Editors -- Do They Have Value
Do Editors Have Value?
This question came up for me, because of something a fellow author recently posted on an author's forum. She said, and I'm paraphrasing, that anyone who lets an editor rewrite or change an author's work, gets just what they deserve. That they, as an author, personally would never allow an editor to get their hands on their writing, or let them change the story and so muck it up.
I have to strongly disagree with this idea. For one thing, it just sounds incredibly arrogant to me. And for another, the publishing system has worked well not just for decades, but for several centuries. Editors are the midwives, so to speak, of manuscripts.
They have to be. Why? Well, because we writers are often too close to our own work. I think every sentence I write is valuable, because I put a lot of effort into every sentence! But editors, good, qualified editors (and there are a lot out there), can give us serious help in that regard. They have a fresh eye, the background of having read and worked on many books and they keep the public’s tastes in mind. And that’s important!
I think a good editor can make a moderate work good, and a good work great. I mean, come on -- would publishers pay for editors if they could get by without them? Editors, apparently, are needed. And let’s be frank here, not every word that drops from our lips as authors is really as precious as gold, however much we might like to personally think so. And we need someone to tell us that sometimes -- like editors.And as anyone who has been a member of these peer-group on line critique groups can say, there are a lot of would-be writers, many young (teens, sometimes), who are totally inexperienced. Sadly, many are without a good background in English/writing/story-telling, or even having finished a high school education. I know, because I’ve had to personally deal with some who were real “lulus’ in this regard!
I was in a sci-fi authors group. And one young reviewer there critiqued a story I had written about a planet that always had one face permanently facing its giant planet neighbor around which it revolved. The smaller planet was gravitationally tidally locked with the larger. The writer who commented on my story (very young) said that such a thing was “terribly unbelievable and not at all scientific.” I pointed out to him that the earth and moon have just such a gravitational arrangement with the moon always having one face toward the earth. I told him that this close-to-home example was where my idea had come from. OOPS! Grade school science stuff and he didn’t know it!!!! Worse, he felt qualified to comment negatively on it! "Where ignorance is bliss a little knowledge is a dangerous thing..." It would seem so!But this points out some authors’ rank ignorance on many subjects they write about, and it is editors who have to catch the resulting mistakes. For example, I had one author’s story say “He couldn’t ‘separate the sweet from the chaft,’” instead of “the wheat from the chaff.” He really didn’t know any better -- didn’t know that sweet isn’t and can't be separated from chaft because there is no such thing as "chaft," didn’t know what real "chaff" even was!?! And that it was "wheat" and not "sweet!" Oh, Lord! Where did he go to school?
And how many authors write “I seen,” instead of “I saw????” And I’m not talking about just the dialog for a particular character here. Another author (would-be one?) used the phrase “charged like a bullet a-gate,” when what he meant to say was “he charged like a bull at a gate.” Apparently, many such authors don’t even know such common things as clichés, when and how to use them, if at all, and then how to say them correctly! Again, editors have to catch this stuff -- lots of it! In addition, apparently many would-be authors don’t know what a fragment or a run-on sentence is, because they use them all the time in their narrative, and not just in dialog. Many have no concept of what a passive phrase is versus an active one, or that publishers much prefer the one over the other!I mean, just because someone decides to write, doesn’t mean there any good at it yet! I’m a firm believer that one has to develop writing skills, learn the tools of one’s own trade. This is a profession, like any other. It takes training. It takes practice. It takes hard work, research, and lots of it! This may seem terribly obvious, to the point of being trite to most of us as authors, but even so, it absolutely astounds me how many writers haven’t even begun to acquire such skills, and then have the nerve to lash out at an editor who is only trying to help them make their story not just better, but maybe even just readable!Authors who know better, know all this stuff, and who have already striven, developed themselves, should, of course, always have final say over their work, but so should the publisher and/or editor, with regard to whether they want it or not, or feel changes are necessary, or not! Anyone in the writing/publishing chain has the right to say, --“no, that’s just not for me.”
For instance, publishers may not want to print your work without certain changes, and that is their choice. After all, they are taking the monetary risk most times. Just as it is our choice to decline a publisher, if we don’t like how they are dealing with us. We as authors have that choice. But then, so do they as editors, and/or publishers.The crux of the thing here is that we should only make such momentous decisions, as authors, if we truly have the experience, the knowledge, the wherewithal to know the difference! For some unsung, unknown, uneducated author to challenge their hardworking, long-time experienced editor, without benefit of knowing any better, well -- that's just stupid to me! Fight with an editor, and you better have good, sound, reasonable arguments as to why! After all, we are authors. They are editors, and they (most of the times) know their stuff! Just as we pride ourselves on the fact that we do.
So, as for editors -- by and large, my hat is off to them. There may be some incompetent and petty ones who dwell on the wrong things to the exclusion of all else, but there are far more that are learned, educated, have tons of experience, and can help us along the way, make our works better. Just as there are many good editors, and some bad, so too, with authors. There are the great, the good, the mediocre, and the just plain terrible! Such is life, I suppose.
But to use another cliché, “let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater” when it comes to editors. After all, where would we be if editors had done the same with their massive slush piles (in which our works rested for some time, no doubt), and just tossed them all out, without reading them, without some benefit of the doubt for us writers?Would we still be writing now if none of them cared to even bother reading our work, suggesting improvements for it? I doubt it. And here’s a thought; if sometimes an editor really focuses on our basic grammar/writing skills to a great extent, maybe we should just ask ourselves if those skills need improvement. A little self examination never hurts. Even if we “think” we know our stuff. But then, I do know my stuff so none of that "stuff" applies to me!!!! That's a joke, in case you didn't realize it. Because seriously, we can all improve, no matter how good we think we are now.
