Monthly Archives: May 2012

Writing and Editing

Seeing Editors as Allies, Not Enemies

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I belong to an online writers’ and editors’ group, and when time allows, I entertain myself by catching up on the discussions in the forums. People generally behave themselves admirably, but the writers, most of whom are self-publishing, do lash out at editors from time to time. One day, I saw an author complaining that she’d been ripped off to the tune of three thousand dollars by an editor. Other forum participants were quick to become indignant that any editor would even dream of charging her such an amount to edit her book. What an outrage!

Feeling profoundly irritated, I wrote that it was ridiculous to consider the cost outrageous without knowing the facts–after all, the author hadn’t even mentioned what the word count was or told us anything about the nature of the book. Nor had we seen a sample of the writing. Without this information, no one could possibly know the extent of the editing required. And had anyone even considered the question of what the author actually received for her money? As she later revealed, the answer was nothing–she paid three thousand dollars to the “editor,” who never delivered any work at all. The unsuspecting  author had not been dealing with a professional editor–she’d fallen victim to a smooth-talking scam artist.

Apart from the author’s misfortune, what bothered me about this whole exchange was the readiness of the writers who were commenting to believe that editors are taking them for a ride. Apparently, some writers still don’t see the value in what editors have to offer. I suspect that those who feel this way have never actually had their own work edited, so they can’t even begin to understand the invaluable contributions an editor can make to a manuscript. As well, such writers fear criticism, as most of us do to one degree or another, but rather than being able to perceive it as helpful and constructive, they feel threatened by it. And so they insist on standing in their own way, and the book suffers as a result.

I still occasionally meet people who think that all editors do is correct typos; they confidently assert that they can do their own spell-check and grammar check, thank you very much–as if spelling and grammar were all there was to it. But editors are involved in shaping the entire manuscript, and they cover the broad strokes as well as the fine details. A good editor will diplomatically call attention to a plot that doesn’t even get off the runway, loose ends that dangle messily, a protagonist who bores readers to tears, or a character who talks like he’s a nineteenth-century British aristocrat instead of the twentieth-century American student he’s supposed to be. Furthermore, a good editor offers constructive advice for fixing these problems.

I believe that writers who don’t appreciate what editors can do for their work are in a small and ever-shrinking minority. But often the writers who need editorial help the most are the very ones who are most resistant to receiving it. It’s time that such resistant writers began to see editors as allies who can help them create their best possible work, not as enemies who will either take advantage of them or belittle them. All editors contend that every writer needs an editor, and most writers I know wholeheartedly agree with this contention. And as an editor who also writes, I know that I’ll need an experienced and eagle-eyed editor to help me with my book before I publish it; I wouldn’t dream of skipping this essential step. Even for the best writers, the choice is clear: if you’re putting your book out there for public consumption, hire a professional editor.

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General Musing

What I Love about Old Books

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Eleven years ago, I went on a road trip to the Finger Lakes district of New York with two friends. Happening upon a dusty second-hand bookshop in Ithaca, I discovered a 1919 copy of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, a novel based on the life of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. I’d read the book a number of times before, but the price was a mere six dollars, so how could I pass it up?

It isn’t a fancy edition by any stretch of the imagination, but in its simple way, it’s a lovely object. I love the bold graphic of the palm trees on the cover and the graceful illustration of the Tahitian beauties on the inside cover. I adore the way the title of the book has been designed, with the linking o‘s in Moon. A fascinating little detail is the embossed publisher’s insignia on the front cover that features a peacock (visible in the bottom right of the photo).

My edition of the book is battered, so it’s not worth any more than I paid for it. One corner has been banged up, water spots speckle the cover, and the edges of the pages have yellowed over time, but this just shows that the book was read and enjoyed by many people over time, as any good book deserves to be. As well, there’s the intriguing inscription, which appears to be as old as the book itself, in well-formed script inside: “Happy Birthday Hugh. Frances.” I can’t help but wonder what Hugh’s relationship to Frances was. Were they siblings? Lovers? Husband and wife? Was she trying to impress him with her good taste in literature? I can’t help but wonder if he liked the book. What happened with the two of them after he received it? There’s a story there that we’ll never know, but we can always invent something.

With old books, the story within the covers is augmented by the story of the book as a physical object, passed from one person to another over time. Of course, there’s a lot of mystery about a book’s previous owners, hinted at only by things like inscriptions, notes in the margins, and passages underlined. And what does such a book say about the time in which it was produced? To me, my copy of The Moon and Sixpence speaks to a more elegant and serious time in which books were considered objects of beauty and thought of as items to be treasured for generations.

I have quite a number of battered volumes that bear the stamp of my grandfather, Jesse Kaiser, a World War One veteran who died when I was just eight years old. I have only vague impressions of him as a kindly but sombre man. Photographs of him, and his collection of books–mostly war-related novels and poetry from the teens and twenties–are just about my only link to him and hint at a preoccupation with events that were undoubtedly burned into his psyche for the rest of his life. Having his books gives me a sense of connection to him and to the past that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

In our world of disposable culture and e-books, hard-copy books have lost the sense of being significant objects in and of themselves, and I think this is a shame. Although I have an e-reader and find it handy for travelling, I still much prefer curling up with something made of paper than with a cold, hard, electronic screen. But I wonder how many people like me still roam the earth. Although I may be a dinosaur, give me my old books with their dog-eared pages and their whiff of the past any day of the week.

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