I recently received edits back on an accepted story. I’ll share more details about the story and publication when I can. In the meantime, I thought I’d share tips and tricks, regarding being edited.
Don’t make it difficult to work with you. You can have your opinions about your writing, and you can choose your hill to die on, but you should not outright refuse to make changes to your story based on edits. An editor’s number one job is to make sure that your ideas and story are clear to your readers. Of course you know what you mean by saying that the main character’s dog was blonde; but do your readers know? If they don’t, then you messed up, but an editor can help you make it clearer.
To build on the previous point for tip number two: Being edited is a partnership; it is not (supposed to be) adversarial. Some people work better together than others, so even good editors working with good writers won’t always mesh. But you have to believe that your editor wants what’s best for you and your story. If you can’t believe that, you might need to consider if being published (as opposed to self-publishing) is really for you.
I make that last point having sat through a lot of writing workshops in which the cruelty seemed to be the point and people seemed to be getting off on tearing each other down. That’s not easy to take as a writer; more than that, it’s not necessarily useful. So at a certain point, you’ll realize that Not every criticism/edit is helpful. So you do need to strike a balance between the two and understand the fine line between being obstinate and sticking up for your story. This applies more toward workshops and writers’ groups than it does to being edited by the person who’s going to publish your story.
Understand the difference between line edits and content edits. Line edits are when an editor makes a correction, e.g. capitalization, spelling, grammar, etc. These are pretty simple edits, usually only involving changing one or two words at a time. Content edits are usually more in depth, sometimes calling for paragraphs to be rewritten or sometimes added or struck. These edits require more work and should definitely be collaborative.
Understand how to use Track Changes in your word program. Long ago and dead are the days of red pens. All hail Track Changes! If you don’t know, you can “track changes” made within a document (at least in Microsoft Word) so you can see what your editor has changed. The changes should be limited to line edits. For content edits, most editors I know will highlight a portion of text and make a comment on that portion of text, sometimes asking for expansion or clarification, leaving it up to the writer to–well, write something.
So here’s my step by step guide on how I work on an edited story.
After opening the document (this is for Microsoft Word), under the Review tab, under Tracking, I accept all changes. Then, if comments aren’t already visible, I make them visible to review content edits. I open a separate document to re/write anything the editor has requested. I do this in a separate document so that I’m able to think more clearly about the sentence or paragraph or whatever. Then I cut the new sentence/paragraph/whatever and paste it into the story where the editor has requested it; I also may or may not delete the highlighted text flagged by the comment as the situation calls for. Then, I put the story away for at least a day, but more if my deadline allows. Finally, I open the story and read it, making minimal edits if anything really stands out to me as weird or out of place.
I’ve found that accepting all the line edits and writing the asked for content edits in a separate document (mostly) circumvents my natural inclination toward resistance if I’m reading the story and then trying to make a decision on each edit as I come across them.
Because my words! My beautiful words! How could a person be so cold-hearted, so dim-witted, so willfully blind as to not see the beauty of my words?!
Because that’s an editor’s job, that’s why. It’s to take a writer’s beautiful words and make them something that other people can and want to read.
Happy writing (and being edited)!
The Chimerical Dark 