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Red Pens and Invisible Ink: Editors do their work behind the scenes

• icantdrive55 9y ago
  This article needs an editor. I can't always be positive. Maybe I'm having a bad day? Funnel. Condense. Then condense more. I once had an English teacher whom I thought was a Red pen nut job. I'd get my papers back, and they looked like an abortion. Now--I realize he was just doing his job.
• noobiemcfoob 9y ago
  Much of this relationship exists in one form or another with coding, though perhaps a little inverted, with writers and architects. When you're writing alone for yourself, publishing or not, you can with certitude feel 100% ownership. The second you open the door just a crack to another set of eyes, that question is less certain. Add in individual egos and you have the cocktail that endlessly spawns "creative differences"
• kqr 9y ago
  Where have I heard a quote along the lines of "a writer is someone who isn't good enough at writing to become an editor"? I've been looking for the source without finding it.
  • hammock 9y ago
    Not sure. A lot of writers hate editors. But I would say "good editors know why they are bad writers."
    • ska 9y ago
      A lot of writers hate editors, it's true. But almost all of them desperately need to be edited.
• woliveirajr 9y ago
  > At time of Browne’s second interment, the vicar recorded the age of the deceased as "317 years." That's the last line from the Cabinet magazine that is mentioned.
• rashkov 9y ago
  If you found this interesting, here are some really insightful tributes to and stories about Bob Silvers of the New York Review of Books -- a world-class editor who passed away recently: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/05/11/robert-silvers-tributes/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/05/11/robert-silvers-tr...