{"id":961,"date":"2020-09-18T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T10:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/?p=961"},"modified":"2020-10-03T01:16:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T01:16:05","slug":"too-famous-to-edit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/18\/too-famous-to-edit\/","title":{"rendered":"Too famous to edit?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I spend a little part of every day on Twitter. I probably spend too much time on Twitter, if I\u2019m honest. Sometimes, it\u2019s a bit \u2026 meh, and sometimes it\u2019s red hot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, someone I followed posted this:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know when artists get so famous their work isn\u2019t edited properly \u2026\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

and they went on to quote a few pieces of work.
Basically asking if the bigger the author gets, reputation- and following-wise, the more influence they have on the production side of their book. Specifically, editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Cue TwitterStorm. \u201cAre you saying long books are rubbish?\u201d No, they weren\u2019t.
\u201cAre you saying books are over-long drivel?\u201d No, they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some authors engaged, on differing sides of the discussion. Some authors, and non-authors, and lots of men, hurled abuse. Leaping straight into abuse is not a good look. That happens a lot nowadays. Any opinion you voice becomes a spark to ignite the powder. No one says \u201cI respectfully disagree\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember the famous quote, often attributed to Voltaire, but was actually coined by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre? In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote the phrase: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That seems to have gone out of the window now. It\u2019s now \u201cI disapprove of what you say, and you\u2019re a ***ing **** **** * for even having the temerity for saying it. And by the way, you look like a fish\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, to the question. And I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m on the side of \u2018aye\u2019. I\u2019ve read books that I thought were over-long – unnecessarily over-long. I\u2019ve read some long books, and really enjoyed them. At the end of the day, the specific word count for a novel doesn\u2019t matter a jot, as long as it meets genre and reader expectations. By and large, romance is shorter, epic fantasy longer. Crime is pretty much in the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m reminded of a book club, where we read the latest novel by a Booker prize winner. Our group was about 12 strong, mainly female, with 2-3 men, if I remember correctly. The book we read was over 600 pages long. Not small pages and large type – 600 \u2018normal\u2019 paperback pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one finished the book. No one liked the book. I gave up at about the one-third point, when a character was attending a banquet. And the author listed item after item after item. Several paragraphs of foodstuffs, as though the author had Googled \u201cwhat could be served at a banquet in the mid-1800s\u201d and had then done a massive copy-paste job to boost their word count. Seriously. Call me a Luddite, call me an infidel, call me Ishmael. But no, nothing was gained by inserting that mahoosive list in the middle of a book. It added nothing to the narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, I understand that editors can sometimes misunderstand authors, or that they won\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 the writing, and can be \u2018over-eager\u2019 in their editing suggestions. I\u2019ve had readers misunderstand, or think something is unrealistic, or that there is too much of \u2018me\u2019 in the writing (author intrusion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I get it. The relationship between an author and an editor is one based on trust. And one thing is absolutely clear – there is not a piece of work written that can\u2019t be improved by a little judicious editing before it\u2019s published. Not one. Find an editor you like, folks, and use them before you publish your novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To finish off, here\u2019s a little piece from Anne Rice, author of (amongst many other things) The Vampire Chronicles. She\u2019s had 36 novels published and sold nearly 100 million copies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spend a little part of every day on Twitter. I probably spend too much time on Twitter, if I\u2019m honest. Sometimes, it\u2019s a bit \u2026 meh, and sometimes it\u2019s red hot. Yesterday, someone I followed posted this: \u201cYou know when artists get so famous their work isn\u2019t edited properly \u2026\u201d and they went on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-writers","category-publishing","category-thinking","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/18Sept20-thick-book-for-featured-image.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5y3CH-fv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":978,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gerald-hornsby.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}