As an editor, I try not to think of myself as a creator. That muddies the waters. Of course, sometimes the writers think of me that way.

Long ago, I was editing a friend’s story for my anthology, Finis: A Book of Endings. I marked it up heavily, and sent it back to him for comments. He sheepishly IMed me asking if I wanted co-author credit.

My response was more or less: “Fuck you. I’m your editor. You wrote this. I just took out the scaffolding you left in.” (For the record, he was someone with whom I could answer with vulgarity, so it was a friendly “fuck you.”)

But yeah, some are more like copy editors than managing editors. For RPGs, I’m ill-content to just copy edit. So I turn down jobs that look too much like that. I’m a craftsman, and I’m doing this thing because I love it.

- Ryan

The lack of power is really an interesting issue. People in the indie-crowd often speak of “Creator-control”, but the editor is also a creator, no? Heh.

That lead me to realize that sometimes editors around here are more like proofers, due to the lack of the dictation ability.

In re: tangent, hey, I’m firmly possessed of the opinion that it’s impossible to go off on a tangent on one’s own blog, since for the most part, a blog is pretty much a collection of tangential thoughts.

What you said 100%.

Working with Paul on Penny was always about dialogue, but he was a pretty reachable guy on this project, so asking him low-level stuff like “what do you actually want to achieve with this paragraph?” was easy to do. I have worked with less reachable writers where I have to assume a lot more about intent because dialogue was infrequent.

That’s to say that I don’t see achieving my two primary duties as something done solely by text-changing. Dialogue is key.

I can’t remember where, but there was a paragraph in Penny that Paul & I went back and forth about. I kept asserting that it was unclear, so I eventually rewrote it to be what I thought he was saying. His solution was “That’s not what I meant…but you’re right in that it was unclear. Here’s what I mean.” That experience has stuck with me as a lesson in trying not to assume I know the intent something that needs rewriting, if that makes any sense.

Of course, I often find myself in the curious position of editing for a writer who is also the publisher, so I often frame things in the form of conversation rather than dictation. I’m an editor who often only has authority to walk off the job, and everything else is looked at as mere suggestion. But, I find that’s a healthy way to converse with writers (at least, I do right now). And that was a total tangent, wasn’t it?

- Ryan

But I digress.

As an editor in my day job (and a freelancer for some RPG folks), I’m always anxious about the above, as well as angsty at the pocketbook level about doing substantive editing or rewriting … it occurs to me that if I’m doing that much revision, then I needs to get paid and/or acknowledged as a *writer* or contributor in some way, just as Paul did with you on “Penny.” Any editor knows that there’s a huge difference in the amount of time spent on substantive editing vs. copyediting, possibly an order of magnitude.

So, my disorganized reply to your disorganized yet on-target thoughts is “you’re absolutely right about the need for an editor to align text with intent… if that’s what the writer’s intent is for having you as an editor.” That’s got to be clear up front, or unhappiness will abound.