The Secret Sign of a Good Editor
Keep this basic tip in mind if you’re editing someone’s work
Recently I had the pleasure of writing again for my old newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, about a very cool book.
It’s called Terminal Island: Lost Communities on America’s Edge. If you’re unfamiliar with Southern California, it’s a book about one of the unlikeliest — and ugliest — spots.
Terminal Island is the shipping/commerce center for our region. I guess I’m being harsh when I say it’s “ugly,” but that’s because it’s a heavily industrialized place right on the water next to Long Beach and San Pedro. The name isn’t very romantic, either. It was inspired by the idea that the island would be the end of a railway line taking goods to and from the harbor. A very practical name.
Long before it was developed for commerce, Terminal Island was an amazing place that started out as an inconspicuous sandbar where locals started living and building towns and villages. As sand piled up along the jetties, the size of the island grew. An artist colony started. Then the resorts came. So did a Japanese fishing village that was tragically erased by the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
You can read more about the book here. (Please note: Unfortunately, my old paper has a paywall for non-subscribers, but I’m providing the link anyways. You might still get a free view before you have to subscribe.)
The presence of absence
The real point of my piece is something my headline refers to; it’s something I experienced after reading that book and interviewing the authors.
Each author has her own writer’s voice, but when I read the book I didn’t hear either of them. I didn’t pick up any of the idiosyncracies I’d heard during our Zoom conversations. Instead, in the book, there’s a single voice that doesn’t sound like either of them stretching from the first page to the last.
That, I realized, was a sign of the book’s editor. Editors are invisible. They work in the background. If they’ve done their jobs right, you shouldn’t notice them at all.
For many years at the paper, that’s what I practiced. Whenever I worked on someone’s story or feature, I tried to be like the scout in the forest who drags a branch behind him to cover his tracks. You weren’t supposed to find me in the piece, but … my invisibility was also a sign that I’d been there. It’s a very Buddhist-sounding way of looking at editing, and I like that. It’s always been true for me.
Be clear with your client(s)
If you are an editor who is offering your services to others, bear what I’ve said in mind. When you edit an author’s manuscript or article, you are not there to insert your own voice into it. You’re there to help them preserve theirs, and also to provide clear suggestions and help them improve or smooth over anything that seems rough, clunky or troublesome.
If you think there’s a better creative solution to something in their manuscript, that’s different: Then you’re playing the role of a developmental editor. If you want to be able to offer creative input to your client, you need to negotiate this part of your editing agreement upfront.
Important: This also means you should be charging more than you would as a straight proofer/copyeditor. If your client is getting invaluable creative feedback from you, you deserve to be paid for it.
If you’re working on a manuscript that has more than a single author — like the Terminal Island book — then your editing role may be a little different. You still need to be invisible, but you also have to make more assertive edits so that all the sections will sound like they’ve been composed with a single voice.
Does that make sense? I hope it does.
Whatever your situation is, make sure that you are clear with your client(s) about what you will provide. Negotiate everything before you begin. You don’t want to make an extensive set of changes that bring all the parts into alignment only to find out that the co-authors didn’t want that.
Sometimes co-authors prefer to have two distinct voices in their narrative even though I think that makes for a terrible reading experience. But hey, it’s their book; it’s their money.
If you have any questions or need some feedback on a project that you’re working on, add a comment here or send me an email via my website.
Onwards, my friends. Don’t give up!
