How Much is Too Much?

[rolanni]

Today's question for the group mind: How much editing is Enough; how much is Too Much; and d'ye ever crave more?

kinzel and I are ...fortunate, I suppose the word is... in generally being edited lightly. This comes with its own set of terrors, of course, and it's not at all unknown for us to impose upon friends to beta-read our latest novel and ask them to Do Their Worst.

However, out there in ListWorld, I've been reading tales from writers -- many of them multi-published authors who clearly know what they're doing -- whose editors edit their proposals, to the extent of not letting them continue on what I consider to be the Real Work -- that would be, writing the book -- until the proposal is up to the editor's standard. This seems beyond foolish to me, but what do I know? My feelings about proposals are ambiguous at best.

Comments

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

Editing the proposal would be beyond my comfort level. It's still MINE, at that point. I am not ready to let people in yet.

Anyway, a proposal for me is always just a vague marker of what I might eventually turn in.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

a proposal for me is always just a vague marker of what I might eventually turn in.

Yes, and yes. Which is why I find the whole "editing the proposal" scenario so ...macabre. I mean, surely editors know that proposals are just, well -- guidelines....

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Me too.

The very idea makes me want to go and hide under the bed.

I usually write the first 20,000 words of the book, aka "the easy bit" before doing the proposal anyway.