covered in their particular pieces that the reader will find nowhere else. It is of special importance that contributors also understand the work’s intended readerships, so that they can tailor their presentations accordingly.

During development, the editorial board and in-house editors create materials that will be sent to contributors to clarify these issues. In addition to a general project description, a device that colleagues and I have come to employ is the “scope description”—a paragraph prepared for each article describing its intended coverage and focus, indicating specific examples or topics that need to be introduced in the article in order to ensure proper overall coverage in the volume, and listing articles on related topics that are also planned for inclusion in the volume. This paragraph is amended as necessary in discussion with the contributor so that publisher and contributor have a firm agreement about the objectives of the piece right from the start. This step, replicated with each contributor, provides insurance against gaps of coverage or undue repetition across the network of articles. Contributors also need technical instruction on issues of editorial and bibliographical style, and guidelines for preparing copy in manuscript or electronic format. Explicit guidance to contributors in these areas eliminates needless complication in later editorial stages.

Having witnessed and participated in the development of many reference works, I can state two things with relative certainty. One is that development of a list of entries is always more complicated than one ever anticipates. Layers of conceptual complexity will gradually emerge in any substantial project, and all involved may come to wonder why they ever agreed to take part in such a hopeless and interminable endeavor. Persistence pays off, though, and with much the same feeling as donning a pair of glasses and having the world come into focus, the structure and content of a complex encyclopedic work will eventually fall into place. Another truism is that it is worth every penny of cost to bring an editorial board together, in one room, to sort through initial questions of substance and organization. The group spirit that emerges in these sessions—in addition to an intense and productive focus on important editorial issues—provides glue that holds a team together through the inevitable trying times.

Once the list of entries is in final form and prospective contributors have been identified, administrative work on the project begins. Here, the division of labor set out in early planning of the project begins to come into play. One common arrangement is for the publisher to assume responsibility for the administrative aspects of the project—inviting contributors, preparing and sending out contributor contracts, receiving manuscripts from contributors and routing them to the editorial board for review, and recordkeeping—thereby allowing the editorial board to restrict its focus largely to important issues of content. This arrangement is possible only if the publisher has on staff and assigns to the project an in-house project editor to follow through with the stunningly large number of administrative details that must be tended to assiduously every day. There is, of course, added expense to the publisher in assigning a project editor (who may handle several projects at a given time) to the work; the clear benefit is insurance that the project will keep moving at a brisk pace toward publication. Whatever the specifics of the administrative arrangement, all involved must be committed to keeping each piece of writing moving as quickly as possible through the editorial process.

Recordkeeping is a central challenge in any project involving hundreds of contributors and at least as many individual pieces of writing. The publisher may be ideally situated, with the benefit of its substantial computer capabilities, to create and then to maintain a project database—a constantly updated electronic record of article titles and descriptions, article lengths, due dates, payment terms, and editorial status. Using such a database, an in-house project editor can with relative ease produce stacks of individualized,
routine correspondence or generate a list of overdue articles for follow-up. (When I was first involved more than a decade ago in a major multiauthor reference project, computers had not yet taken over. We used a large wall chart to keep track of each piece of writing as it moved through the sequence of editorial steps.) Of course, if the general editor is equipped with proper computer capabilities or other suitable means for tracking this kind of complex effort, there is no particular need for the publisher to handle this work. The decision is really a practical one: who is best set up to exert rigorous, day-to-day control over the inevitable details of record-keeping, scheduling, and trafficking of materials? Interestingly, the computer has also become an important ally in the development process described earlier; databases that orchestrate mass mailings can also sort through lengthy lists of entry terms to identify problems of coverage and balance.

Since the administrative work described above is ongoing for the life of the project, editing in fact runs concurrently with it. Even as editing of individual articles proceeds, records need to be kept, reminder letters sent to tardy contributors, and manuscripts routed to the editorial board for review. During the period of editing, articles commissioned for the volume move through a rigorous process of substantive and stylistic review, revision, and final copy editing, a process typically orchestrated by the in-house project editor. Article due dates are staggered by projected length—anywhere from three to four months from the date of the invitation for the shortest article (fewer than one thousand words), to the better part of a year for the longest (perhaps six to seven thousand words).

In most projects an effective arrangement is one in which each article is reviewed by at least two editorial board members—the editor (often called the “section editor”) in whose specific area of editorial responsibility the article falls, as well as the general editor (who, having overall responsibility, reads every piece in the volume). Typically, the section editor communicates with the contributor about needed revisions and approves the article in its final form. If the prescriptive efforts of the earlier development process have been successful, most articles will need little more than modest fine-tuning at this point.

Because readers will be disappointed (rightly) to find coverage that is incomplete or that reflects a narrow interpretive stance or point of view, the section editor must review each piece for balance, accuracy, and fullness of coverage and provide the contributor with specific directions for remedying any deficiencies. At the same time, the general editor must critique the
article from the perspective of its fit within the volume’s network of articles on related topics. Another important focus throughout the process of review and revision is attention to the components of good writing—among them a clear line of argument, engaging examples to back up points being made, and high interest level—which apply every bit as much to reference works as to other kinds of writing projects. The contributor may be asked to work through stylistic problems with the help of detailed suggestions supplied by the section editor, or the section editor may attempt a line edit in the course of reviewing the article. Minor infelicities that persist can be dealt with in final copy editing. Of course, whenever changes are made in a manuscript it is important that the contributor be given an opportunity to review and approve them.

In the final stage of editing, individual contributions, each in final form, are brought together in a cohesive alphabetical manuscript. The editorial apparatus (cross-referencing systems and the like) that guides readers to specific information that they seek is devised at this point and inserted into the manuscript; the index, a very important access point in most reference works, is completed at proof stage. Since these final efforts require knowledge of the entire contents of the volume, and of the patterns of interrelated articles, they are most efficiently handled by the general editor working in concert with in-house editors. One need only experience the frustration of being unable to locate a needed piece of information in a reference work to appreciate the importance of this particular stage of editorial work. The manuscript is now ready for production and manufacturing, and, with any luck, will appear within several months as a finished book.

A slight variation on an old adage sums up rather well the nature of reference publishing: the more things stay the same, the more they change. I imagine that in coming years much that is familiar to me about the world of reference publishing will not change all that much. My colleagues and I will continue to look for promising areas in which to publish, taking fresh looks at “old” topics and invigorating looks at new topics, trying to keep pace with reader interests. We will labor intensively over complicated projects that bring with them both substantial costs and substantial rewards. And we will go along our way feeling that, just maybe, we are involved in something that really matters, that makes the world a better place in which to live.
What
we do, then, is likely to remain pretty much the same, although we may have to do it faster, and better, to keep pace in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Change will come more in the realm of
how
we do
what we do. Computers will help us make better books by allowing us to scrutinize our plans with speed and flexibility; they will also help us to be more efficient in handling detailed administrative work. And certainly they will continue to shape how the material we generate reaches its audiences, with brave new technologies (CD-ROM, on-line services, and the like) coexisting with—but, we know in our hearts, never replacing!—the wonderful, reassuring bulk of a reference book.

Peter Davison

P
ETER
D
AVISON
entered publishing in 1950 with the firm of Harcourt, Brace and Company. Since then he has edited books for, successively, Harvard University Press, the Atlantic Monthly Press (of which he was director from 1964 to 1979), and Houghton Mifflin Company, where he now publishes under the Peter Davison imprint. He is also poetry editor for the
Atlantic Monthly.
He is the author of nine books ofpoetry(most recently
The Great Ledge,
Knopf, 1989), an autobiography
(Half Remembered,
1973 [revised edition, Story Line Press, 1991]), and a book on poetry
(One of the Dangerous Trades: Essays on the Work and Workings of Poetry,
Michigan, 1991)
.

“
The life of biography is in the details,” writes Mr. Davison in this elegant essay that biographers, autobiographers, and editors of both will enjoy for its sage advice and wry wit
.

An editor of biographies for over forty years, among them Diane Middle-brook’s
Anne Sexton: A Biography
(he offers a fascinating editorial evaluation of the controversy surrounding the publication of excerpts of tapes of Ms. Sexton’s sessions with her psychiatrist), Mr. Davison is generous in sharing his expertise with editor and writer. He writes intimately and knowingly about editorial details, problems, and considerations relevant to editing biography and autobiography: finding and gaining legal access to vital papers; dealing with the laws of copyright and public domain in terms of personal letters; obtaining vital permissions to quote text and use photographs, and securing releases from persons depicted and quoted; handling the egos of those who want to tell too little or too much; coping with the spouse of a biographical subject still living or only lately dead; staving off
the threats and punishments of libel; choosing a biographer who will not come to either admire or hate the subject too much; suggesting to the writer a compelling opening and a satisfying conclusion to the biography or autobiography; recommending to the biographer a reevaluation of the subject of the biography; and more
.

Recalling the witticism of French critic Roland Barthes that biography is fiction that dare not tell its name, Mr. Davison dares to tell some trenchant truths about the art of editing people’s lives, among them:

“
Should the autobiographer plan to begin his tale at the beginning? Usually not: the exit from the womb takes pretty much the same course for all of us and is of principal interest to obstetricians
.”

“
The editor’s approach to the autobiographer has to be one of parental tenderness, even though parental strictness may also be called for to keep the memoir believable
.”