On Dealing With Editors of All Breeds

Yeah, I said "breeds." Yes, I'm joking.

For the most part.

For the record, I don't have a problem with editors. I think many of them are very intelligent people who know how to get the best out of their writers.

A great editor is like a great director. They can command great performances from their actors by guiding them towards something organic instead regurgitating how the director would "act" the part. Same goes with an editor.

In my opinion, the best editor isn't someone who fancies themselves as a writer who happens to have an editing job. It's like an actor who's directing when they really want to be acting. There's a built in bias of "well, that's not how I'd do it."

As a freelance writer, you're going to work with several editors at a time (if you're lucky), and there's a good chance that each one is going to have their own version of what your "best writing" is.

I've worked with editors who either:

- are also the publisher and you have to track them down for your pay
- have a fixed political agenda they want you to follow
- don't manage their time and assign you more than you signed up for
- are missing a sense of humor

I've also worked with editors who are:

- intelligent
- well read
- know how to push you creatively to get the best from you as a writer

My best advice is to not take it personal once you're working with an editor. At that point, you're a professional writer (or damn close), and yes, you should care enough to put your best effort into your work, but you're officially in the world of commerce and you're providing goods. Those goods might come from your heart and soul, but they're still just goods.

I'll end with a quick story about the worst experience I had with an editor.

I submitted a short story to a small literary magazine on the East Coast. My story was a satiric piece imagining Eugene O'Neill working as a court reporter at the Scopes Trial. Not exactly a premise for low brow humor.

The piece was simply poking fun at O'Neill's playwriting style, his scene and character description in particular, while using actual dialogue from the Scopes Trial.

The piece was accepted, OK'd by the editor, and was set to go to print.

A few days later, I received an email asking me to go deeper into the science vs. religion debate.

I reminded him that the piece really wasn't about that (it was a humor piece, and that's how I submitted it) and that I wasn't going to add in fake dialogue with the actual court transcript.

He responded that on second review he was going to pass.

I suggested that most likely he didn't read it in the first place.

I never heard back.

Ah well... it was later published online as it was intended to be HERE.