Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: amused
  • Music: Reefer Madness, 'Mary Sunshine.'

Meet the proofers, or, Mary vs. the comma.

When I write a book, I generally start with, well, text. After which, I poke the text with a stick until I'm sure it won't decide to eat somebody, and pass it off to my first tier of proofreaders (called, imaginatively enough, 'Tier One'). Tier One is normally five to eight people; they're selected from a small pool of prior proofers who have proven good at handling my specific first draft follies. Tier Two gets the text when it gets finished for the first time. It's about the same size as Tier One, and tends to be a little more vicious. Tier Three combines Tier One and Tier Two, along with about five new people. Yes, I have a large proofing pool. (No, I'm not looking for more -- these are people I know through a variety of channels, some of whom are in writer's groups with me, others of whom have just proven very, very good at what they do. What they do often involves grenades.)

I'm always fascinated by the way different people approach the editing process. I know authors who don't let anyone see anything until the book is finished for the first time. Authors who hit a single chapter eighty times before moving on to the next one -- they may be slow, but dude, when they finish a book, it is finished. Me, I tend to run as fast as I can from one end to the other, editing and correcting as I go, and throwing chunks of text to the wolves as frequently as I can.

Right now, I'm processing edits to A Local Habitation provided by Mary, who has developed a vendetta against the British comma. Seriously, she's like some sort of twisted naturalist, stalking them through the wild paragraphs, and clubbing them to death like baby harp seals whenever they're stupid enough to come into her sight. I'm afraid she's going to start taking shots at me. She's also going to war against my tendency to insert semi-colons wherever I can swing it. This is why I love Mary so very, very dearly. Also why I will never actually let her near me with a red pen.

I have about five stacks of edits to process after this (gulp), and then it's on to the denouement, which will hopefully do me a favor and not hit me like a ton of bricks. Ah, editing. Ah, criticism. Ah, snark.

What are your feelings on editing? How much is too much -- and how mean is too mean?
Tags: current projects, editing, i love my editors, proofreading
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  • 7 comments

vaspider

May 20 2008, 18:24:37 UTC 9 years ago

I have always agreed with Anne Sexton's feeling that poems are never finished, only abandoned.

copperwise

May 20 2008, 18:34:48 UTC 9 years ago

I don't claim to be gentle. If someone asks me to read their stuff and I know they only want warm fuzzies, they'll get "oh, yes, it was interesting." If someone like you who wants serious work and serious opinions asks me to proof/edit/copyedit/critique, that's what is going to happen.

I think too much is when someone takes it upon themself to try to *rewrite* for you. But I assume when you are processing edits, you ignore things that don't make sense to you. If that comma is where you want it and you don't feel it needs to go away, then I assume you keep it.

As for mean and snarky, I reserve that for reviews of already edited and published work. Works in progress need calm and logical critique. The idea is presumable to remove any trace of possible suck. When something has made it to published status and is still filled with suck, *then* mean and snarky are the order of the day.

kyrielle

May 20 2008, 18:53:01 UTC 9 years ago

For me, it depends on the context and the request (if any) made of me. Someone posting a poem or story and saying "I had fun writing this" or "here, see this!" - unless it's in a critique group, I respond if I love it and keep my mouth shut otherwise. No critique requested, none given.

Someone handing me something and saying "Hey, do you think there's any potential here?" will get a response to that question, along with whether I think it needs a lot of work or just a little polishing.

Ask me for detailed critique, and you get, well, detailed critique. If I can find things to critique - sometimes, I miss stuff. But if you ask for a critique, that's what you get - anything that catches my attention that I think you need to know. I'll try to be polite about it if I can, but I'm doing no favors to someone who asked for serious critique if I fail to point out that the guy who was a vegetarian on page 80 is eating steak on page 115 with no qualms. (Of course, I'm also likely to miss details like that one, but assuming I spotted them!)

If someone tells me it's a first draft, don't mind the dust or the misplaced punctuation yet, but does the story work? then I'll focus on story elements. That sort of thing. It really depends on what they're asking for.

I don't do enough writing that's meant to go anywhere to ask for critique, because honestly, if it's just for me, it doesn't have to be shiny. But I generally used to have three categories in mind when I was actually trying to publish poetry - things that are just for fun (no critique asked or wanted; also not going to do anything with it unless I get to the point where that changes!), rough drafts (general input on whether it's worth polishing or if any lines work really well, but not detailed), and later drafts (machete!).

Deleted comment

hsifyppah

May 21 2008, 05:56:35 UTC 9 years ago

Me like stabbing! RARRRR I STAB.

deire

May 21 2008, 13:33:30 UTC 9 years ago

I used to be a lot thicker skinned. These days, I'm sloooowly getting back to writing and sharing. First draft, I need to hear something good. If it's all rip-tear-shred, I will probably rip-tear-shred the sucker right into the nearest waste basket. Once I have more confidence back (it was here once, it will be again), I like a balance. All praise tells me nothing. All criticism tells me nothing. I need to know how to make something stronger--which implies that there is a base for that strength.

archangelbeth

May 27 2008, 17:47:51 UTC 9 years ago

• I like editing...
• I hate editing my own work after a point. If I could see where it was wrong, I'd fix it already!
• I think I'd like editors who point things out quickly and let me hasten to fix my clear idiocy, though a bit of clever, kind snark would probably make it more enjoyable.

(BTW -- and ignore this part at will! -- Any suggestions towards building proofer-pools? I have some beta-readers, but if I can't hack something down to a quarter its size (*wince*), I'm going to need someone else to help with the machete work and I suspect that the readers I've got are either too busy or aren't seeing the same flaws I'm not seeing...)