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

[janni.livejournal.com]

Editing the proposal would be a little uncomfortable for my own work, though I have done it for work for hire, mostly because I'm not convinced the proposal tells much about the final story anyway.

But editing the actual text--I mostly enjoy that. Especially if the edits make the story stronger. Kids book editors tend to edit a lot more than adult ones, so two or three editorial rounds is not at all out of question.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Editing the proposal would be a little uncomfortable for my own work, though I have done it for work for hire

We have also had extensive editorial input into the front-end of work done for hire. This strikes me as only fair, since the editor is in that case paying us to write their vision, and we want to be sure to have it nailed down at all the corners before we start, in order to avoid Unpleasant Surprises(tm).

Especially if the edits make the story stronger.

No question that, as a friend says, a good editor is worth six months.