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Vorpishly t1_j6ifu1b wrote

Reply to comment by shillyshally in Just me, or was IT really too long? by KnightOfPanda

I have read On Writing, and started using it as a guide to write. Writing without outlines and just going where the story goes has been great so far, creatively. however I have 100 pages for roughly 3 scenes. I can see what you mean.

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SonnyCalzone t1_j6k2jof wrote

Very glad to see On Writing get a mention here. That book is still the only book which I have bought multiple paperback copies of, just so I could gift them to my friends, and I did that more than ten times. On Writing is so good, and never gets mentioned enough anywhere.

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shillyshally t1_j6k4l7h wrote

If you go back to the golden age of editing and look at Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins and take a look at the manuscript pages, the relationship is obviously collaborative. Both those authors are noted for their brevity - that is not an accident!

The self-publishing that has blossomed with Amazon is terrific but man, there is no substitute at all for a good editor.

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Bonezone420 t1_j6kadi6 wrote

Having a good relationship with a good editor is pretty hard though. A lot of people - fans especially - tend to view it as a solely adversarial thing. That like, the editor is a piece of shit because their job is to go in and ~butcher~ the art. And a lot of editors can easily fall into a mentality that they are, somehow, the gatekeeper of quality and the author is basically just an unhinged hosepipe and it's up to them to sculpt things into what they want heedless of what the author desires. And because usually the most famous dumpster fires get publicized while really good relationships that elevate the final product almost never get brought to light except in interviews and end notes where the author thanks their editor (seriously; read just how many authors will include a note thanking their "tireless editor" often "For dealing with all of this when you could have just quit and moved on to more profitable venues" or something similar) a lot of people, especially those on the outside or are just getting into either side of the industry get a really brutal image of it and kind of go in with a preconceived notion that it's supposed to be editor vs author. And sometimes all it takes is one shitty partner - on either side - to fuck up someone's whole career and perception life-long.

Self publishing is still in its wild-west sort of era; but much like youtubers as of late, I think before long any creator doing reasonably well will realize how much more efficient and effective they'll be by hiring editors to help cut their own labor in half, basically, and we'll have a boom in independent editors for independent authors.

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[deleted] t1_j6khc6g wrote

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Bonezone420 t1_j6kndj0 wrote

It's absolutely been wild seeing how it's gone, yeah. Personally: I think it's shaping up for the better - publishers, imo, didn't adapt well enough to the digital landscape and worked too hard to preserve their sort of gilded tower and closed gates policies which is why self publishing has taken off so well, while before it was basically only a bastion for the desperate and determined. Now anyone with like, a hundred bucks and a word processor can throw their stuff out into the void.

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Randym1982 t1_j6kajsc wrote

Didn't he mention that he also edits his own manuscripts and usually waits like 3-5 weeks before a re-read/rewrite.

I think most Publishers and editors know that his books sell more than anybody else, and have for the past 50 years. So they allow them the comfort to kind of do whatever he wants.

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