Surviving the editorial process
October 21, 2014 6:21 AM Subscribe
If you are a writer (nonfiction or fiction), a designer, or a programmer, how do you survive the editorial process with your self-esteem intact?
I'm interested in some tips as to how you can react more constructively to having a harsh, demanding or nit-picky editor (for programmers, think Steve Jobs) without over-reacting, catastrophizing, or personalizing.
How do you stay focused on the process and improve your work, rather than feeling that you are incompetent at your profession and have wasted years of your education or that the editor / manager is out to get you and wants you to wash out?
I'm interested in some tips as to how you can react more constructively to having a harsh, demanding or nit-picky editor (for programmers, think Steve Jobs) without over-reacting, catastrophizing, or personalizing.
How do you stay focused on the process and improve your work, rather than feeling that you are incompetent at your profession and have wasted years of your education or that the editor / manager is out to get you and wants you to wash out?
In work produced for other people (so, not a book-length piece I'd be publishing under my own name, which I haven't done): I let go of ownership of the work. My job is to communicate the company's (or my boss's or client's) ideas; my goal is to have a piece that does so to their satisfaction, not necessarily mine. The editing really has nothing to do with me as a person. I also make sure I consider each iteration a "draft" (and I'll name the file that way and put "DRAFT" on the top of the written page) so that it's clear to both me and my boss that we're still in collaboration mode.
I would likely have a much harder time with this on creative work going out under my own name, but I haven't done that. I can speak from the editing side, though, and I would say that my job as an editor was to make each writer shine, to make sure that each piece was as clear and beautiful as possible. It may help to think of the editing as someone putting in the effort to help you because you're worth helping. Most editors don't both trying to suggest major revisions for bad writing, because it's unlikely a poor author has enough skill to make such a revision work. The more I respect a work and the stronger a writer I think the author is, the more comfortable I am suggesting edits.
posted by jaguar at 6:34 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
I would likely have a much harder time with this on creative work going out under my own name, but I haven't done that. I can speak from the editing side, though, and I would say that my job as an editor was to make each writer shine, to make sure that each piece was as clear and beautiful as possible. It may help to think of the editing as someone putting in the effort to help you because you're worth helping. Most editors don't both trying to suggest major revisions for bad writing, because it's unlikely a poor author has enough skill to make such a revision work. The more I respect a work and the stronger a writer I think the author is, the more comfortable I am suggesting edits.
posted by jaguar at 6:34 AM on October 21, 2014 [2 favorites]
I react more constructively if I make myself put the thing aside for a few hours (time allowing) and not dive back in right away after getting the feedback. It removes a bit of the "this is mine mine mine" dynamic and lets me judge it a little more dispassionately.
Another way I've become a better consumer of editorial feedback is by editing other people's work.
posted by AndrewInDC at 6:36 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Another way I've become a better consumer of editorial feedback is by editing other people's work.
posted by AndrewInDC at 6:36 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
It's useful to remember that you are not your writing. Your piece of writing is just something you've made and not a reflection of who you are as a person. It's got nothing to do with you as a person.
Think of your writing like a tasty casserole. Your editor is the guy next to you who goes: "you know what? Add a bit of salt " - he is there to improve your writing and make it the best goddamn piece of writing you can imagine. He hasn't spent eight hours slaving over that hot stove, so he is able to detect that casserole needs seasoning. He's worth his weight in gold.
At the end of the day, just remember you want your output to be amazing and your editors want the same thing. Writing is a process and towards the end of that process it becomes a collaborative effort.
posted by kariebookish at 6:47 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]
Think of your writing like a tasty casserole. Your editor is the guy next to you who goes: "you know what? Add a bit of salt " - he is there to improve your writing and make it the best goddamn piece of writing you can imagine. He hasn't spent eight hours slaving over that hot stove, so he is able to detect that casserole needs seasoning. He's worth his weight in gold.
At the end of the day, just remember you want your output to be amazing and your editors want the same thing. Writing is a process and towards the end of that process it becomes a collaborative effort.
posted by kariebookish at 6:47 AM on October 21, 2014 [4 favorites]
Good editors want you to look good. They want to make you the best you can be. They are working for you, not against you.
Now, some editors are jerks and not helpful, but the good editors I've worked with pushed me really hard and my work was better for it. They deserve the credit for this, even when it was my name on the piece. And when I've edited pieces, I always want the writer to be the best. It's not my voice -- it's theirs -- I just want to shape it and make it stronger.
It's OK to feel a bit hurt momentarily. It's hard not to. But move past that and understand the intentions are coming from a good place.
posted by darksong at 7:21 AM on October 21, 2014
Now, some editors are jerks and not helpful, but the good editors I've worked with pushed me really hard and my work was better for it. They deserve the credit for this, even when it was my name on the piece. And when I've edited pieces, I always want the writer to be the best. It's not my voice -- it's theirs -- I just want to shape it and make it stronger.
It's OK to feel a bit hurt momentarily. It's hard not to. But move past that and understand the intentions are coming from a good place.
posted by darksong at 7:21 AM on October 21, 2014
If you've ever tried to edit yourself, you'll appreciate how hard it is to find ways to improve what you've already written. What the editor is doing is a huge service to the work (and you, if you haven't yet depersonalized it) by fixing it up in ways you most likely could not do yourself.
Don't be embarrassed, remember that everyone needs an editor.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 7:31 AM on October 21, 2014
Don't be embarrassed, remember that everyone needs an editor.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 7:31 AM on October 21, 2014
I edit lots of things. Here's the thing -- if I put a lot of work into making very fine-grained critical comments about the work, it's because I think the work is worth editing. Many things that cross your editor's desk don't get the same kind of nit-picking, because the editor judges that the thing is going to be bad no matter how much he or she fixes some superficial problems, so why spend time? That energy is better spent really editing the hell out of your piece, which actually has the potential to be good, so long as you make the following 1,426 changes.
posted by escabeche at 7:53 AM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 7:53 AM on October 21, 2014 [6 favorites]
Sometimes it's just bad editing. Sometimes your editor has a cleareer version than you do. I've had good and bad editors and it's amazing when you finally click with an editor (and I say this as a nitpicker who has all the same terrible feelings when I am poorly edited). What helps for me is trying to give the editor the benefit of the doubt, at least at first, and see if the work really does read better. See if they can explain why they like it a different way. Editing is a word job but also a relationship job optimally, and some people are better at the former than the latter. Also keep in mind that you have a few vetos that you can use if things are really important. This was important to me when there were a few things that me and my editor disagreed on, strongly. So think: if you had three vetos (and only three) would this be a thing you wanted to use a veto on? And it's okay to start a discussion about (some) changes and not just roll over on everything. But make it your goal to figure out why they want things, not just them vs you with no additional data.
Keep in mind also that in many cases publishing houses will have in-house or contract editors but will totally outsource copyediting and layout type of stuff and you may have people working on those things who have zero investment in your work. Feel free to push back MUCH more strenuously on changes (and timelines) that they suggest. My copyeditors knew perfect English by the book but very little vernacular and made a hash out of a lot of my colloquialisms and I pushed back every time because it was that kind of book. They were right in general but wrong in specific. My editor had the final say but she was a trusted professional and so she and I could work on that together.
Other than that, tips for managing stress generally (rest, food, exercise) are all good ones. I was a ball of nerves during my book-writing process and I didn't even notice it until afterwards when it was over.
posted by jessamyn at 7:59 AM on October 21, 2014
Keep in mind also that in many cases publishing houses will have in-house or contract editors but will totally outsource copyediting and layout type of stuff and you may have people working on those things who have zero investment in your work. Feel free to push back MUCH more strenuously on changes (and timelines) that they suggest. My copyeditors knew perfect English by the book but very little vernacular and made a hash out of a lot of my colloquialisms and I pushed back every time because it was that kind of book. They were right in general but wrong in specific. My editor had the final say but she was a trusted professional and so she and I could work on that together.
Other than that, tips for managing stress generally (rest, food, exercise) are all good ones. I was a ball of nerves during my book-writing process and I didn't even notice it until afterwards when it was over.
posted by jessamyn at 7:59 AM on October 21, 2014
Are you working with an editor of your own accord, or is this happening at work where you have to be edited or managed by this person? Because, as an editor myself, I don't think you should acclimate to a "harsh, demanding or nit-picky" editor unless you don't have a choice about it. There are ways to edit work that are supportive, educating, and frank without being part of a power-based relationship. Find someone like that, with a point of view off-center from your own, but which you respect, and who is adult enough to pull his or her own weight creating a professional relationship.
Frankly, if I found myself working with someone like you describe, I'd intentionally pepper my work with crufty-crap to give them something to shout about that I could confidently tune out while visualizing the bath I was going to take after work. Then if something they said actually penetrated my buffered awareness, I'd think it was something valid to work on. But that's just me and my survival mechanisms.
You can try managing this person about the type of feedback you want and see how it goes: "This is early in the process and I'll be doing a fine-tooth review later, so please focus only on what's working well and what to expand on." Or "For now I'd like to hear the top three things you think need attention." That might be world-building or dialogue or pacing, but it gives the editor guardrails about where to focus. And if they say, "Here are three words that are misspelled," then thank them for the three things, go back and do a self-edit, and only go back again when you're ready. Train them to pull their feedback up to a level you want.
Lastly, know your work and your voice. Sometimes putting a piece aside for a little while (months) can give you a much more resilient relationship to it because you are less personally attached to its lifespan. It can get addicting writing something, working on it for so long, that threats to it feel personal. If you're a writer, relate to yourself as having a career you work on, over a number of books, rather than an author of just this one book. Writers who are able to project or manifest this overall identity seem to weather the editing process better because there's less at stake for them.
posted by cocoagirl at 8:40 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Frankly, if I found myself working with someone like you describe, I'd intentionally pepper my work with crufty-crap to give them something to shout about that I could confidently tune out while visualizing the bath I was going to take after work. Then if something they said actually penetrated my buffered awareness, I'd think it was something valid to work on. But that's just me and my survival mechanisms.
You can try managing this person about the type of feedback you want and see how it goes: "This is early in the process and I'll be doing a fine-tooth review later, so please focus only on what's working well and what to expand on." Or "For now I'd like to hear the top three things you think need attention." That might be world-building or dialogue or pacing, but it gives the editor guardrails about where to focus. And if they say, "Here are three words that are misspelled," then thank them for the three things, go back and do a self-edit, and only go back again when you're ready. Train them to pull their feedback up to a level you want.
Lastly, know your work and your voice. Sometimes putting a piece aside for a little while (months) can give you a much more resilient relationship to it because you are less personally attached to its lifespan. It can get addicting writing something, working on it for so long, that threats to it feel personal. If you're a writer, relate to yourself as having a career you work on, over a number of books, rather than an author of just this one book. Writers who are able to project or manifest this overall identity seem to weather the editing process better because there's less at stake for them.
posted by cocoagirl at 8:40 AM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
As someone who both edits a lot of things and gets lots of reviewer comments (I'm an academic), I just wanted to second what escabeche said: if someone is giving you detailed and useful comments, even if they are harsh, it's actually a compliment. I would never bother to put the time in to something that I thought was crap and would stay crap even if they took my edits on board.
(What I usually want to say to such things is something like "scratch it all and redo it from the beginning", which is of course completely pointless and also mean, so I never say that. What I do say is something much briefer like "I think this work is fundamentally flawed for X, Y, and Z reasons, but perhaps I'm missing something.")
So if you're getting harsh criticism but it's useful and goes into detail, that's actually a supreme compliment. It still stings -- I know it stings! -- but remind yourself that someone, probably a very busy someone, spent a long time thinking a lot about it and trying to figure out how to improve it. That means they thought it was worth it.
And if you're talking about short useless feedback like the above? The nice thing for one's ego is that it's really hard to make the distinction between considered feedback (from someone who knows what they are doing) the that work is bad, vs feedback from someone who didn't think about it much or contemplate it closely or understand it at all. It's short and not very detailed in either case. So you can always salve your ego with the thought that they didn't know what they were talking about -- which may in fact be true! [Now, if all of the feedback you ever get is like this, you might indeed want to consider if you're doing something wrong; but the occasional one is probably pretty meaningless.]
posted by forza at 5:52 PM on October 21, 2014
(What I usually want to say to such things is something like "scratch it all and redo it from the beginning", which is of course completely pointless and also mean, so I never say that. What I do say is something much briefer like "I think this work is fundamentally flawed for X, Y, and Z reasons, but perhaps I'm missing something.")
So if you're getting harsh criticism but it's useful and goes into detail, that's actually a supreme compliment. It still stings -- I know it stings! -- but remind yourself that someone, probably a very busy someone, spent a long time thinking a lot about it and trying to figure out how to improve it. That means they thought it was worth it.
And if you're talking about short useless feedback like the above? The nice thing for one's ego is that it's really hard to make the distinction between considered feedback (from someone who knows what they are doing) the that work is bad, vs feedback from someone who didn't think about it much or contemplate it closely or understand it at all. It's short and not very detailed in either case. So you can always salve your ego with the thought that they didn't know what they were talking about -- which may in fact be true! [Now, if all of the feedback you ever get is like this, you might indeed want to consider if you're doing something wrong; but the occasional one is probably pretty meaningless.]
posted by forza at 5:52 PM on October 21, 2014
So, I have a job where I have to communicate for other people who are generally not communications professionals, i.e. much of my job is having things written for a general audience edited by lawyers who think they know better.
There are a couple of things that help me:
First, like jaguar says, relinquish ownership. From doing freelance writing and (years ago) regular newspaper work, I was able to build up a fairly thick skin and part of that is, "Fuck it, my job was to write this. I did it well, and now it's not my problem what it ends up looking like when it comes out." I know that's hacky, but it really does help me detach with a lot of stuff like press releases that will literally only be read by the board member who they're about.
Second, I have a decent sense of two things within anything that I write: What the important (to me) pieces are, and why it's important that they're written that way. The criticisms and edits that most annoy me are the ignorant ones, where, to pick a minor example, I have to justify AP style on capitalizing titles for the 6 billionth time to someone who wants to Make Everything Important. There are deliberate choices that I make, and I have a rationale for them. A lot of the other stuff I just don't care about. Much of what I write is somewhat arbitrary — it could just as well have had another formulation.
Third, the editors are often a specific audience that I can learn from. If something's not connecting with them that's a problem, even if I think their solutions are dumb. So I'll often take the note that it's not connecting for whatever reason then ask questions to try to suss that out. That's often more helpful than whatever general changes there are.
Fourth, there's usually good criticism in there too. Remembering that I do want the best work to come out makes that easier to focus on.
Fifth, and arguably the most important one for me professionally, is that I always have, like, six other projects that I also need to finish at any given time. Having another project makes it so much easier to not get caught up in endless haggling over details, because ain't nobody got time for that.
posted by klangklangston at 5:56 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
There are a couple of things that help me:
First, like jaguar says, relinquish ownership. From doing freelance writing and (years ago) regular newspaper work, I was able to build up a fairly thick skin and part of that is, "Fuck it, my job was to write this. I did it well, and now it's not my problem what it ends up looking like when it comes out." I know that's hacky, but it really does help me detach with a lot of stuff like press releases that will literally only be read by the board member who they're about.
Second, I have a decent sense of two things within anything that I write: What the important (to me) pieces are, and why it's important that they're written that way. The criticisms and edits that most annoy me are the ignorant ones, where, to pick a minor example, I have to justify AP style on capitalizing titles for the 6 billionth time to someone who wants to Make Everything Important. There are deliberate choices that I make, and I have a rationale for them. A lot of the other stuff I just don't care about. Much of what I write is somewhat arbitrary — it could just as well have had another formulation.
Third, the editors are often a specific audience that I can learn from. If something's not connecting with them that's a problem, even if I think their solutions are dumb. So I'll often take the note that it's not connecting for whatever reason then ask questions to try to suss that out. That's often more helpful than whatever general changes there are.
Fourth, there's usually good criticism in there too. Remembering that I do want the best work to come out makes that easier to focus on.
Fifth, and arguably the most important one for me professionally, is that I always have, like, six other projects that I also need to finish at any given time. Having another project makes it so much easier to not get caught up in endless haggling over details, because ain't nobody got time for that.
posted by klangklangston at 5:56 PM on October 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
A lot of this really does depend on what sort of written work you're editing. I am a government employee who edits regulations, policy guidance, correspondence, webpages, and a ton of other technical type stuff written by 100+ different people.
Ultimately, my goal--in addition to ensuring that it adheres to our style guidelines--is to make sure that what we issue to the public is clear and easy to understand. The instructions and guidance we send out could be read by someone with a PhD or by someone with an eighth grade education, so we have to make sure that anyone who needs to read it for program compliance can comprehend it. I've noticed that government employees tend toward writing like a bureaucrat and I feel like I am forever deleting conjunctive adverbs like furthermore, wherefore, thus, and henceforth. Anyway...
What I try to tell people when I return a document with a ton of edits is that they are not novelists, the work we produce isn't fiction, and unfortunately, preserving or respecting their voice is not important in this instance. My primary objective to ensure that what send out is simple, easy to understand, and unlikely to be misinterpreted.
Explaining that seems to have helped some of the more sensitive writers in my office. Because it IS frustrating to write something and have it ripped to shreds by an editor. But making it clear that I am not a subject matter expert like they are, and that I am merely working to make sure that our customers understand what we send to make it easier on ALL of us (sending instructions that are understood from the start means nobody is calling us to ask for clarification!), has really given content providers some perspective. Not only are they less resistant to my edits, but they're also more willing to come ask me questions before they even provide a draft to their manager.
Obviously I am a far better editor than I am a writer. And I tell them that as well!
posted by elsietheeel at 6:21 PM on October 21, 2014
Ultimately, my goal--in addition to ensuring that it adheres to our style guidelines--is to make sure that what we issue to the public is clear and easy to understand. The instructions and guidance we send out could be read by someone with a PhD or by someone with an eighth grade education, so we have to make sure that anyone who needs to read it for program compliance can comprehend it. I've noticed that government employees tend toward writing like a bureaucrat and I feel like I am forever deleting conjunctive adverbs like furthermore, wherefore, thus, and henceforth. Anyway...
What I try to tell people when I return a document with a ton of edits is that they are not novelists, the work we produce isn't fiction, and unfortunately, preserving or respecting their voice is not important in this instance. My primary objective to ensure that what send out is simple, easy to understand, and unlikely to be misinterpreted.
Explaining that seems to have helped some of the more sensitive writers in my office. Because it IS frustrating to write something and have it ripped to shreds by an editor. But making it clear that I am not a subject matter expert like they are, and that I am merely working to make sure that our customers understand what we send to make it easier on ALL of us (sending instructions that are understood from the start means nobody is calling us to ask for clarification!), has really given content providers some perspective. Not only are they less resistant to my edits, but they're also more willing to come ask me questions before they even provide a draft to their manager.
Obviously I am a far better editor than I am a writer. And I tell them that as well!
posted by elsietheeel at 6:21 PM on October 21, 2014
I love working with an editor. Together we are making the document clearer and more concise. I find it useful and a great feeling that an editor is working with me to make my work stronger. I find the process rewarding and love that someone else is working with me to make my writing better.
posted by miles1972 at 8:46 PM on October 21, 2014
posted by miles1972 at 8:46 PM on October 21, 2014
This thread is closed to new comments.
Sometimes your editor is just a dick, and/or is working against you. That's an entirely different situation, but in my experience is rare.
posted by The Michael The at 6:29 AM on October 21, 2014 [5 favorites]