The masterless editor
Lessons in editorial diplomacy from the samurai
Before I started studying professional writing and editing, the word ‘editor’ conjured up a The devil wears prada-esque demonic figure, insistent on changes and abusing writers to the point of near breakdown. Likewise, the word ‘editing’ meant ‘proofreading’ — searching for spelling errors and misplaced commas — instead of the stages before that use all of an editor’s skills.
The reality of editing, as I’ve learned throughout my studies, is a very different story. Outside the prescriptive world of magazines and newspapers, editors have very little power over an author’s work — almost no power. In-house editing jobs are also rare and competitive: the Australian Publishers Association website once joked that the best way to become an editor was ‘killing an editorial assistant and assuming their identity’.[i] This leaves many editors as masterless freelancers. To me, being an editor is a bit like being a rōnin — a masterless samurai from feudal Japan — with similar concerns in negotiation, diplomacy and acceptance.
The author–editor relationship
In most cases, a writer willingly engages an editor because they want to improve their work. However, sometimes an editor is a mandatory — even unwelcome — collaborator. Writers will always have an attachment to their work and the editing process always sparks a kind of fear. As John Steinbeck wrote in Journal of a novel, a book ‘goes first to the lions […] It is kicked and slashed and gouged’.[ii] While Steinbeck’s editors might have had the rapport with him to say, ‘My god, how you do dangle a participle’, a masterless editor has no such established relationship.
As samurai-turned-monk Yamamoto Tsunetomo wrote in the Hagakure, the most influential book on the samurai code of honour, ‘the way in which an opinion is offered is of the essence […] people think they are being considerate by pointing out wrongdoings that are unpleasant or difficult to broach’.[iii]
No matter how egregious the error, the masterless editor can’t just say, ‘This bit adds nothing — cut it out’ or ‘That’s definitely offensive and you’re a bigot’. Instead, the editor must suggest, ask questions, frame queries with an effect to the writing’s audience and purpose.
Both editors and samurai can benefit from Tsunetomo’s thoughts on offering one’s opinion: ‘While complimenting his finer attributes, present your views in such a way that he will happily take your advice to correct his shortfalls, just as a man with a dry throat reaches for water to quench his thirst.’ This is the secret to masterful editing: being so in tune with the writer’s voice that they believe your suggestions and sentences are their own.
Editorial detachment
As Mandy Brett wrote in Meanjin, an editor’s job is paradoxical: a matter of simultaneously holding and letting go. ‘You must never, ever forget,’ Brett adds, ‘that it doesn’t belong to you. Your job is to make something perfect. It is not possible.’[iv] The masterless editor, like the rōnin, exists outside a system where they’re guaranteed consistent work and an ongoing relationship with collaborators. They must judiciously pick their battles. Is it really worth arguing with a writer over readers not understanding their favourite adverb when they’re changing tenses mid-paragraph?
An editor must care, but it isn’t their work. As Brett says, ‘You need to be able to offer a principled argument and then give way graciously without thinking your gall bladder is going to explode’. Like a samurai leading troops on a doomed charge, an editor can only watch clunky sentences make their way onto the final proofs with a ‘Well, I did mention it’.
Detachment isn’t just bracing for a stubborn writer. The masterless editor’s good intentions, especially when eager to prove their skill, can go too far. I heard an anecdote from a friend of a friend, describing his experience publishing a fantasy novel trilogy. The writer was working with a new copyeditor for the final novel, who left numerous dreaded red marks across the manuscript. Some of these were along the lines of, ‘This character’s dialogue is stilted and unnatural’. ‘Yes’, replied the writer, ‘I’ve written his speech like that on purpose, since Book 1’.
Tsunetomo has thoughts on eager, ambitious corrections: ‘There are some men who wish to be called heroes […] They offer remonstrance thinking of it as a meritorious deed of service, but it leaves them open for condemnation, and then ruin’. I don’t know if this editor was given access to the previous editors’ resources, but editorial detachment means you must put aside your preferred conventions to best serve the writer and their text.
Unbeholden to an overarching employer, the masterless editor also has the option of walking away. Sometimes there’s just nothing you can contribute to a project, whether because of a personality clash, a lack of communication or too many missed deadlines. This might go against every fibre of your editorial ethics, but the writer’s decisions are final. It’s their work. Sometimes an editor has to say, ‘If I don’t receive anything from you by such-and-such date, then I’ll have to assume this project isn’t going ahead. Thank you for the inquiry’.
Conclusion
Perhaps the picture of editing I’ve painted seems grim. Under the heading ‘How do you become an editor?’ in Janet McKenzie’s The editors’ companion, she says, ‘First, are you sure you want to?’
For all the frustrating diplomacy and lack of security being a masterless editor entails, it also comes with a degree of freedom. Tsunetomo recounts a man telling him, ‘People think that nothing could be worse than being a rōnin […] It must crush the spirit and lead to a loss of incentive. Yet, when I was a rōnin, I found it was not all that bad. It was different to what I expected, and to be honest, I wouldn’t mind being a rōnin again’.
In the end, the masterless editor walks off into the horizon, past a text they’re sad to leave behind, a barren wasteland of poorly planned chronology and misplaced commas, or something in between.
[i] McKenzie, J 2011, The editor’s companion, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne
[ii] Steinbeck, J 1969, Journal of a novel: the East of Eden letters, Viking Press, New York City, US
[iii] Tsunetomo, Y, translated by Bennett, A 2014, Hagakure: the secret wisdom of the samurai, Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon, Vermont, US
[iv] Brett, M 2011, ‘Stet by me: thoughts on editing fiction’, Meanjin, vol. 70 no. 1
