Has anyone ever REALLY worked with you?

About 15 years ago -- when I was a couple years out of college -- I tried to find a mentor. Introduced myself to a couple of writers I admired. Asked if I could send them some stuff to critique. It worked for a while, but it was a hard relationship to maintain. You really need someone working with you during the reporter/writing process, not after.

I have always thought the ideal situation would be to find someone like Sean Connery in the movie "Finding Forrester." You give him your work, he rips it to shreds, you try again, he says "You suck." In the end, he introduces you during the Pulitzer ceremony.

Anyone have such a person?

 

I've been at three shops in about 3 years and I've had only one true "mentor" type. That was at my first shop, a 10 K daily, where the SE pretty much took me under his wing and showed me the in's and out's of the business. Good editor, brilliant designer. It's a shame he's out of the business now because he was a true journalistic talent.

 

One mistake I see, and I don't like it, is that an editor will work the copy like he or she wants to write it, taking away much of the writer's voice. Especially in the lead, but also throughout.

I say let the writer have his/her voice, and change only the stuff that is factually wrong or just plain dumb writing (including style mistakes). The rest of the time, give the writer his/her palatte, and let them hang themselves if that's the case.

Too many editors edit only for other editors -- just as many designers design only for other designers -- and that turns it into some kind of chop-socky pissing contest.

I like to let the writers breathe a little. It's their byline, and they do know what they wanna say. If readers don't like it, it's on the writers, and then it's time to adjust.

Fix the little stuff, and the big problems, but let them hang it out there in their own voice. Editors should polish copy, yet be smart enough not to rewrite it just because they think they could write it better.

I didn't use to think that way, but I do now. Mostly because of the Internet. Smart writers can adjust if they read their own mailbags.

And mentoring is everything in this business.

Sadly, they keep running the mentors out, and the newbies get offended at the thought of anyone mentoring them.

As if they couldn't, you know, learn from someone who's been around a while.

 

Nope. I worked at three different newspapers and had the same type of guy for an editor each time.

"Looks good."

No matter what I wrote, no matter how long it was, "looks good."

Now, a counterpoint ... I can almost understand why those editors were happy to let me write whatever with minimal editing. Too many supposed hot-shit sports fans who thinks they can write writers who went fucking nuts at any changes. I experienced that myself when I filled in during an editor's vacation. This new guy we'd just hired flipped out on me because I edited the story. I didn't do anything with a heavy hand, but the guy writes in the passive voice. But the fucker actually thought that I should print his stories with no changes and started screaming at me. I promptly told him to go fuck himself. That was just one instance in one week. Maybe the editors I worked for had those experiences nearly every day and just gave up?

Still, no excuse. The minimalist editors either don't know how to make copy better or don't care.

 

But many writers don't know how to make their copy better, either.

You could call them minimalists also.

 

Then, too, is the toxic compound of a minimalist writer and a minimalist editor.

The end product is doomed to suck.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Not really. Certainly not early on when some advice could have speeded things along for me. I wish I had a chance to meet twenty years ago the people I work with now. Alas.

Just to backtrack ...

There are a couple of other explanations for the minimalist/passive editor. Early on I was one (briefly perhaps, but still think about it). I had a chance to massage some copy for some writers and in retrospect the stuff could have used it. Two stories:

The ingrate.

One guy sent a dispatch from the America's Cup in Australia. This is a long time ago -- it was teletype. I asked him to resend it because it was garbled in transmission. Sentence and word fragments littered the copy. Resent, meme chose. The guy basically sent me his notes and quotes, didn't bother to write it as a magazine story. By comparison to what I had to do to resurrect this 3,000-word piece Dr Christian Barnard did cosmetic surgery. Turned inside out, end to the beginning, stuff (his hotel and cab ride) thrown deservedly overboard. It ended up a good read, not a great read, but to get it to that point I burned the midnight oil, crawling out of the office at 2 am. Never worked harder. Next time I saw the guy, a staff party, I asked him about it vaguely. "Yeah, I thought it turned out okay," he said and that was it. Not a thank you. Not a question about this piece. Nothing. I tried to laugh it off -- in retrospect, I'm not even sure the clown read the piece. At the very least, he did but so lacked any clue about writing that he actually mistook it for the crap he had written. Bottom line: I could see how an editor would think there's not a lotta upside to the mentor thing.

The rookie.

Not the writer, but me. The writer was, she constantly reminded me, a Syracuse grad (honors) and had published hither and yon. Me, I was just starting out. Just a year after selling my first freelance piece to this mag (long defunct) I was helping out as an associate editor. Her piece landed on my desk. "What do you think?" she said sunnily. "Fine," I said. In retrospect I'm sure it was publishable but it coulda/shoulda been better. I was just too timid to do anything about it. I didn't see it as my role. She was more my peer than protege. If I had a do-over I'd offer up suggestions and not be didactic about it.

Mr Harrison, I buy the don't know-don't care prop. There are other strains of it, tho'. "Feeling your help is unappeciated" and "Lacking confidence and fear of offending" would make the list.

YD&OHS, etc

 

The primary concern ought to be the reader, not the writer. If you let the writer "hang himself," you're hanging the newspaper and the readers along with him.

There's also the question of whether it's a true voice or an affectation. The writer may truly believe his voice is that of Hunter S. Thompson, but to everyone else he looks like an idiot. It serves no one to indulge this fantasy. Writer looks dumb, paper looks dumb, readers think, "This convertible-driving moron writing about the 23-16 high school softball game? Is he on mushrooms or something?"

Of course, it shouldn't be just changed, it ought to be discussed.

 

Frank - I think Night Owl's post reveals a disconnect between what people think of when they think of as writing and editing, and what kind of suggestions this editor - and any good editor - was actually making.

This had nothing to do with my "voice." Or my desire to write soaring, poetic prose. It was about, in a word, clarity. And, if I can add another, cohesiveness. It had nothing to do with my beautiful sentences or lack thereof, and everything to do with strands of the piece leading to dead ends and, in other spots, threads being introduced with no context.

Of course, a lot of new Writers find that kind of criticism boring. They want to know about their alliteration and their metaphors and analogies and themes. But it's absolutely essential that you organize the piece for maximum clarity and impact. And that's what I've never gotten enough help with.

 

I hear your voice, Night Owl, and I like it.

This has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine regarding some editors' editing. They write it, or re-write it, the way they would, to the point that the reporter barely even wants a byline because they don't feel like they wrote it. They just did all the work.

While I don't think writers ought to just be allowed to hang themselves, editors should be helping with organization, and maybe, pace or touch -- all areas where people who may be better reporters than they are writers, or where younger writers, might need some help.

But the voice and writing style should be their own, as much as possible. It promotes ownership and responsibility. And hopefully, with time, the writer will learn and improve, thanks in large part to the daily editing, and practicing, of writing.

 

I was going to say I resemble that remark, but I don't think I've seen 39 runs in the same high school softball game. But yeah, '91 Dodge Shadow convertible was indeed among the cars that I sacrificed to the deity of small-town sports journalism.

Once again I had the good fortune to have some direction early to get out of a few bad habits - maybe not all of them - and find my way. As long as I'm doing this in any capacity I want to get better.

It took awhile to realize the need for clarity more than anything, and so I came to accept that kind of criticism. We all want to make a big splash with some literary flourishes early before just settling into our ways, I guess. The problem is not becoming stagnant, and this is a trap everyone falls into at some point.

 

This is a subject near and dear to my heart, because so is my editor, Peter, the best editor I've ever had.

I say this humbly: I didn't start getting attention or awards for my writing until Peter became my editor, and it's not a coincidence. He makes everything I write much, much better.

What's frustrating for me is, when he points something out -- and he never rewrites, he makes suggestions, points to a spot on the horizon and pushes me toward it -- but when he points something out to me, it's so clear that he's right. And I'm like, Why couldn't I see that when I was writing it?

It's because editing is an entirely different skill, as distinct and praise-worthy as writing. And I really believe that you need that person in your work if you're ever going to reach your real potential. You want an editor who is twice as good at his job as you are at yours. And then you want to listen, very carefully, to everything he says.

I've worked with Peter probably five years now, and I can't think of more than one or two instances where I've disagreed with one of his suggestions.

And that's the other point I want to make: If you are lucky enough to find that one person who can take you where you want to go, you better damn well recognize the gift you've been given and make the most of that partnership. Because that's what it is. Your name alone might be on the story, but at least where I work, two people, equally important, put their stamps on every sentence. Seven edits, at least, I would say, even for small pieces -- that's how you get good at this game. There have been instances where Peter and I have talked on the phone for ten minutes trying to find the single right word for a sentence -- one word. That's how much we both care about what we do -- and that's what you need, most of all, to find in an editor. You need someone who deep down cares about you and about what you write.

Seriously, when Peter decides to hang it up, I might too. I can't imagine working with anyone else.