Thursday 30 October 2014

Editors


I've been preparing my novel, 'Death of a Dreamonger', for self printing in my own Grub Street Publications.

One of the steps toward publication has been to hire an external editor to sort through the book and lend a clear and impartial bit of advice. The cheapest of these was 'cheapbookeditors'. I sent them three chapters and instead of advice, I received abuse.


you seem to be a man, yet write the story as a first person female
perspective, which will have every female reader throwing it down
as soon as that is realised, and every male reader thinking that it is
some gay thing, and every literary agent will shake their head in 
disgust at a man trying to write as a woman.
 
the book is all over the place with mixed tense, and it would need
a great deal of work, so I am not sure that we would take it on board.
 
perhaps you could send the whole thing, and explain it to us...


Aside from the fact that the editor can't use capital letters at the beginning of sentences; or that the reading was so cursory that the pretty obvious tense of the piece was misunderstood, the person behind the email really didn't understand that part of the fun of writing is assuming roles.

I had already decided there was no way I'd be using them but riled, I thought I would send them a little more and answer their points.


The original idea of the first person female narrator was as an inversion of the first person male narrator of the traditional gumshoe sort of novel. Setting her up as an outsider, often on the edge of respectability and financial stability was part of this gumshoe element. I was hoping that as the reader continued, they would read Eve as herself and appreciate her as such.

The tense of the book is present tense. I experimented with all three but present tense seemed to have a taut and exciting quality. However at the very beginning of the book she is looking back at her preparations (curling her hair and dressing up) and her hopes for the action ahead (he will gaze his two peepers on my two peepers) so tense does roll back and forward a little.


I received another email...


I have scanned through, and the problem is that it is clever, too clever for its own good, and us editors can only edit that which is 
traditional and fits some rules. No rules, nothing to edit.
 
There are very obvious punctuation problems, which begs the question
as to how someone who can write in a clever fashion can end speech
in a full stop and miss every comma that should be in placed before a name.
 
In order to fix this we would have to know what was in your mind, and we don't, so we can't apply normal rules - there would be red ink everywhere.
 
Also, you (and I the reader) look through the eyes of a girl kissing a man,and us male editors don't do that.
 
Good luck elsewhere, and you need a lady editor that is unconventional and a telepath.
 

I would admit that my punctuation is a little skew-whiff, readers of this blog would agree with that. They would also agree that I have a tendency towards unnecessary words. But to say that my book has no rules is an outrage and an insult. That's not counting the misogyny and homophobia implied all through the messages.

I know as an aspiring writer I am a ten-a-penny waste of space but I don't think I deserved such rudeness, especially from somebody I was originally intending to pay.

Luckily, I have found another editor. I am yet to ascertain her conventionality or telepathy but I did receive a first impression.

It's wonderfully original and your writing has a lively, youthful quality

Here we go then.


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