Great comments from James. Here's my "Yeah, but..." :]
Jamesaritchie said:
What editors really want are writers who can do their own writing and their own editing. If you can't do your own re-writing, revisions, and your own editing, you can't do anything a publisher wants.
...
As an editor, I need writers who can write very well, who can rewrite, who can revise, and who can edit. I don't need or want writers who have to hire any of this done.
Yeah, but for a lot of writers, part of the learning process is the editing process that occurs before they start submitting their books to publishers. To me, this makes it sound like, if you're not born with red pen in hand and perfect grammar and punctuation right out the gate, you're pretty much screwed, and that's not true.
Jamesaritchie said:
If you really want to make certain your first three chapters are the best they can possibly be, then learn to write well, learn to rewrite and revise well, and learn to ediot [sic] well. These are all part of being a writer
...
Editing is part of writing. Rewriting is part of writing. Revision is part of writing. If you can't do these things for yourself, you aren't a writer, and an agent or editor will pick someone else who can do them.
Yeah, but if we could all do all of these things naturally and at the same skill level, there'd be no need for English teachers, writing/critique groups, editors of any sort, or Spell Check.
Learning about the editing process, however you choose to do it, can be a valuable part of becoming a better writer and learning how to self-edit. If your chosen way of learning about that is hiring an editor (someone whom you have thoroughly researched and who will return edits with Track Changes so you can see exactly what the problems are), that doesn't mean you're a failure as a writer.
For people who already know how to do these things, it's easy to say to someone else, "Dude, just figure out how to do it yourself." But if you don't even know what questions to ask yet, how on earth are you supposed to answer them? Seeking outside help, free or paid, is a major factor in that learning process.
Jamesaritchie said:
Trust me on this. I don't care who you hire to work on your book, it is not going to be exactly the way I want it. I will ask for major changes, and you'll have to make these changes, and do some serious editing while you're at it.
Yeah (no "but"). The only person who can tell you if your book is publishable is the person who's going to publish it, and that person will have very specific ideas as to what will make your book publishable for him or her. No one other than that particular publisher can tell you definitively what those things are.
What a presubmission editor
can do, however (kind of like a "but"), is alert you to things that may stand in the way of a publisher's even reading your manuscript: sentence-level errors, obvious-to-everyone-but-you plot holes, anything unclear or confusing, things of that ilk.
Jamesaritchie said:
If you have to hire your editing done, then you are not going to be able to handle this phase of the publishing process, and I'll see that immediately. I will not be a happy editor.
As an editor, I need writers who can write very well, who can rewrite, who can revise, and who can edit. I don't need or want writers who have to hire any of this done.
If you have to hire to have someone else turn your incoherent, illogical, unintelligible ramblings into a book, then yeah, you're going to have serious problems when it comes time to make publisher-requested revisions. That's definitely a case when, as James said in his post,
Jamesaritchie said:
As an editor, the last thing on earth I want to do is boy [sic] a book from a writer who has to hire someone else to do his job for him. I'd be better off hiring that guy myself and skipping the writer.
But an actual editor, not a rewriter or ghostwriter, is
not doing the writer's job for him. The writer's job is to write and revise. The editor's job is to point out areas that need revision. If you wrote "ther" instead of "there" and the editor fixes it, that ain't rewriting--that's editing. Good editors will query issues beyond basic typos and grammar issues, which is the editor's job, and the writer's job will then be to address those queries by revising the manuscript, which is the writer's job.
My $.02.
Kristen
