My first boss in publishing once said something that I have subscribed to ever since: “Everybody needs an editor. Especially the editor.”
The subtext of this aphorism is twofold: 1. Every writer’s work can be improved if another competent writer offers editing suggestions. 2. Experienced writers (who are often editors) can become complacent about the quality of their writing.
For these reasons, I have always put whatever I’ve written at the mercy of another writer and, in most cases, accepted any changes suggested. When an editor alters your writing, the resulting improvements are often head-slappingly obvious or (better yet) a revelation.
So I once again recommend my boss’s wisdom with a single caveat: the person editing your work must be worthy of your respect. In other words, he or she must know as much or more about writing than you do.
Over the years – both in magazine publishing and in the world of fiction – my writing has occasionally fallen into the hands of ‘editors’ who simply don’t know what they’re doing. This ineptitude can stem from a lack of editing experience, not reading widely enough, being unworldly, or a combination of the three. I can’t speak for other writers, but when one of these ‘editors’ changes something of mine for the worse, I just want to destroy him. Verbally or physically, I don’t really mind.
It’s a combination of annoyance and disbelief that makes me react that way. Annoyance that an incompetent twit is successfully masquerading as a professional editor, and disbelief that an individual so clueless would dare meddle with something I crafted to read a particular way.
The good thing about writing fiction is that mostly the author has to approve the changes and can push back on anything where the editor has missed the point or got something wrong. In the journalism world, however, the article is usually published without further consultation. That’s how it has to be – otherwise deadlines would never be met – but if you’re lumped with a dodgy editor, the results can make you want to tear your hair out.
The simple rule I try to follow as an editor is this. If something doesn’t appear to make sense, I ask myself if it doesn’t make sense because I don’t understand it. If there is any possibility that is the case, I will go back to the writer and query him about it. We live in a world of mobile phones and email; it’s not hard to do. Oftentimes it will just be a typo or syntax error, but because I checked, the writer doesn’t have to read over his published article and discover the editor has effected an erroneous change that makes him (the writer) look like a clot.
This is especially true of idiom and dialogue – and yes, an editor who changed my use of idiom occasioned this salutary rant. Informal language, dialect, and patois can differ from suburb to suburb, let alone state to state, so to change something someone has written because you aren’t familiar with it is pure ignorance. Which, as I mentioned above, is usually the root of the problem.