Working with an Editor

It’s a question I have heard many times: How, folks ask, can an editor tell you what to do? It’s your story, after all. Surely you know better than anyone else what it needs!

And, of course, it is my story, and before an editor ever sees it I’ve invested everything in it that I have to give. Or at least I think I have. But I’ve learned to equate what an editor brings to my story with what a vocal coach does for a singer. She stands outside my piece and hears/sees it whole. Especially, she sees what’s missing, often what lives so deeply inside me that I don’t recognize that it isn’t yet on the page. Her questions reopen the door to my story so I can climb back inside and discover it new.

That, of course, is the ideal, and editors are human, just as writers are, so not every interaction is ideal. But in a career that spans forty years I have worked with dozens of different editors, and nearly every encounter I’ve had has strengthened the piece we worked on together. Some editors have simply let my manuscript stand without requesting revision, though that’s been true only of picture books. When I submit a picture book manuscript it has been closely worked, and it’s possible to polish four-hundred or so words to so high a shine that they don’t need revision. But I would be disappointed if an editor accepted a longer work of mine without bringing her own insights to the page. However long I’ve labored over it, I will, inevitably, have missed important pieces, and when I hear what’s lacking from reviewers I’ll no longer have a chance to respond.

The only editing I find difficult to accept is the kind that tries to fix a problem for me instead of merely defining it so I can do the fixing. I want to be told what works and what doesn’t and then given the room to climb back into my story. Most editors do precisely that.

Over the years I’ve often been told that I’m a “real professional.” What that means, I’ve decided, is that I don’t make trouble. I listen and keep my mouth shut and do what’s needed. And it works. I’ve never had any book published where I regretted changes I’d made under an editor’s supervision.

Here’s the simple rule I operate under that gives me the label of “professional.” First, when an editor speaks, I listen. I don’t challenge or defend even if there is a challenge going on inside my head. I just listen. I ask questions, and I listen some more. Then I sit down with the edits and go through them thoughtfully and with care. They fall, I find, into three categories.

For most my response is, Oh, of course. I should have thought of that. And those I fix with gratitude.

For some I think, Well . . . I can see that it could be the way you are suggesting, though I’m not quite convinced your idea is better than mine. Still, your way wouldn’t diminish what I’m doing here, and since you have the advantage of perspective, I’ll do it. And I make the change without comment.

And then comes the final—and much smaller—category. That’s where I’m certain the editor’s suggestion isn’t a fit, where I believe making the change would actually diminish my work. That’s the place, and the only place, that I hold my ground. And because I’m not arguing every other point, because I’m clearly responding fully to the editor’s intent, those points rarely become a matter of contention. In the few cases where an editor continued to want a change as strongly as I didn’t want it, we always found a compromise.

We’re told again and again that editors now have little time to edit, that the day of Maxwell Perkins and Ursula Nordstrom is over. But however they find time to do it—in the evenings at home is my best guess—I have rarely felt that an editor paid insufficient attention to a manuscript of mine. In fact, again and again I have been grateful for the improved book that has emerged under an editor’s guidance.

Working with an editor? It’s one of the blessings of this good career.