ONE
THING I’VE LEARNED
Over
the last fifteen years I’ve made the transition from being a publisher to being
a full-time writer and journalist. I was an editor for many years, working with
both novelists and non-fiction writers, advising, editing, publishing. It was a
peach of a job, but not one that I miss in any way now.
As
gamekeeper turned poacher, the one thing I’ve learned is what a huge difference
there is between editing and writing. I’ve lost count of the number
of times I’ve gaily advised authors to sharpen that character, lose that scene or
even, in two cases, to rewrite the whole book. But now when my editor gives me
similar advice (she hasn’t yet been moved to do the last, thank God), I think:
How do I do that? What exactly do you mean? When I was an editor myself, I
don’t think I realised how much thought is sometimes required to make those
changes. I think back to ‘my’ authors and wish I had been more understanding of
the process. Writing is much more demanding than I realised then.
People assume that I must find it easy to edit
my own work. Far from it. By the time I’ve finished a novel I’m so close to it
that I can’t see the most obvious of errors. Being an editor requires a degree
of objectivity that gets lost in the creative process. In order to do both, I
would have to put the book away for months before I could distance myself
sufficiently.
The difference between a writer and their
editor is best reflected in the distinction between the expression of a story,
characters and ideas, and the clear communication of those to the reader. That
is where the editor comes in.
Writer and editor are united in their desire to
create a story, characters and ideas and to communicate them to the reader. But
their roles are different. One produces the material. The other rubs off its
rough corners with (if you’re fortunate) a combination of delicate psychology,
tact and syntactical skill. It seems to
me that writing and publishing a book is a process that demands the successful
collaboration of both.
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