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MRBP #11: Do writers work alone?

This was first pub­lished in 2013. You’ve read it often enough that it’s #11 on the count­down of Most Read Blog Posts. Thanks to each of you for fol­low­ing this blog.

EditorWe like to think of authors as the sole cre­ators of their work, a roman­tic notion of the soli­tary fig­ure alone in his/her gar­ret, spool­ing out spot­less text. Thus John Hem­ing, of Shake­speare: “His mind and hand went togeth­er: And what he thought, he uttered with that eas­i­ness, that we have scarce received from him a blot.” [Pref­ace to the First Folio]

Don’t believe it. It is one of the curiosi­ties of our cul­tur­al bag­gage that we think writ­ers work alone. Are not their names—alone—on the title page? When awards are hand­ed out, is not the author the one who takes it home?

In fact writing—in the pro­fes­sion­al world—is an intense­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive art. No one these days is more impor­tant than the edi­tor, who can, and often does, work with the writer to shift, guide, cut, redi­rect, refine, and some­times even rewrite the work. The edi­tor has a unique set of skills, per­cep­tions, and the tal­ent to com­mu­ni­cate to the writer. It’s high­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic. Edi­tor X and writer Y work won­der­ful­ly well togeth­er, but not edi­tor X and writer Z. Z works bet­ter with M. It’s not uncom­mon for a writer to work with a spe­cif­ic edi­tor through­out his/her career. And if you study an editor’s con­nec­tions, there are some edi­tors whose writ­ers have been more suc­cess­ful than oth­ers. It is not a coincidence.

I’m think­ing these thoughts since I just sent in the first draft of a new book to my edi­tor. When I hear from her I’ll start writ­ing the book.

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