3 ms·

Even more bizarre is that he feels the same! He agrees that this phrase needs editing and is still confused that it was flagged by his editor. > In my version,

Even more bizarre is that he feels the same! He agrees that this phrase needs editing and is still confused that it was flagged by his editor. > In my version, that writer is also in his underwear, and the reader is informed that the couple is having some sad, drunken nights (« marriage blackout nights » doesn’t sound right and would have needed editing anyway, but bear with me).

coldtea 4y ago
>Even more bizarre is that he feels the same! He agrees that this phrase needs editing and is still confused that it was flagged by his editor. Yeah, it's not like he spends 10 or more subtle paragraphs explaining both why he feels the phrase was important (despite needing editing for other reasons) and why he felt the shame (despite knowing he had not done anything shameful, except under a puritan gaze: he felt the shame because he was forced to view his prose under a different culture's understanding of sex).
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  As things are described, he writes paragraphs about his assumptions about the editor's reasoning for crossing out a nonsense phrase and fails to consider that the editor was not critiquing his artistic notions but rather just crossing off something that both of them agreed was bad. There's no particular evidence that the editor would not be amenable to simply rewriting the passage to make sense. It was bad writing and the editor removed it. The fact that he felt shame doesn't make his assumptions any more valid.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >fails to consider that the editor was not critiquing his artistic notions but rather just crossing off something that both of them agreed was bad That's because the editors they worked with, and others he discussed such things, had a pattern to cross off specific things (regardless of whether both author and editor agreed they were bad), and those "crossing offs" revealed not just an editorial hand, but also an underlying ethics/ideology behind what they chose to focus on... >It was bad writing and the editor removed it. The fact that he felt shame doesn't make his assumptions any more valid. Way to miss the whole argument. It's not even like he didn't spell it out...
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      > That's because the editors they worked with, and others he discussed such things, had a pattern to cross off specific things (regardless of whether both author and editor agreed they were bad), and those "crossing offs" revealed not just an editorial hand, but also an underlying ethics/ideology behind what they chose to focus on... That's obviously not exclusively true. Otherwise the sole purpose of the editor would be pure ideological shifts. That would be dumb. Ergo I conclude most of the edits are just competent editor edits. > Way to miss the whole argument. And I'm saying the author seems like a sensitive soul that has jumped the gun far too quickly. His argument is incorrect.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        >That's obviously not exclusively true. Otherwise the sole purpose of the editor would be pure ideological shifts. That wasn't the argument I've made. I didn't say every edit suggestion was based on ideological shifts. I said that (actually, merely summed up the author's experience) they discovered a tendency for editors to also (keyword: also) make suggestions that not only result in ideological shifts, but have an ideology/ethics and not "how best to serve the text" or aesthetics as the underlying drive. And some those corrections can even coincide with a "better expression" edit. To make the claim perfectly clear: (1) editors make mainly "better expression" edits (2) they also make a certain class of ideology/ethics edits. Some of them they make them explicitly with ideology in mind (e.g. they find situation X, that is acceptable to a French sensibility as yucky because of their culture), and other times unconsciously as mere not understanding the point of the text (but again, not because it doesn't have one, but because of conceptions rooted in their culture about what is included, not some "universal" needs of the text). (3) they make enough of the latter that the writer can see a pattern - also shared/expressed by other writers of the same culture as him (different to the editor's culture) (4) many people reading about those, can't even understand that the latter kind of edits are of that kind, not only because the change might be suble subtle and they can't understand what's at stake, but also because they share the same ethics/ideology (in short: culture) with the editor.
        4y ago

coldtea 4y ago

>Even more bizarre is that he feels the same! He agrees that this phrase needs editing and is still confused that it was flagged by his editor. Yeah, it's not like he spends 10 or more subtle paragraphs explaining both why he feels the phrase was important (despite needing editing for other reasons) and why he felt the shame (despite knowing he had not done anything shameful, except under a puritan gaze: he felt the shame because he was forced to view his prose under a different culture's understanding of sex).

spywaregorilla 4y ago
As things are described, he writes paragraphs about his assumptions about the editor's reasoning for crossing out a nonsense phrase and fails to consider that the editor was not critiquing his artistic notions but rather just crossing off something that both of them agreed was bad. There's no particular evidence that the editor would not be amenable to simply rewriting the passage to make sense. It was bad writing and the editor removed it. The fact that he felt shame doesn't make his assumptions any more valid.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >fails to consider that the editor was not critiquing his artistic notions but rather just crossing off something that both of them agreed was bad That's because the editors they worked with, and others he discussed such things, had a pattern to cross off specific things (regardless of whether both author and editor agreed they were bad), and those "crossing offs" revealed not just an editorial hand, but also an underlying ethics/ideology behind what they chose to focus on... >It was bad writing and the editor removed it. The fact that he felt shame doesn't make his assumptions any more valid. Way to miss the whole argument. It's not even like he didn't spell it out...
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    > That's because the editors they worked with, and others he discussed such things, had a pattern to cross off specific things (regardless of whether both author and editor agreed they were bad), and those "crossing offs" revealed not just an editorial hand, but also an underlying ethics/ideology behind what they chose to focus on... That's obviously not exclusively true. Otherwise the sole purpose of the editor would be pure ideological shifts. That would be dumb. Ergo I conclude most of the edits are just competent editor edits. > Way to miss the whole argument. And I'm saying the author seems like a sensitive soul that has jumped the gun far too quickly. His argument is incorrect.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >That's obviously not exclusively true. Otherwise the sole purpose of the editor would be pure ideological shifts. That wasn't the argument I've made. I didn't say every edit suggestion was based on ideological shifts. I said that (actually, merely summed up the author's experience) they discovered a tendency for editors to also (keyword: also) make suggestions that not only result in ideological shifts, but have an ideology/ethics and not "how best to serve the text" or aesthetics as the underlying drive. And some those corrections can even coincide with a "better expression" edit. To make the claim perfectly clear: (1) editors make mainly "better expression" edits (2) they also make a certain class of ideology/ethics edits. Some of them they make them explicitly with ideology in mind (e.g. they find situation X, that is acceptable to a French sensibility as yucky because of their culture), and other times unconsciously as mere not understanding the point of the text (but again, not because it doesn't have one, but because of conceptions rooted in their culture about what is included, not some "universal" needs of the text). (3) they make enough of the latter that the writer can see a pattern - also shared/expressed by other writers of the same culture as him (different to the editor's culture) (4) many people reading about those, can't even understand that the latter kind of edits are of that kind, not only because the change might be suble subtle and they can't understand what's at stake, but also because they share the same ethics/ideology (in short: culture) with the editor.
      - 4y ago