You need an editor in your head: instalment 1
In younger days I used to think that producing written work of good quality would get easier and easier with increased experience. Wrong! The more we know about writing, the higher we set the bar for ourselves. Gradually acquiring a fuller awareness of what first-rate work demands, we become more exacting. After decades of publication, I still find that writing well remains a real challenge – but at least I now recognise how important it is to keep an editor in my head.
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Inexperienced writers commonly misunderstand the nature and scope of editing. Shouldn’t it wait until the end of the main writing process? No. Shouldn’t it be left to an expert professional employed by the author or the publisher? No.
Experience has taught me that we must edit our own work as we go.
This doesn’t mean fussing over every sentence before we permit ourselves to move on to the next, but it does mean trying to write with a double consciousness, so that the creative impulse goes hand in hand with a critical awareness. Why so? Unless there’s an editor in your head as you write, scrutinising details while simultaneously keeping the larger picture in view, it’s likely that the way you shape your work will undervalue two fundamental things: engaging the interest of readers and maintaining their confidence.
Of course the first reader you must impress – not counting loyal friends, who will usually find it hard to be frank about your manuscript – is a prospective publisher. If you don’t score a success there, other readers will never materialise; and if your work isn’t already highly polished when you submit it, the publisher won’t give it a positive reception.
Even if you succeed in getting past first base, gone are the days when you could rely on a publisher’s editor to tidy it all up for you. Of course there are some highly skilful professional editors out there. (One substantial benefit of being in the UWA Publishing stable is that two excellent editors have worked with me to ensure that every detail in the final version of each of my novels is as polished as I can possibly make it. I’m indebted to Linda Martin for help with The End of Longing and That Untravelled World, and to Nicole Young for help with The Mind’s Own Place.)
You may be lucky enough to get your work not only accepted but also put into the hands of a really astute, diligent editorial person. But you can’t rely on that. The book industry faces financial challenges these days, and hard-pressed publishers sometimes cut corners (though mine doesn’t, fortunately). So if you haven’t taken all possible care with your writing, it may go forth into the world in a form you’ll later regret. Having something in print should be a happy experience, but the exhilaration will soon evaporate if reviewers and readers are turned off by defects that scrupulous editing should have fixed.
The principle of incorporating an editorial attitude into our own writing is just as relevant to an advanced practitioner as to a novice. It means spending a lot of time meticulously checking and revising what we’ve drafted. If we steam ahead with a first draft, never hesitating, we may eventually find we’ve gone so far down the wrong road that it’s almost impossible to retrieve the situation. On the other hand, anxiously fiddling with every sentence as we go can be an inhibiting compulsion, which never allows a creative momentum to develop. So it’s a matter of balance.
The editor in your head should keep a critical eye on three aspects of your writing: its content, its structure and its texture. In a sequel to this post I’ll explain what I think these should involve…
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