Yesterday’s column seems to have touched a nerve. Judging by the readership numbers and the back-channel communications, a lot of writers seem to have a lot of questions about the care and feeding of these strange creatures known as “editors.”
As it happens, over the course of forty-some years in the writing racket I have gotten to know a lot of editors, some quite well, and eventually became one myself. This morning I began to write a column on the subject but it quickly mushroomed beyond containment in a single column. There are so many different kinds of skills that fall under the job title of “editor”—acquisition, development, managing, copy, production—and the people who fill these roles can themselves be so very different from each other.
I have worked with good editors; great editors; a few absolutely brilliant editors; as well as a few who ranged from merely bad to unspeakable. I have worked with editors who had absolutely no business working in SF/F, because they despised the genre, despised the people who wrote it, and looked down with contempt on the people who read it. (Why then were they working for a genre publisher? Well, they wanted to work in publishing but couldn’t land a job at St. Martin’s or Little, Brown.) As I have worked to develop my craft skills I have done a lot of reading and made something of a study of the seminal editors who deformed shaped this genre we call… whatever it is that we call it. (Hugo Gernsback wanted to call it “scientifiction” but no one else did.)
My question for you this morning is: do you find this subject as interesting as I do, and would you like me to write more about my experiences with editors and what I’ve learned?
The lines are now open. Let me know.
Thanks,
~brb
8 comments:
Do eeeet
I agree with "Karl said"!
Could you do one or two CONCEPTS at a time rather than a complete download of all your wisdom? Maybe do it by verses, sort of like Solomon or the Psalms...
Guy
I am all ears!
@Guy -- That was why I asked this question. Once I realized that the column I'd begun writing was growing out of control, I wanted to get some sense of whether this topic was worth turning into a series of much shorter columns.
THIS is something interesting to me.
That’d be interesting!
Do it. I'd love some great anecdotes from an editor's perspective. You've shared some anecdotes with me over the years that would be quite entertaining and instructive if shared in a column.
I’m curious as to where the line is between editing and writing. At what point is the editor carving the piece of furniture while the writer is just sweeping up the sawdust?
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