Editors and Authors

When I was young and full of literary piss and vinegar, I gave several of my short stories to a friend who was taking courses to become an editor. I got them back with the expected red ink, and followed through on her suggestions. To my surprise and delight, her reading of what made my work "work" was spot-on. She improved my writing.

I've meditated on this experience a great deal over the years. It opened my eyes to what goes on behind the wizard's curtain in pro publishing -- where she quickly found a job and soared to the top, editing some of this country's most recognizable names.* Happy as I am to throw my words into the digital realm without any outside interference whatsoever, this relationship -- between writer and editor -- is the one element of pro publishing that I still view with wistful longing.

It is not the easiest relationship, of course -- there is a long and colourful history of quiet and not-so-quiet disputes between author and editor, the latest chapter of which is a collection of epistolary emails between editor Fred Ramey and novelist Marc Estrin, called The Insect Dialogues.

Ramey, who edited Estrin's initial 900-page draft to a snappy book that clocked in beneath 300, is in the unusual position of seeing his charge's first draft come to public light -- through the wondrous advent of easy, inexpensive self-publishing. Both versions are, apparently, readable -- Estrin, though hardly a household name, is no slouch as a writer. But which is "better"?

Over at Slate, Colin Dickey does a terrific job of surveying the ideological and aesthetic no-man's-land these three books expose -- highly recommended.

*She's gone freelance now. If you're trying to "break out" give her a note and tell her I sent you.