You've said you warn people that you can be a real jerk
when you edit their books. What do you mean by that?
And for the record, I don't say I'm a real jerk. I say I'm a real bastard. Perhaps it's a semantic difference, but I think it's worth stating.
That means my job isn't to find what works and praise you for it, but to find what doesn't and help you make it better -- even when, and especially when, it hurts your writer's pride and bruises your ego. Then I prune and cut and slice and dice and point out all the ways your story doesn't meet the high standards that both you and I have for it.
Then we work together to make it better.
I think it most typically shocks people who come to me expecting glorified proofreading. What they get back are tracked changes that often bleed more red than the original black.
I'm ruthless. I go after weak verbs like a serial killer, find ways to murder adverbs and most adjectives, make sure your characters have consistent personalities and speech patterns throughout the book. I destroy your redundancies when you overuse your favorite go-to words in a single page, paragraph (or sometimes even sentence). Recently I even rewrote an author's opening paragraph so that it started with something to draw in the reader and stop wasting time on all the pretty flowers.
Grab me first, flower me later -- this is a novel, not a date.
Perhaps that why I don't typically edit the work of my friends. Though it is telling that people whose work I do edit usually become friends after the first good cry. *grins*
I can *so* relate to this! I am a hard editor, but only because I want the author to *improve*. I don't get paid to hold your hand and tell you how awesome you are. I get paid to show you how awesome you can be.
ReplyDeleteAbout two years ago, I started editing an author who is a professor in the MFA program I went though (not one of mine though). After I sent her the first round of edits, I asked her what she thought. She said, "Well, you certainly don't f*ck around."
Yeah, that's the rep I want. ;)
I love that. If you want to pay me the same rate to tell you how awesome you are, I'll do that, but don't tell people I edited your work. All I was paid today was stroke your ego. *grins*
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