Editer's Donut Hlep!

I still remember my shock and indignation the first time my brother informed me about the role of an editor.  I was sixteen(ish).  Old enough to know that I wanted to write.  Young enough that I had no clue what that endevour might entail. We were out walking the dog and talking about important things: comic books, D&D, science fiction, fantasy and, of course, writing.




Someone had dropped the ball, or sold out, or jumped the shark.  I can't remember exactly what the catalyst was, but it inspired me to announce something to the effect of: "Well, nobody's going to touch my words.  Not in my book.  That's ridiculous!"




And, sadly, I truly meant that.  At sixteen(ish) I was not truly aware of the difference between talent and craft.  The thought that another person would be intruding on my creative territory really seemed like a violation.




"It's not like Asimov had an editor!  Or Tolkien.  Or Stephen R. Donaldson.  Or..."




"Sure they did," my brother said, without pause.




WHAT? 




That was the bombshell.  The thought that Isaac Asimov did not personally pen and arrange every single word of The Foundation Trilogy or Caves of Steel or even Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids, the realization that someone helped him write those seminal stories of my youth, it shattered me.  




How could they not be talented enough to write those books by themselves? I wondered.




I absorbed that information, and over the years I (reluctantly) accepted the reality that critical and specific feedback could actually be quite helpful in the writing process.   I still attributed it mostly to slip ups and typos.



Sure.  Slip ups and typos could happen to anybody.  Good thing to nip those in the bud, I reasoned. 




Several years later, one of the alpha readers of In Siege of Daylight put this acceptance to the test.  He not only provided some valuable help catching typos, but he actually (shudder) suggested that I take out certain words!  Words that I had written!  I stared and stared at his emails, as if trying to comprehend a foreign language.




But that's a good word, I thought.  Why would I take that out?




I experimented a little.  I lost an adverb here and there. I took out a flowery description there.  But I couldn't quite execute the number of innocent nouns and verbs that he suggested.  A few of them died an ugly death of deletion, but most of them lived on to needless modify a perfectly good verb another day.




Several more years later, I was polishing up the now decade-old manuscript of In Siege of Daylight and I pulled out those old emails with their sacrilegious edits, and I took a look at the suggestions with fresh eyes.  I realized that most of his suggestions were actually pretty good.  Adverbs died by the thousands (okay, probably dozens).  When I took out most of those words, it really did help, or at the least, it forced me to look at a more creative way to state what I'd originally written.  A huge chunk of ego died in those days.  




Around this same time, I was posting these re-polished chapters to a site called Writer's Cafe, hoping to get some feedback or even more edits.  Mostly, this did not work out.  Useful critique is quite the elusive beast, I found.  It was a year or more before I started getting reviews/edits from another user called "Weaver."  It actually started with a different piece, Greyspace, which I'm finishing up now, and then moved on to my old, abandoned epic fantasy.  




It was clear right away that Weaver was powerful in the Ways of Grammar.  Some of the suggestions were obvious fixes, and I  applied those immediately.  Others made me stop and think.  Hesitantly, I experimented with applying the changes and re-reading the passages in question.



As it turned out, most of these changes made great sense and actually improved the writing.  At first glance, I'd thought some of the suggestions were small and was tempted to shrug them off.  I'm glad I didn't.  Suddenly, this discarded old book which had for so long represented the soul-crushing failure of an unrealized dream was coming to life again.  I was enjoying the process of re-reading it, and relishing the improved flow of the dialogue and the narrative.  And the improvements were exponential.  For every edit Weaver suggested, it inspired me to make more and more changes of my own. What before had been adequate prose was now more clear and concise and I could feel the book finally coming together.  The missing pieces that had eluded me for so long were falling into place like Tetris pieces dropping from the sky.   (Slowly, slowly dropping from the sky, as my wife might clarify, much like the earliest levels of Tetris).



In short, I have no doubt that my editor saved this book , and by extension the upcoming sequels, from the slush heap of old writings that clutter my hard drive.  Weaver didn't just fix comma splices and dialogue tags, but provided a sounding board for plot and character and narrative flow and world-building.  Truly, a partner in crafting the novel.  So much so, that I feel any success of In Siege of Daylight I must share with Weaver (and converesely, if it fails miserably it will be completely Weaver's fault).  :D



So... thank you to my brother for breaking the news to me, and to my alpha-reader for slaughtering adverbs, and to Weaver for making In Siege of Daylight the best that it can be.




Shameless Plug:
Incidentally, if you are looking for a good editor of science fiction and fantasy fare, and you can tolerate diverse references to everything written in the genre, insane attention to detail and lots of weird witty humor, you should consider hiring my editor to be your editor.



Details here: http://northofandover.wordpress.com