Something I’ve noticed during my time in publishing is that the editing process is not what I thought it was — and probably not what it should be. I’ll add the disclaimer that my perspective is obviously limited, but I’ve heard similar things anecdotally from around the publishing industry. I’ll also add that there are legitimate reasons that editing is not what it should be: namely, limited resources. I don’t claim to have any solutions to that significant obstacle. But I do have a manifesto for what editing would look like (and not look like) in an ideal world.
- Your book is probably already brilliant.
There’s a reason you’re so excited about your book: it really is brilliant. You provided form to your formless imagination, and it now has its own life in words that other people can read. You have done nothing less than immortalized a piece of your soul. No editor could ever do this for you. - People will probably not be able to tell that your book is brilliant without editing.
It’s also true that people might read your book and not sense any of that because all of that brilliance is obscured through ineffective writing. A good editor will be someone who recognizes the brilliance of your book while also acting as a less-enlightened reader — and bridging that gap, guiding you in helping your book to convey its brilliance to a broader audience. Sorry: you are inherently able to do this for your own book. - Editing is not a one-time exchange.
A common perception of editing is that it means the author handing the manuscript over to the editor, and the editor marks it up and returns it for the author. This “process” is about as likely to lead to entrenched conflict between the author and the editor as it to lead to any positive, meaningful change. - Editing is ongoing and relational.
Editing only really works if it’s a conversation. Power should be equally distributed between author and editor, so every exchange should be give-and-take. The relationship between the two people involved should be at the center of the process. - Editing is not a quick, supplemental step in the writing process.
Deadlines are realities in the world of book creation, but the power of editing will be severely limited if it’s forced into a formulaic length of time, as though it were a standardized segment of an assembly line. Editing is more than quality control or due diligence on the part of the publisher before the book goes to the printer. - Editing should take longer than writing.
Longer lengths of time are intrinsically valuable with editing, just as they are with writing. Breaks in the process are where the best thinking happens. If the author needs these pauses in work while writing, the editor needs them too — the mind must work creatively in editing as it does in writing.
- Editing is not narrow.
Proofreaders are valuable people in the creation of a book. But editors are not proofreaders. The idea that editors catch “errors” is a bad stereotype. This reductionism seems part of a larger trend of deprofessionalization — the attempt to remove gray areas from expert-level work. - Editing is big-picture.
Editors must be working positively toward an artistic vision that is subjective and non-formulaic. This vision will differ from the author’s, but the interaction between the two can provide the alchemy needed for editing to be truly transformational. - Editing is not destructive.
When editors at their worst, they become the author’s worst nightmare: someone out to pick apart their work until a skeletal vestige remains. When editors serve only legalistic directives — like getting a book to a “readable” length — this is exactly the sort of dynamic established. The editor’s desk becomes a butcher’s block where entire chapters can end up discarded so that a book can become “marketable.”
- Editing is generative.
True editing should always be adding to a book, even when it is deleting words. The question should always be at the forefront of the editor’s mind: what would be created if this change were made? And if the relational aspect of editing is honored, the editor’s work may compel the author to create further, enacting a virtuous cycle of mutually inspired generativity. Thus, the editor becomes a co-creator without ever diminishing the author’s creative ownership.