5 ms·

What Writers and Editors Do

102 points by samclemens 6y ago

voidhorse 6y ago
I was in a writing group at one point and one of the members of the group happened to have studied Gordon Lish extensively; I think studied under him directly for a bit and more or less worshiped the guy as a guru. It was kind of an interesting dynamic--here was an aspiring writer whose hero was an editor, but it shows Lish's impact on American letters. From what I've understood from others, Lish was (again, this is just hearsay) kind of a dick. The guy in the writing group that loved him was definitely a dick (no hearsay). It was a small group formed with the intention of taking a more positive, but still honest, tack to critiquing each other's works, since it can often be such a harsh experience and the passion, scrutiny, and energy of people's critiques often outweigh the passion, scrutiny, and energy they put into their writing--this guy did not want to buy into the rest of the group's philosophy. Now, whenever I read anything Lish has touched I can't help but feel it comes off sort of dickish and he is the embodiment of the cruel, unrepentant editor/critic to me, though undeservedly so.
- DanielBMarkham 6y ago
  I've been a member of a writing group a couple of times very early in my career. My spouse was in one quite recently. I have very mixed feelings about your comment. In my experience in the arts, specifically music, photography, and writing, good artists are good artists because they know all of the detail and nuance of their work and they continue to be dicks to themselves. A good artist is never happy no matter what they create or what the reaction is, otherwise they would stop improving. Beethoven once famously played a piano recital so poignant that many in the audience were weeping. When finished, he stood up and laughed at them for being so simple-minded and easily manipulated. Of course, that's just a broad generalization, and there's no excuse for being a dick to others. (Unless they ask for it). I think, however, it draws in stark relief the central question in your comment: are writers' groups for encouragement or improvement? You mentioned a bit of both, but to my untrained ear that sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. Being just motivated enough to produce various works of art that most people in your social group would never criticize to your face? That's not a personal goal. So I think we're back to the topic of this essay, editors. Editors are there to negotiate what the author wants to do with how the world at large can consume it. They're not there to create or give their own voice. They're there to assume the role of author and advise them what needs to happen for others to better consume the art they make. I had a friend once who loved taking pictures, as I do. We were mods on a local forum and both of us loved sharing our pictures. (This was in the early blogger days) Eventually news and politics started taking over, so we both left. He went on to do his own thing. I'll never forget what a mutual friend said about him: he just wants people to praise his pictures. Nothing else really matters. He ended up making a bit of a living doing just that. He never became famous but he understood that it was the social praise he was chasing and not the art. I consider a lot of the stuff he did cartoonish but it worked for him. To your point, he became good enough for his social group to be praised and talked about, but no more. My best editors have always been both inside my head and brutal. They knew where I was going and they weren't shy about redlining the shit out of my text to help me get there. That hurt my feelings a lot and another person might have given up. I found it transformative. ymmv
  - voidhorse 6y ago
    Thanks for your comment! You have some great points. >In my experience in the arts, specifically music, photography, and writing, good artists are good artists because they know all of the detail and nuance of their work and they continue to be dicks to themselves. A good artist is never happy no matter what they create or what the reaction is, otherwise they would stop improving. > are writers' groups for encouragement or improvement? You mentioned a bit of both, but to my untrained ear that sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. Being just motivated enough to produce various works of art that most people in your social group would never criticize to your face? That's not a personal goal. Totally, that's where the "but honest" part comes in. I still have the drafts this group looked at and they are well decorated with both comments and proofreading/editorial marks. I think the distinction come in in how you communicate these things. There's this sort of mythos around "the artist" which stems from this "artist as genius/artist as madman" figure that people tend to use as justification/an excuse for a lot of bs and bad behavior in the arts. For example, a lot of artists tend to ape other artists when they first start out. One could and should call them out on this, but it's about how you go about it. You could be a total asshole and tell them their art is worthless, it's just an imitation of X, maybe they should go home, etc. etc. Or you could express the same thing while giving them some kind of encouragement, such as "it mostly seems to pull a lot of elements from X, but I want to see more of you in the piece, perhaps take another look at aspect Y of your work, as it seems more genuine--can you amplify it, can you go deeper on it?" etc. When I'm critiquing someone's work, I try to constantly keep in mind that my job is to basically do what you are saying the duty of a good editor is--I have to see where the person is going not where they are at, and I have to do whatever best helps them get there. For some people that might be negative reinforcement, "this is worthless, etc." but in my experience for the vast majority of people that isn't the best way. Most people do much better if you tell them what's wrong in a neutral way and help keep them eager by letting them know what's actually working in their piece. Sure, that may mean they don't have the character of a Beethoven, but most of us aren't going to be epoch-defining artists--and I think you should always try to measure an artist in the context of pushing their own oevure forward instead of holding them up to some ridiculous detached standard of "the greats" you happen to admire (which will result in cheaply imitative art anyway, and which is what this individual was doing w/ Gordon Lish).
WalterGR 6y ago
As a fan of good technical writing, I’ve entertained the thought that technical editing could be interesting. Is that a viable career choice?
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I would expect not, in that a viable career needs to have enough of a range of workplaces that you can move between of varying sizes, responsibilities, and pay. I would expect only big technical publishers would actually have 'technical editors' and there would not be many of those positions available. So a thousand positions available as English language technical editor is the most I would expect. That's not a career to shoot for (in the way editor, programmer or technical writer can be) I would think a technical editor job would be limited to a relatively few large technical publishers, and in my readings on the subject I understand an editor there would be a normal editor who sends out books and articles to technical experts (in book's subject matter) for review of technical quality.
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    Well, there is a massive increase in new authors, and the enlightened ones among them realise that their work needs editing to help it stand out from the crowd. As a result there is an emerging market for author support, including editing, acquiring an agent, knowing how to submit manuscripts to a publisher if you are not self-publishing, etc, etc. The people supplying these services generally sit outside the big publishing organisations themselves.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I doubt even big technical publishers have much if anything in the way of technical editors on staff. For one thing, the same person is probably not going to be able to technical edit a book on Linux internals and Javascript. More typical is they'll reach out to people in their Rolodex and offer them a few hundred dollars to do a technical edit on a book in their area of expertise. ADDED: Of course, larger vendors do have documentation departments and there are people in those departments who manage technical writers, review docs, etc. But that may or may not be what's of interest.
KineticLensman 6y ago
I spent a lot of time doing technical editing professionally – checking that docs met their stated objectives, that they were logically structured, that they satisfied house styles, etc, etc. Recently a friend of mine has written their first novel and I offered to have a look as an editor. They can actually write well, spell correctly, etc, so the ‘technical’ aspects were very easy – there were very few typos, ungrammatical sentences, etc. Instead, I found myself looking for things like * situations where the PoV character knew things that were actually hidden from them in the plot (e.g. something happening simultaneously in a different location) * situations where characters acted unexpectedly out-of-character for no obvious reason * places where the timeline or scene jumped unexpectedly (e.g. in successive paragraphs in the same chapter) * phrases that were overused * whether something that was supposed to be a surprise for the reader had actually been signposted. I’d love to know if there is a checklist of issues for fiction writing in general: not standard plots / characters / etc, but mistakes like those above to look out for. (I certainly didn’t find it in the article).
- zombie_owlbear 6y ago
  As a writer, I can tell you you're doing very valuable work for your friend. The vast majority of people can't tell you when something's wrong with the writing even if they want to, let alone point a finger at it. I don't have a list, but here's something that I dealt with recently: * Is everything sufficiently described/explained? - Environment descriptions: Is it clear where the scene is set? - Character motivation: Does the reader understand why they decided to do <x>? - Are there enough clues for the conclusion / reveal / twist to make sense? - What day is it? Whenever a reader finds something confusing, it's usually a matter of that thing not having been described enough. * Are the characters distinctive enough? - Have I described each in a non-perfunctory way? - Could I tell who's saying which line if I removed the dialogue tags? - Is someone just a background character when they ought to be a person? * Can a paragraph be cut down into a sentence without losing anything? Edit: * Is there enough tension throughout the story? Is the main character lacking personal stakes in the plot?
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
qz_ 6y ago
I'm sorry, his book is called My Struggle? What?
- jacobolus 6y ago
  The Norwegian title is Min Kamp. Clearly an intentional choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausgård_novels) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausgård_novels)
kashyapc 6y ago
An anecdote from a more modest realm on the unrepayable value of editors: I recently volunteered to write my first couple of articles for the always-excellent LWN.net. As expected, I went through several rounds of editing with them. This was after several of my own "look again on a fresh morning" rounds of private editing. The process was quite instructive. I benefited from a range of "bug fixes" from the fine editors—suggestions to make the lede paragraph more robust; small rephrasings that greatly improve readability; and seemingly minor edits that contribute to the overall structure and coherency. The value of an experienced and judicious editor is hard to describe well. (Thanks Jake, et al!) I relished the back-and-forth review rounds, good-natured arguments, and "nitpicks" that greatly benefited the end product. As William Zinsser puts it, "Rewriting is where the game is won or lost; rewriting is the essence of writing." - - - For those who're curious, I did this as part of KVM Forum[1] conference round-up for LWN. Here's[2] one of the two articles; it should be accessible without login. If you're the patient kind, I certainly recommend contributing to LWN. [1] https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kvm-forum/ https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kvm-forum/ [2] Challenges in protecting virtual machines from untrusted entities — https://lwn.net/Articles/838488/ https://lwn.net/Articles/838488/

102 points by samclemens 6y ago

I was in a writing group at one point and one of the members of the group happened to have studied Gordon Lish extensively; I think studied under him directly for a bit and more or less worshiped the guy as a guru. It was kind of an interesting dynamic--here was an aspiring writer whose hero was an editor, but it shows Lish's impact on American letters. From what I've understood from others, Lish was (again, this is just hearsay) kind of a dick. The guy in the writing group that loved him was definitely a dick (no hearsay). It was a small group formed with the intention of taking a more positive, but still honest, tack to critiquing each other's works, since it can often be such a harsh experience and the passion, scrutiny, and energy of people's critiques often outweigh the passion, scrutiny, and energy they put into their writing--this guy did not want to buy into the rest of the group's philosophy. Now, whenever I read anything Lish has touched I can't help but feel it comes off sort of dickish and he is the embodiment of the cruel, unrepentant editor/critic to me, though undeservedly so.

DanielBMarkham 6y ago
I've been a member of a writing group a couple of times very early in my career. My spouse was in one quite recently. I have very mixed feelings about your comment. In my experience in the arts, specifically music, photography, and writing, good artists are good artists because they know all of the detail and nuance of their work and they continue to be dicks to themselves. A good artist is never happy no matter what they create or what the reaction is, otherwise they would stop improving. Beethoven once famously played a piano recital so poignant that many in the audience were weeping. When finished, he stood up and laughed at them for being so simple-minded and easily manipulated. Of course, that's just a broad generalization, and there's no excuse for being a dick to others. (Unless they ask for it). I think, however, it draws in stark relief the central question in your comment: are writers' groups for encouragement or improvement? You mentioned a bit of both, but to my untrained ear that sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. Being just motivated enough to produce various works of art that most people in your social group would never criticize to your face? That's not a personal goal. So I think we're back to the topic of this essay, editors. Editors are there to negotiate what the author wants to do with how the world at large can consume it. They're not there to create or give their own voice. They're there to assume the role of author and advise them what needs to happen for others to better consume the art they make. I had a friend once who loved taking pictures, as I do. We were mods on a local forum and both of us loved sharing our pictures. (This was in the early blogger days) Eventually news and politics started taking over, so we both left. He went on to do his own thing. I'll never forget what a mutual friend said about him: he just wants people to praise his pictures. Nothing else really matters. He ended up making a bit of a living doing just that. He never became famous but he understood that it was the social praise he was chasing and not the art. I consider a lot of the stuff he did cartoonish but it worked for him. To your point, he became good enough for his social group to be praised and talked about, but no more. My best editors have always been both inside my head and brutal. They knew where I was going and they weren't shy about redlining the shit out of my text to help me get there. That hurt my feelings a lot and another person might have given up. I found it transformative. ymmv
- voidhorse 6y ago
  Thanks for your comment! You have some great points. >In my experience in the arts, specifically music, photography, and writing, good artists are good artists because they know all of the detail and nuance of their work and they continue to be dicks to themselves. A good artist is never happy no matter what they create or what the reaction is, otherwise they would stop improving. > are writers' groups for encouragement or improvement? You mentioned a bit of both, but to my untrained ear that sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. Being just motivated enough to produce various works of art that most people in your social group would never criticize to your face? That's not a personal goal. Totally, that's where the "but honest" part comes in. I still have the drafts this group looked at and they are well decorated with both comments and proofreading/editorial marks. I think the distinction come in in how you communicate these things. There's this sort of mythos around "the artist" which stems from this "artist as genius/artist as madman" figure that people tend to use as justification/an excuse for a lot of bs and bad behavior in the arts. For example, a lot of artists tend to ape other artists when they first start out. One could and should call them out on this, but it's about how you go about it. You could be a total asshole and tell them their art is worthless, it's just an imitation of X, maybe they should go home, etc. etc. Or you could express the same thing while giving them some kind of encouragement, such as "it mostly seems to pull a lot of elements from X, but I want to see more of you in the piece, perhaps take another look at aspect Y of your work, as it seems more genuine--can you amplify it, can you go deeper on it?" etc. When I'm critiquing someone's work, I try to constantly keep in mind that my job is to basically do what you are saying the duty of a good editor is--I have to see where the person is going not where they are at, and I have to do whatever best helps them get there. For some people that might be negative reinforcement, "this is worthless, etc." but in my experience for the vast majority of people that isn't the best way. Most people do much better if you tell them what's wrong in a neutral way and help keep them eager by letting them know what's actually working in their piece. Sure, that may mean they don't have the character of a Beethoven, but most of us aren't going to be epoch-defining artists--and I think you should always try to measure an artist in the context of pushing their own oevure forward instead of holding them up to some ridiculous detached standard of "the greats" you happen to admire (which will result in cheaply imitative art anyway, and which is what this individual was doing w/ Gordon Lish).

WalterGR 6y ago

As a fan of good technical writing, I’ve entertained the thought that technical editing could be interesting. Is that a viable career choice?

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I would expect not, in that a viable career needs to have enough of a range of workplaces that you can move between of varying sizes, responsibilities, and pay. I would expect only big technical publishers would actually have 'technical editors' and there would not be many of those positions available. So a thousand positions available as English language technical editor is the most I would expect. That's not a career to shoot for (in the way editor, programmer or technical writer can be) I would think a technical editor job would be limited to a relatively few large technical publishers, and in my readings on the subject I understand an editor there would be a normal editor who sends out books and articles to technical experts (in book's subject matter) for review of technical quality.
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  Well, there is a massive increase in new authors, and the enlightened ones among them realise that their work needs editing to help it stand out from the crowd. As a result there is an emerging market for author support, including editing, acquiring an agent, knowing how to submit manuscripts to a publisher if you are not self-publishing, etc, etc. The people supplying these services generally sit outside the big publishing organisations themselves.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I doubt even big technical publishers have much if anything in the way of technical editors on staff. For one thing, the same person is probably not going to be able to technical edit a book on Linux internals and Javascript. More typical is they'll reach out to people in their Rolodex and offer them a few hundred dollars to do a technical edit on a book in their area of expertise. ADDED: Of course, larger vendors do have documentation departments and there are people in those departments who manage technical writers, review docs, etc. But that may or may not be what's of interest.

KineticLensman 6y ago

I spent a lot of time doing technical editing professionally – checking that docs met their stated objectives, that they were logically structured, that they satisfied house styles, etc, etc. Recently a friend of mine has written their first novel and I offered to have a look as an editor. They can actually write well, spell correctly, etc, so the ‘technical’ aspects were very easy – there were very few typos, ungrammatical sentences, etc. Instead, I found myself looking for things like * situations where the PoV character knew things that were actually hidden from them in the plot (e.g. something happening simultaneously in a different location) * situations where characters acted unexpectedly out-of-character for no obvious reason * places where the timeline or scene jumped unexpectedly (e.g. in successive paragraphs in the same chapter) * phrases that were overused * whether something that was supposed to be a surprise for the reader had actually been signposted. I’d love to know if there is a checklist of issues for fiction writing in general: not standard plots / characters / etc, but mistakes like those above to look out for. (I certainly didn’t find it in the article).

zombie_owlbear 6y ago
As a writer, I can tell you you're doing very valuable work for your friend. The vast majority of people can't tell you when something's wrong with the writing even if they want to, let alone point a finger at it. I don't have a list, but here's something that I dealt with recently: * Is everything sufficiently described/explained? - Environment descriptions: Is it clear where the scene is set? - Character motivation: Does the reader understand why they decided to do <x>? - Are there enough clues for the conclusion / reveal / twist to make sense? - What day is it? Whenever a reader finds something confusing, it's usually a matter of that thing not having been described enough. * Are the characters distinctive enough? - Have I described each in a non-perfunctory way? - Could I tell who's saying which line if I removed the dialogue tags? - Is someone just a background character when they ought to be a person? * Can a paragraph be cut down into a sentence without losing anything? Edit: * Is there enough tension throughout the story? Is the main character lacking personal stakes in the plot?
- KineticLensman 6y ago

qz_ 6y ago

I'm sorry, his book is called My Struggle? What?

jacobolus 6y ago
The Norwegian title is Min Kamp. Clearly an intentional choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausgård_novels) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Struggle_(Knausgård_novels)

kashyapc 6y ago

An anecdote from a more modest realm on the unrepayable value of editors: I recently volunteered to write my first couple of articles for the always-excellent LWN.net. As expected, I went through several rounds of editing with them. This was after several of my own "look again on a fresh morning" rounds of private editing. The process was quite instructive. I benefited from a range of "bug fixes" from the fine editors—suggestions to make the lede paragraph more robust; small rephrasings that greatly improve readability; and seemingly minor edits that contribute to the overall structure and coherency. The value of an experienced and judicious editor is hard to describe well. (Thanks Jake, et al!) I relished the back-and-forth review rounds, good-natured arguments, and "nitpicks" that greatly benefited the end product. As William Zinsser puts it, "Rewriting is where the game is won or lost; rewriting is the essence of writing." - - - For those who're curious, I did this as part of KVM Forum[1] conference round-up for LWN. Here's[2] one of the two articles; it should be accessible without login. If you're the patient kind, I certainly recommend contributing to LWN. [1] https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kvm-forum/ https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kvm-forum/ [2] Challenges in protecting virtual machines from untrusted entities — https://lwn.net/Articles/838488/ https://lwn.net/Articles/838488/