Editors: Are they just a necessary evil?

You write something, hand it off, will you still recognize it?

"How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed the publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good." — Mark Twain, speaking at a dinner honoring the 70th birthday of longtime Harper’s Monthly editor Henry Mills Alden, November 10, 1906.

Driving home yesterday, I noticed a policeman on a motorcycle hiding in front of the Catholic Church, another off to the side of an intersection, and a third, sitting in a driveway, obscured from view. I thought of one thing: Editors.

An artist’s conception of me, writing my Substack in a few years, now, WITH an editor

As someone who has been writing sentences for years and years and generally speaking, shipping them off to an editor somewhere, I have not always been pleased to see what comes out the other side.

While the concept of “an editor” is idealistic - “How can I, in good conscience, find a way to put my heart and soul into a delicate, respectful read of this writer’s impassioned words and help him (or her) achieve the very best possible story/column/feature he or she could possibly write?” - the reality of the situation is, as you might expect, quite different.

“I don’t like this word here.” “What do you mean by this?” “I’m sure people won’t understand what you’re saying here.” “This is too long.” “I don’t think you mean what you’re saying.” (I could keep going but, you get the point, I suspect.)

In theory at least, it certainly does make sense. You write something, you’re very close to the work, you need another pair of eyes to give it a good look before you publish it, just to make sure everything is spelled right, punctuation is ok, etc.

However, having done this sort of thing for over 50 years, there have been way too many times when the story/editor relationship to me more closely resembles the relationship between a dog and a fire hydrant.

For way too many editors, it seems as if it is against the law to LEAVE THE COPY AS IT IS. IF THERE IS NO REASON TO CHANGE IT, DON’T.

In fairness, being a editor, like a cop on a motorcycle, is a thankless job. It is rare that a writer will say to an editor - “Gee whiz, pal, you really made my work more better.” I will confess to you that I HAVE complimented editors in the past, which I know may upset some writer friends of mine. One of my editors did such a wonderful job on a story of mine, I won a national award. And I told him so.

Another editor who works at a book publisher, who has worked with me on three Bob Dylan books, a book about teaching Huckleberry Finn and emails me occasionally, is a fantastic editor and, I’d like to think, a distant friend. So it can happen between writers and editors.

But there are other times when, say you’re writing a book about baseball and you include a player that the editor “doesn’t think belongs in the same category” of players you, the AUTHOR, has chosen for your book. So he argues with you. It’s YOUR book, of course, but he thinks he has a role in it, too. Does he?

Of course, I’m biased on this topic, all writers are. But I would simply say this to the editors of the world - not that they are listening. DO NO HARM.

Let the writer have his/her say. Unless there is something unduly offensive or unclear, why mess with it? It’s his/her name on it, not yours. Let them suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune if some reader doesn’t like it.

Having been an editor at times throughout my career in newspapers and having worked with high school writers for a dozen years in putting out an award-winning school newspaper (First in the nation two years in a row - my Gadsden County Gazette!), my goal was to help the writers say what they wanted to say and GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.

With my years of experience as a writer myself, I think I was able to do that pretty effectively. I certainly helped a lot of students learn to write. But to me, you have to understand the mind, the heart, the soul of the writer to do that. You have to care about making a connection. I wish more editors I worked with did that.

Maybe it was time pressure, maybe it was personality, maybe it was they had the power of the final say and you didn’t but too many editors I worked with just weren’t there. They were supposed to, in my view, HELP the story. Some did. Many just got in the way. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel about it.

My classic editor story happened at my last newspaper job. Every year, there was a big-time fishing tournament in our area. While I’m not a fisherman, I knew there was tremendous interest and thought my readers would enjoy coverage so I went down to Carrabelle every year. And sometimes there were language barriers, like the time I praised “Diamond Jack’s crack crew for winning another title” and one of the fishermen called me and asked if I was accusing them of being on crack. Really.

But the most infamous moment was when a Tallahassee man, a local fisherman, was a wire-to-wire winner of the tournament, which has perennially been won by somebody from Carrabelle. So this guy, who had a long three-syllable French name - DeLaMontigny, something like that, was leading all week and eventually won.

His name was up on the leader board in giant letters, he was well-known in the club and was a sweet guy, friendly, chatty, perfect for a writer. And it was a big deal that a TALLAHASSEE man won the tournament. At last!

So he wins, I send my story in and about 8 p.m. I get a call from my editor.

“John. There’s a serious problem with your story.”

“What?”

"You spelled his name wrong.”

“Whattya mean I spelled his name wrong? It was in the paper all week, spelled the same way.”

“Did you ask him if he spelled it that way?”

“NO! His name was on a three-foot leaderboard all week. I mentioned him in stories all week. So NO, I didn’t ask him on SUNDAY if that was how he spelled his name.” (I think you could say my tone was strident)

“Well, we checked in the phone book and they have it spelled differently.”

“SO! The phone book lists me as living at a place I haven’t lived in for three years.”

“YOU’RE SAYING A PUBLIC DOCUMENT IS INCORRECT”

(NOW whose voice was strident?)

“We need you to call him,” the editor said.

“But he was up at 3 a.m. and is in bed, sleeping. I don’t want to wake him up.”

“CALL HIM.”

So I did. Woke him up. Apologized, told him my EDITOR insisted.

“You had my name in the GD paper every day!” a sleepy voice said. “It was on the leaderboard all week. Don’t you think I would have SAID something if you had it wrong? People all over Tallahassee know me. I’ve been in the club for years. Jesus!”

“I know. I agree. My EDITOR made me call.”

“Well, he’s a moron.” And he hung up.

The headline in the newspaper the next day was this:

“Carrabelle man wins fishing tournament.”