Reasonable Expectations

     When I have occasion to look at one of my own novels, it is sometimes the case that I spot a flaw in what I’ve written. It might be a homophone error, or an extra-word or missing-word error, or perhaps a minor problem in formatting. Whatever it is, the discovery will irritate me greatly, in an “I should be better than that” sort of fashion. The reaction is an expression of my expectations for myself, and the responsibility I feel toward my readers.

     In these days of Independent Publishing Triumphant – and it is triumphant, Gentle Reader; sales of indie fiction now far exceed those of conventionally published fiction – this brings a serious question to mind:

Given that the typical indie writer is a person of modest means who mostly “goes it alone” from story conception to production, editing, packaging, distribution, and promotion, should our expectations of his “error quotient” be somewhat more relaxed than what we would impose on fiction from a conventional publishing house?

     Today’s fictioneer does have better tools at his disposal than a mere typewriter. Moreover, they’re not at all expensive. Some of them are essential to producing a publishable manuscript at all. We can reasonably expect that a writer will use the facilities built into those tools, spelling checkers being at the top of the list. But as anyone who’s ever bruised his fingers against a keyboard can tell you, spelling checkers can miss quite a few kinds of errors. The same goes for grammar checkers. And there are problems of other kinds, including some quite serious ones, whose detection and capture isn’t currently automated.

     Given our awareness that the job is large and demanding and the indie is all alone in doing it, what is it reasonable to expect from him?

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     Since I became involved with indie fiction about ten years ago, I’ve read some brilliant, meticulously produced stuff, some unconscionable crap, and a great deal of fiction that stood between those poles. I recall one writer, whose stuff grabbed me by the collar novel after novel, who seemed to disdain proofreading. His stories were incomparably better than their physical instantiation. Errors of every kind in the book could be found on every page of any of his novels. But the originality of his story concepts and the brilliance of their expression got me past those technical flaws.

     Just now I’m working my way – mild emphasis on working — through a military SF series written by an indie whose name you might know. The stories aren’t entirely original; indeed, they fall into a category most readers of that subgenre would have encountered before. They aren’t all that well told, either. The author is low on technique and seems unaware of certain conventions that could have made the books easier to write and easier for the reader to follow. There are also many low-level errors: misspellings, wrong-word errors, missing-word errors, and so forth. (I can’t be any more specific than this without revealing the identity of the writer, whom I do not wish to embarrass.)

     But I’m reading them. I do have to suppress irritation at the errors and poor storytelling technique, but I’m reading them. I find them valuable for their themes, which aren’t the sort the barons of conventional publishing would find appealing. Indeed, the climate of political correctness and rampant leftism that reigns in Pub World would probably get these books rejected without any consideration whatsoever. The central character is something of a role model for the profession of arms: the sort of figure one who aspires to a military career would do well to study.

     Now, while it might be arrogant of me to feel thus, I’ve been itching to volunteer my services to the author as a technique tutor and editor. I have a feeling any such offer would be indignantly rejected; after all, no mother wants to be told her baby is deformed. But the impulse is an expression of the value I find in the works even as they are today. It’s also a gauge for the importance of indie fiction as a conduit for stories and themes the conventional houses are unwilling to consider. There’s a moral in there.

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     Sturgeon’s Law, unlike Theodore Sturgeon himself, is alive and functioning in the realm of indie fiction. You have to wade through a lot of garbage to find a jewel...and at that, some of the jewels are semi-precious at best.

     Even so – and believe me, I’m fully aware of how far indie fiction still needs to develop – it’s a field of great promise. Indie is where the originality is. Yes, there’s a lot of hackneyed stuff in the indie orbit: vampires, zombies, space wars, Tolkien derivatives, and other clichés. But the stodginess of the conventional houses is such that hackneyed crap in well-traveled subgenres, easy to categorize and market, is essentially all they’ll publish. Genuinely original fiction has essentially no chance of making it past their gatekeepers. How can we know it will sell? And indeed, that is the crux, for conventional publishers must sell lots of books to meet the bills, whereas the indie is usually under less pressure to do so out of his book revenue.

     So I’m in favor of cutting writers who tell decently original stories with important themes a lot of slack. It’s bit like a taste for moonshine: You can’t get it in the store, so if you want it, you have to be willing to accept a jug without a label or a Surgeon General’s warning on the side. Hell, you might be socially obliged to commune with the vendor over a jelly-jar full of the stuff while he complains about his no-account brother in law, his lazy kids, and how his bunions are just killing him.

     Thoughts?

Whose Story, Yours Or Your Editor’s?

     I’ve been making the acquaintance of an increasing number of other indie writers lately, in consequence of having joined Gab.ai. Quite a few of them have expressed frustration at their difficulties in completing a project. Many of the complaints come from writers who have quite as much to say about their frustration with their editors.

     At least one category of the complaints involves the editor acting as if he were the creative force, and arrogating to himself the privileges thereof.

     To make that plainer and more sharply pointed, such an editor criticizes not the grammar, spelling, punctuation, timing, scene-setting, characterization, plausibility of sequence, naturalness of dialogue, or other technical or quasi-technical matters but the causal underpinnings of the story: in other words, the author’s theme. The editor then tries to steer it in a different – sometimes wholly contradictory – direction. And many a writer, insufficiently sure of himself and his aims, allows such an editor a wholly inappropriate degree of influence.

     An editor who does such things doesn’t deserve to be heeded; he deserves to be fired. But that, too, is often beyond the confidence of a relatively new writer.

     Maxwell Perkins, one of the most brilliant and effective editors of all time, was scathing about such editorial assertions of a co-creative role:

     “The first thing you must remember: an editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as a handmaiden to its author. Don’t ever get feeling important about yourself, because an editor at most releases energy. He creates nothing....If you have a Mark Twain, don’t try to make him into a Shakespeare, or make a Shakespeare into a Mark Twain. Because in the end, an editor can get only as much out of an author as the author has in him.”

     Perkins edited F. Scott Fitzgerald, Erskine Caldwell, Thomas Wolfe, and Ernest Hemingway, among other literary giants. No doubt the great gifts of those writers helped Perkins to remember his famous credo – “The book belongs to the author” – but he worked in the same, self-effacing fashion with other, less well known writers.

     Contemporary editors, both of Pub World and free-lance, have largely failed to grasp Perkins’s lesson.

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     I’ve worked with a couple of gifted editors who did understand the Perkins maxim. One of them, Rafe Brox, was responsible for cleaning up On Broken Wings. The other, Kelly Tomkies, was instrumental in grinding the burrs off Shadow Of A Sword. I won’t go so far as to say their efforts were what made those books readable, but it wouldn’t be too far from the truth.

     By contrast, I’ve also worked with an editor, who shall go unnamed just in case he’s repented of his sins, who wanted to recast my story in a wholly different direction. Ultimately, I ignored his “suggestions.” (It was made easier by his predilection for exclamation points and writing in ALL-CAPS.) Though it took a while – I was a newly fledged novelist and still tended to pay excessive attention to an editor – I sensed, that what he and I both wanted to do was to write the book. I decided that he could jolly well hare off and write his own novel, without my financial contributions.

     Now, there’s a moral in this. Many an editor is himself an aspiring writer. Why he hasn’t struck out on his own might be a mystery, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the author’s authority and the editor’s proper place in the scheme of things. Maxwell Perkins got it right. You, the author, should enforce Perkins’s dicta on any editor you entertain the notion of hiring.

     That can be a difficult undertaking, especially as many a free-lance editor requires payment before undertaking the job in prospect.

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     The great irony of the overly intrusive editor lies in this: the most effective editor for your book will be someone who genuinely enjoys the kind of story you have to tell. Thus, he’s highly likely to be a writer himself, and one who writes in your chosen genres, at that...and that will predispose him to the very over-intrusiveness of which I speak here.

     It doesn’t matter. You must be firm. If you’re not, he’ll succeed in twisting your tale to point in a direction alien to your wishes. The final product might well contradict the premises with which you started your project. Indeed, it might express a theme you believe to be wholly incorrect, perhaps even evil.

     That makes membership in a critique group of like-minded writers one of the most valuable alliances a writer can form. Writers who hold to common moral and ethical values can serve one another as editors, often to far better effect than many a “professional.” Of course that, too, has its costs. The largest of them is obligatory reciprocity: if he agrees to critique your manuscript, you are morally obliged to do the same for him.

     I needn’t go on about this at great length. Remember, “The book belongs to the author.” Don’t allow an editor to snatch it out of your hands and transform it into something you never intended. Imagine the shade of Maxwell Perkins looking down on you from heaven and clucking – not at him for his unholy cheek, which is all too common these days, but at you for your boiled-vermicelli spine.

     [Cross-posted at Liberty's Torch.]