Editing: Threat or Menace
James Nicoll
from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
to publish the book she wrote.
--
"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."
"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
Konrad Gaertner
>
> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> to publish the book she wrote.
I can accept this, but how do you make sure that the publisher isn't
introducing errors when translating the text from whatever the
author submitted to whatever format they need? For example:
http://google.com/groups?selm=3B423FC1.45B2E859%40dreamcafe.com
--KG
James Nicoll
Konrad Gaertner <gae...@aol.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>>
>> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>>
>> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>> much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>> do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>> I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>> take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>> to publish the book she wrote.
Hmmm, the para I though I appended to this never got out.
>I can accept this, but how do you make sure that the publisher isn't
>introducing errors when translating the text from whatever the
>author submitted to whatever format they need?
That's a different kind of editing, I think. I take the Baen
quotation as refering to things like "Isaac, of course there are three
Laws of Robotics in your stories and these are what they are" or less
desirably "I love the story but can you change the protagonist from a
middle aged male truck driver to a 14 year old prostitute, but keep
everything else the same" or even less desirably "The only words still
in the original order in your story are the title and your name. And I
fixed the spelling on your name, Mr. MacAsimov."
Lis Carey
> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> to publish the book she wrote.
I know one author who published several novels with Baen, who then moved from
Baen to Tor. When I talked to her some time after turning her first
manuscript to Tor, she expounded happily for quite a while about the
wonderfully usefull criticisms, comments, suggestions, and general _editing_
she was getting from her editor at Tor. This wasn't why she left Baen; it was
just a happy side effect.
Lis Carey
Timothy McDaniel
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do
>as much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we
>attempt to do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I
>want to publish, I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make
>suggestions but]... we take a fairly strong position, that "thou
>shalt not edit. The author gets to publish the book she wrote.
Darwinian editing. The authors provide random variation and the
editor does selection to produce the fit -- or, in the case of people
selling well, leaves the selection to the marketplace.
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
John Pelan
wrote:
>
> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>to publish the book she wrote.
>
This explains a great deal... ;-)
Speaking as an author, the book or story I wrote is almost always
better after being filtered through some editorial suggestions.
What Baen advocates is sheer laziness as a publisher and a disservice
to their authors.
J
Mike Schilling
"John Pelan" <jpe...@cnw.com> wrote in message
news:3db0a856...@usenet.cnw.com...
extent, the same goes for Boucher and Gold.
Htn963
>"John Pelan" <jpe...@cnw.com> wrote in message
>news:3db0a856...@usenet.cnw.com...
>> On 18 Oct 2002 16:15:34 -0400, jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>> >
>> > JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>> >much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>> >do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>> >I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>> >take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>> >to publish the book she wrote.
Tranlation: we're a cheap publisher, and we do away with editing (in
addition to quality printing, paper, and cover art) to cut costs.
>> This explains a great deal... ;-)
>>
>> Speaking as an author, the book or story I wrote is almost always
>> better after being filtered through some editorial suggestions.
>>
>> What Baen advocates is sheer laziness as a publisher and a disservice
>> to their authors.
Indeed. This reminds me of the time I wrote my first brief on a political
asylum case and eagerly asked this so-called supervising lawyer to critique it:
he sent it back with only one line crossed out. Boy, what a learning
experience.
>If Cambell had felt that way, SF as we know it would not exist. To a lesser
>extent, the same goes for Boucher and Gold.
What are you talking about? Campbell and Gold were notorious for being
hands-on and controlling...don't know much about Boucher.
--
Ht
|Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
--John Donne, "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"|
David Dyer-Bennet
> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> to publish the book she wrote.
I know a lot of authors who *really really* appreciate the suggestions
from their editors, and one case where an author paid out of his own
pocket to get somebody he thought was good to do the "editor" job on a
book the publisher wasn't doing okay on. And *lots* of authors who go
to considerable trouble (including multiple people traveling many
hundreds of miles) to review novels with their writer's group.
And a *whole lot* of books that look to me like they would have been
*much* better if they'd been edited.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info
Bill Snyder
>"Mike Schilling", et al. wrote:
>
>>If Cambell had felt that way, SF as we know it would not exist. To a lesser
>>extent, the same goes for Boucher and Gold.
>
> What are you talking about? Campbell and Gold were notorious for being
>hands-on and controlling...don't know much about Boucher.
??? That's exactly what he means: If JWC, HLG, etc., had been that
cheap/lazy back when the mags played a much more prominent role, the
field would have been stunted by the profusion of poorly-/un-edited
crap..
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Andrea Leistra
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>to publish the book she wrote.
Unless, of course, the book was written more than twenty years ago,
in which case Baen assumes current readers will become confused
and unable to recognize that the book was Not Written Yesterday,
in which case he unleashes the editors to get rid of all those
nasty dated comments and references....
--
Andrea Leistra
Bill Snyder
One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
pipes.
Not to mention all those exploding spaceships in _War of the Worlds_.
Matt Ruff
> from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> to publish the book she wrote.
My first reaction is that this paragraph could use some editing. When he
writes, "if someone were not sending a book I want to publish, I don't
publish it," what does that mean, exactly?
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff
>
> "Mike Schilling", et al. wrote:
>
>> If Cambell had felt that way, SF as we know it would not exist. To a lesser
>> extent, the same goes for Boucher and Gold.
>
> What are you talking about? Campbell and Gold were notorious for being
> hands-on and controlling...don't know much about Boucher.
I think he means, "If Campbell had been more like Jim Baen..."
-- M. Ruff
Christopher Henrich
<43C45A37A0C73C2F.3B47EB07...@lp.airnews.net>,
Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> wrote:
I've read all the volumes (so far published) of the reprinting of James
H. Schmitz and the collection of Lord Darcy stories, all edited by
Eric Flint, and I can't line this comment up with those works at all.
Flint's editing was more restrained than you suggest; the biggest
changes were to take out stuff that he considered padding. In one
Schmitz story, the result was controversial. Here's a thoughtful
review: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton/telzey.htm
In the original Lord Darcy stories, every story had to contain an
explanation of the POD that separates that time line from ours; in the
collection, this explanation appears only once.
But I haven't read _1632_ or _1633_. Do people blow bubbles in those
books?
--
Chris Henrich
Mike Schilling
"Matt Ruff" <storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3DB1710D...@worldnet.att.net...
Exactly. And while Boucher was far more tactful and civilized than either
Campbell or Gold he knew quite well what he wanted in a story and how to get
it.
Mark Atwood
>
> Exactly. And while Boucher was far more tactful and civilized than either
> Campbell or Gold he knew quite well what he wanted in a story and how to get
> it.
So why was he editing instead of writing, then?
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
John Pelan
>"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>> Exactly. And while Boucher was far more tactful and civilized than either
>> Campbell or Gold he knew quite well what he wanted in a story and how to get
>> it.
>
>So why was he editing instead of writing, then?
Probably same reasons I do. ;-) Some people like to do both.
I'll point out that the number of people that do both is actually
pretty significant within the field of fantastic literature.
Cheers,
John Pelan
Jerry Friedman
"Were" should be "is" and the "not" has moved, right? "If someone
sends me a book that I don't want to publish as it is, I don't publish
it [even if I'd happily publish it provided the author made
improvements that I could suggest]."
This is the standard policy of magazines, isn't it?
Mr. Ruff, care to let us in on whether editors at publishing houses
made any suggestions on your books and what the result was?
--
Jerry Friedman
Mike Schilling
"Mark Atwood" <m...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:m3d6q6j...@khem.blackfedora.com...
> "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> writes:
> >
> > Exactly. And while Boucher was far more tactful and civilized than
either
> > Campbell or Gold he knew quite well what he wanted in a story and how to
get
> > it.
>
> So why was he editing instead of writing, then?
He did both, of course; I highly recommend NESFA's complete collection of
Boucher's SF. Actaully, Campbell and Gold both wrote as well, as does
Dozois. Is there a first-class SF editor who doesn't also write?
But what I meant by "how to get it" was "how to get another writer to
produce it."
Dorothy J Heydt
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>"Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>> Exactly. And while Boucher was far more tactful and civilized than either
>> Campbell or Gold he knew quite well what he wanted in a story and how to get
>> it.
>
>So why was he editing instead of writing, then?
He was editing in addition to writing.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Bill Snyder
<chen...@monmouth.com> wrote:
>In article
><43C45A37A0C73C2F.3B47EB07...@lp.airnews.net>,
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 10:23:46 +0000 (UTC), alei...@ptah.u.arizona.edu
>> (Andrea Leistra) wrote:
>>
>> >Unless, of course, the book was written more than twenty years ago,
>> >in which case Baen assumes current readers will become confused
>> >and unable to recognize that the book was Not Written Yesterday,
>> >in which case he unleashes the editors to get rid of all those
>> >nasty dated comments and references....
>>
>> One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
>> Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
>> appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
>> pipes.
>>
>I've read all the volumes (so far published) of the reprinting of James
>H. Schmitz and the collection of Lord Darcy stories, all edited by
>Eric Flint, and I can't line this comment up with those works at all.
>
>Flint's editing was more restrained than you suggest; the biggest
>changes were to take out stuff that he considered padding. In one
>Schmitz story, the result was controversial. Here's a thoughtful
>review: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton/telzey.htm
The reference was to deleting references to the Evil Nicotine, hence
bubble pipes instead of the real thing. I assume Richard won't mind
quoting part of one paragraph, so here's a comment from the review
that you may have missed:
"(A final set of changes, not obvious in a casual reading, involved
reducing references to things like smoking. It's true that those
references were once ubiquitous and implied nothing much, because our
culture, at the time of the stories, regarded smoking quite
differently than we do todays. Thus it is fair to say that to a new
reader constant references to characters smoking might be jarring. But
I do regret such changes, because I think that in reading older
stories, one of the minor pleasures is the immersion in the attitudes
and "flavor" of the time they were written.)"
Flint's also "corrected" dollar amounts in some of the Laumer reprints
to allow for inflation; and seems in general to have the notion that
while modern readers might be able to cope with big novelties like
Galactic Federations and invisible brain-napping alien dogs, small
ones like someone lighting up a cigarette or paying 25 cents for a
cup of coffee will explode their poor widdle bwains.
And for at least one of the Andre Norton reprints, Baen prevailed on
her (I suppose that's the politest way of putting it) to significantly
rewrite two books in order to yank them out of their original Cold War
milieu.
>But I haven't read _1632_ or _1633_. Do people blow bubbles in those
>books?
Not in _1632_, as best I remember. After wading through the treacle
in that one, I'm not likely ever to know about the other.
Captain Button
wrote:
[ text snipped ]
>And a *whole lot* of books that look to me like they would have been
>*much* better if they'd been edited.
What is the equivalent for editing of "That's not writing, that's just
typing."?
--
American Express says I'm deceased. Boo! Consider yourself haunted.
Captain Button - but...@io.com
John Pelan
Friedman) wrote:
The vast majority of my stories and novels have had at least some
editorial changes (with my approval, except for a time or two when I
had to be sneaky). The vast majority of the stories in my anthologies
have had some degree of editorial tweaking. I see no reason to settle
for a good story when I can have a great one. (And neither should
anyone else.)
On another note, since I edit a large number of books by authors that
aren't around to discuss the issue at hand, my policy is to change
nothing unless it's an obvious typo that slipped past the original
copyeditor. In some cases you can refer to correspondence that
indicates which version of a story is thee author's preferred text, in
some cases you have to make a reasonable guess.
Cheers,
John
Cheers,
John
Richard D. Latham
Hmmm. I'm not an author, but it sounds like you're advocating "sheer
laziness" on the part of authors. :-)
Baen apparently expects you to have actually submitted a publishable
manuscript, not something that, with several rounds of editing, could
be flogged into a publishable manuscript.
I'm not a publisher either, but .... "I see his point" :-)
--
Richard D. Latham
richard...@verizon.net (home)
lat...@us.ibm.com (work)
Mike Schilling
"Captain Button" <but...@io.com> wrote in message
news:B9D72B589...@pm3-2-user-9.cvl.hom.net...
> In article <m23cr32...@gw.dd-b.net>, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net>
> wrote:
>
> [ text snipped ]
>
> >And a *whole lot* of books that look to me like they would have been
> >*much* better if they'd been edited.
>
> What is the equivalent for editing of "That's not writing, that's just
> typing."?
That's not editing, that's just market research.
aRJay
<1A1A0CEAE5E2F2B4.E4837267...@lp.airnews.net>,
Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> writes
>And for at least one of the Andre Norton reprints, Baen prevailed on
>her (I suppose that's the politest way of putting it) to significantly
>rewrite two books in order to yank them out of their original Cold War
>milieu.
Cite, or other evidence that it happened that way round.
Preferably something better than "but that is how Baen works".
--
aRJay
"In this great and creatorless universe, where so much beautiful has
come to be out of the chance interactions of the basic properties of
matter, it seems so important that we love one another."
- Lucy Kemnitzer
Jim Lovejoy
news:7dks9.2529$J02.94...@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com:
How about "That's not editing, that's just proofreading"?
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>In article
><1A1A0CEAE5E2F2B4.E4837267...@lp.airnews.net>,
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> writes
>>And for at least one of the Andre Norton reprints, Baen prevailed on
>>her (I suppose that's the politest way of putting it) to significantly
>>rewrite two books in order to yank them out of their original Cold War
>>milieu.
>
>
>Cite, or other evidence that it happened that way round.
>
>Preferably something better than "but that is how Baen works".
I'd suggest you begin by Googling for the threads 'Norton "Time
Traders" Revised!?', "Whoa, there, boy." and so on -- in which both
you and I participated. These establish clearly that a) the books
were substantially revised, and b) not all the revising was done by
Norton, although she was allowed to "supervise and approve" changes
done by others, whatever the hell that means (and incidentally that c)
Baen published them with no notice to the reader that these weren't
the originals).
I'd also suggest that you do something about your memory, your level
of honesty, or both, before you go casting aspersions again.
Louann Miller
wrote:
>Hmmm. I'm not an author, but it sounds like you're advocating "sheer
>laziness" on the part of authors. :-)
>
>Baen apparently expects you to have actually submitted a publishable
>manuscript, not something that, with several rounds of editing, could
>be flogged into a publishable manuscript.
>
>I'm not a publisher either, but .... "I see his point" :-)
It's not that binary. Books can be interesting and readable in the
draft the author first submits and yet wind up even better when a good
editor has gone over them. Usually are, in fact. It's impossible to
edit yourself the same way an outside reader will, because it's too
easy to see what you meant instead of what you actually said.
--
Mozilla 1.1 is free and has a built in pop-up killer.
Just uncheck "open unrequested windows" under "advanced" under preferences.
http://www.mozilla.org
Htn963
>On 19 Oct 2002 02:25:33 GMT, htn...@cs.com (Htn963) wrote:
>
>>"Mike Schilling", et al. wrote:
>>
>>>If Cambell had felt that way, SF as we know it would not exist. To a
>lesser
>>>extent, the same goes for Boucher and Gold.
>>
>> What are you talking about? Campbell and Gold were notorious for
>being
>>hands-on and controlling...don't know much about Boucher.
>
>??? That's exactly what he means:
No, not in context of what was quoted in full -- check the parts you
snipped out again. The penultimate paragraph does refer to a no-editing
policy but the last ( the logical point of reply) is about full-editing.
"That way", if one wasn't sure of the poster's knowledge of sf history, would
likely be read as feelings about full-editing. At best, it is ambiguous.
More precise language or judicious snipping (take out the last paragraph)
would have helped. Or he could just have quoted the OP, Nicoll.
> If JWC, HLG, etc., had been that
>cheap/lazy back when the mags played a much more prominent role, the
>field would have been stunted by the profusion of poorly-/un-edited
>crap..
--
Mike Schilling
the library today. In the introduction, he describes his relationship with
Campbell:
It took me *years* to sell a story to John Campbell. The interesting
part is that I kept trying. I kept sending him stories because he
encouraged me to. He didn't like what I wrote; but he thought he would,
someday, if only I kept it up. When he returned my stories, he sent long
letters with them: letters filled with advice and fulminations and ideas and
concepts. Then own day, I didn't get back a letter, only a check. It was
almost a disappointment.
That, boys and girls, is editing.
David Dyer-Bennet
"Publishable" isn't a clearly-defined line. And aiming for the best
possible, rather than the minimum necessary, is common (and
appropriate) for most artists, most craftsmen of any kind.
Justin Bacon
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>to publish the book she wrote.
Coming from Jim Baen that's the height of irony.
As a general principle, it is constradicted in practice by works such as DUNE
-- which almost incontrovertibly benefited heavily by Campbell's editorial
touch.
JB
Justin Bacon
>One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
>Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
>appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
>pipes.
I always go for _The Lord of the Rings_ as edited by Eric Flint. There's
nothing quite like Bilbo and Gandalf blowing bubblegum bubbles...
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Justin Bacon
>> One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
>> Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
>> appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
>> pipes.
>
>I've read all the volumes (so far published) of the reprinting of James
>H. Schmitz and the collection of Lord Darcy stories, all edited by
>Eric Flint, and I can't line this comment up with those works at all.
Eric Flint removed all references to smoking from the Schmitz stories. This is
probably the *least* offensive maiming-- err... editing performed by Flint.
Flint admitted in this forum that he did not respect Schmitz' writing, and he
demonstrated his hubris in rewriting the work of a dead man.
I rank Flint right up there with the Victorians who wrote happy endings for
ROMEO & JULIET, the violent altering of Mark Twain's work in recent times, and
the wrong-headed and pointless rewriting of Robert E. Howard's CONAN stories by
L. Sprague de Camp.
Justin Bacon
trai...@aol.com
John Pelan
wrote:
>jpe...@cnw.com (John Pelan) writes:
>
>> On 18 Oct 2002 16:15:34 -0400, jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
>> >
>> > JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>> >much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>> >do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>> >I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>> >take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>> >to publish the book she wrote.
>> >
>>
>> This explains a great deal... ;-)
>>
>> Speaking as an author, the book or story I wrote is almost always
>> better after being filtered through some editorial suggestions.
>>
>> What Baen advocates is sheer laziness as a publisher and a disservice
>> to their authors.
>>
>
>Hmmm. I'm not an author, but it sounds like you're advocating "sheer
>laziness" on the part of authors. :-)
Not at all. I fully expect any story submitted to me to be polished,
professional in format and as good as the author could make it.
Aything I write is as good as I'm capable of; however, and here's a
big however... Having another set of eyes and another take on
something can find little things that may improve a good story and
make it a great one.
>Baen apparently expects you to have actually submitted a publishable
>manuscript, not something that, with several rounds of editing, could
>be flogged into a publishable manuscript.
We are not speaking of "flogging something into a publishable
manuscript", we are talking about the crafts of writing and editing. A
good editing job can make a book or story better. Considering some of
the chuckle-headed decisions that Baen makes when they do actually
edit something, it's probably just as well that they leave most books
alone.
Cheers,
John
aRJay
<417B50C3A662CEDA.20A2B32C...@lp.airnews.net>,
>On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 23:34:59 +0100, aRJay <aR...@escore.demon.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>In article
>><1A1A0CEAE5E2F2B4.E4837267...@lp.airnews.net>,
>>Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> writes
>>>And for at least one of the Andre Norton reprints, Baen prevailed on
>>>her (I suppose that's the politest way of putting it) to significantly
>>>rewrite two books in order to yank them out of their original Cold War
>>>milieu.
>>
>>
>>Cite, or other evidence that it happened that way round.
>>
>>Preferably something better than "but that is how Baen works".
>
>I'd suggest you begin by Googling for the threads 'Norton "Time
>Traders" Revised!?', "Whoa, there, boy." and so on -- in which both
>you and I participated. These establish clearly that a) the books
>were substantially revised, and
>b) not all the revising was done by
>Norton, although she was allowed to "supervise and approve" changes
>done by others, whatever the hell that means
This I don't, I had the distinct impression that Norton had carried out
the changes on her own initiative. However I could be wrong see notes
about shocking memory below. As to what the hell that means I suspect it
would be to do with getting someone else to do things for her after all
she is 6 years older than my mother who is (a) frail and (b) becoming
senile, most 90 year olds are less robust and active than they were in
earlier years.
>(and incidentally that c)
>Baen published them with no notice to the reader that these weren't
>the originals).
This is nothing new and varies substantially amongst published works in
general, but the presence or absence of such notices is highly variable
in Baen's.
>
>I'd also suggest that you do something about your memory,
Suggestions would be gratefully received as I really would like it to be
much longer before my memory gets as bad as my mothers who no longer
reliably remembers anything.
>your level
>of honesty,
As you bring up the question of honesty I will assume you to be an
honest person yourself, and say that I hope my honesty is sufficiently
close to your own to be acceptable for usenet.
>or both, before you go casting aspersions again.
>
Actually I wasn't casting aspersions (deliberately) I was merely asking
for proof that the events had occurred as stated bearing in mind that
(1) there is a lot of hostility to Baen's house style in this group, (2)
it is virtually taken as a given that senior famous writers don't get
edited (see Heinlein and other threads), (3) I have a lousy memory and
tend to forget that I work online now so that Google groups is
available.
<long interruption while I try to get Google to work>
Unfortunately Google isn't working for me so I was unable to get
anything more definitive than Eric's post some of which you used so I
have still seen nothing (that I recall) as to who suggested the rewrite
and how forcefully they had to prevail on the other party to get their
way.
aRJay
<417B50C3A662CEDA.20A2B32C...@lp.airnews.net>,
Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> writes
>I'd also suggest that you do something about your memory, your level
>of honesty, or both, before you go casting aspersions again.
I do hope by the way that this advice is also at least looked at and
considered by those on the other side of the lets throw stones at Jim
Baen crowd to me.
Joseph T Major
Bill Snyder wrote:
One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
pipes..
I always go for _The Lord of the Rings_ as edited by Eric Flint. There's
nothing quite like Bilbo and Gandalf blowing bubblegum bubbles...
Joseph T Major
--
And what Emperor Belisarius "Rick" Hammer would have done in the sixth trilogy, using Lazarus Long's Principle, would have been One wonder to behold!
Matt Ruff
>
> "Were" should be "is" and the "not" has moved, right? "If someone
> sends me a book that I don't want to publish as it is, I don't publish
> it [even if I'd happily publish it provided the author made
> improvements that I could suggest]."
I figured that was probably what he meant. While I agree that ideally,
publishers should only publish books that they really love -- that they
love even in an unpolished, first draft state -- I think that's a
separate issue from whether books need to be edited.
> This is the standard policy of magazines, isn't it?
My one experience writing for a magazine involved a *lot* of editing.
The editor liked my idea a lot -- which is why he made me go through
four drafts in order to get it right.
> Mr. Ruff, care to let us in on whether editors at publishing houses
> made any suggestions on your books and what the result was?
I've had substantial editorial help on every book I've written. Probably
my best experience was also my most recent one -- on the book I've got
coming out next February -- despite the fact that my initial editor,
Jennifer Hershey, ended up leaving for another publishing house in the
middle of the process. Both Jennifer and her replacement really loved
the book, understood what I was doing...and had plenty of useful
suggestions about how to do it better.
The majority of their suggestions involved tightening: eliminating
redundancies, and trimming scenes that went on longer than they needed
to. I ended cutting about 100 pages out of the original 710-page
manuscript. A lot of these were cuts I probably would have made on my
own, but one of the difficulties you have editing yourself is that when
you've read a particular passage so many times that you've practically
got it memorized, even changes that are right sound wrong. That's where
you really need someone who isn't wedded to a specific version of the
story to come in and say, "You don't need this, and you don't need this,
and I see what you were trying to do over here, but it doesn't quite
work, so how about trying this instead..."
Now of course it's also possible to get an editor who doesn't understand
what you're doing, doesn't like what you're doing, or wants an entirely
different novel than the one you've actually written -- that can be
hellish, and in that situation you're best off cutting your losses and
taking the book to someone else. But an editor who tells you, "It's
perfect -- don't change a word," isn't doing a good job either.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff
>
> On another note, since I edit a large number of books by authors that
> aren't around to discuss the issue at hand, my policy is to change
> nothing unless it's an obvious typo that slipped past the original
> copyeditor.
Your place is heaven is thereby assured...
-- M. Ruff
Lois Tilton
But an editor who tells you, "It's
> perfect -- don't change a word," isn't doing a good job either.
Well, there you have it. Editing is work. The editor has to actually -read- the book
in order to edit it, read every word. That takes valuable time.
--
LT
Matt Ruff
No, editing is when you get back the manuscript with suggested revisions
marked in red pencil. What Campbell did sounds more like mentoring --
something that can be either good or bad, depending on the exact nature
of the "advice."
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff
Oops -- that should be, "Your place *in* heaven is thereby assured..."
-- M. Ruff
J.B. Moreno
> (2) it is virtually taken as a given that senior famous writers don't get
> edited (see Heinlein and other threads)
Not all -- it's taken as a given that such writers can manage to get
published without editing. I.e. your statement implies that famous
writers never get edited after they become famous, while the general
impression around here is that if you're popular enough, and have enough
guaranteed sales, the publisher won't insist upon editing because they
know that the writer can always go elsewhere or possibly even
self-publish. So if the writer *wants* to be edited, he will be, if he
doesn't he won't.
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Joel Rosenberg
Yup. For those of us not sufficiently senior and/or famous, getting
edited is more of a hit-and-miss thing, and depends in large part on
the vagaries of the editors.
--
If the Bible has taught us nothing else -- and it hasn't -- it's that
girls should stick to girls' sports, such as hot oil wrestling and
foxy boxing and such and such.
-- Homer Simpson
Lisa on Ice
------------------------------------------------------------
http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com
Kai Henningsen
> On 19 Oct 2002 02:25:33 GMT, htn...@cs.com (Htn963) wrote:
>
> >"Mike Schilling", et al. wrote:
> >
> >>If Cambell had felt that way, SF as we know it would not exist. To a
> >>lesser extent, the same goes for Boucher and Gold.
> >
> > What are you talking about? Campbell and Gold were notorious for
> > being
> >hands-on and controlling...don't know much about Boucher.
>
> ??? That's exactly what he means: If JWC, HLG, etc., had been that
> cheap/lazy back when the mags played a much more prominent role, the
> field would have been stunted by the profusion of poorly-/un-edited
> crap..
That's another point of where an editor would have been useful: "By 'that
way', do you mean the way the poster you're replying to thinks, or
possibly the way Mr. Baen thinks?"
For the record, I also read it as an attack on the poster instead of on
the publisher.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>In article
><417B50C3A662CEDA.20A2B32C...@lp.airnews.net>,
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> writes
>>On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 23:34:59 +0100, aRJay <aR...@escore.demon.co.uk>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>In article
>>><1A1A0CEAE5E2F2B4.E4837267...@lp.airnews.net>,
>>>Bill Snyder <bsn...@iadfw.net> writes
>>I'd also suggest that you do something about your memory,
>Suggestions would be gratefully received as I really would like it to be
>much longer before my memory gets as bad as my mothers who no longer
>reliably remembers anything.
>
>>your level
>>of honesty,
>
>As you bring up the question of honesty I will assume you to be an
>honest person yourself, and say that I hope my honesty is sufficiently
>close to your own to be acceptable for usenet.
Sorry, I get a little testy occasionally (well, OK, maybe that's
putting it mildly).
>>or both, before you go casting aspersions again.
>>
>Actually I wasn't casting aspersions (deliberately) I was merely asking
>for proof that the events had occurred as stated bearing in mind that
>(1) there is a lot of hostility to Baen's house style in this group, (2)
>it is virtually taken as a given that senior famous writers don't get
>edited (see Heinlein and other threads), (3) I have a lousy memory and
>tend to forget that I work online now so that Google groups is
>available.
What was posted by Sea Wasp at the start of the "Whoa, there" thread,
in response to someone's wondering aloud whether revisions were done
with Norton's knowledge/consent, was this:
"Seeing this kind of thing start up, I went to the source for info.
" *ANDRE NORTON* did the revisions, or directly supervised and
approved all revisions done by someone else."
Note he did not say the revisions were Norton's idea. And when I
speculated that "supervised and approved" might amount to
(paraphrasing) "Sign off on this if you want it publshed" -- which
would seem the natural time to post a correction if the revisions
*were* Norton's idea -- he did not speak up and say "Wait, you've got
it all wrong--"
Myself, I'm willing to infer from this that a) "the source" means
someone at Baen, and b) the revisions were their idea. Of course
inferences, however reasonable they may seem to the inferrer, are
drawn at one's own risk. But the Wasp is obviously perfectly capable
of speaking for himself if he has anything to add to his previous
comments.
aRJay
<pl...@newsreaders.com> writes
Chris Byler
That's an obvious typo that slipped past the original copyeditor (if
there was one?)
--
Chris Byler cby...@vt.edu
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the
baker that we expect our supper, but from their regard to their own
interest." -- Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_
J.B. Moreno
> > aRJay <aR...@escore.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >> (2) it is virtually taken as a given that senior famous writers don't get
> >> edited (see Heinlein and other threads)
>
-snip JBM saying nope, famous writer can *chose* to be edited or not-
> Yup. For those of us not sufficiently senior and/or famous, getting
> edited is more of a hit-and-miss thing, and depends in large part on
> the vagaries of the editors.
Yeah, and somewhere in this thread (no id handy), that there's been at
least one case of a writer hiring an outside editor because the one that
the publisher supplied was more of a miss than a hit.
(Which goes along with being rich and famous, as I doubt that the
typical writer can afford to pay for an editor out of pocket).
Elf Sternberg
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do
>as much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we
>attempt to do.
Oh, well. This explains much about my lack of interest in Baen
books.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, rational romantic mystical cynical idealist
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf
EAC Department of Corrective Phrenology
Eric Flint
"Justin Bacon" <tria...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20021020042713...@mb-cm.aol.com...
> Christopher Henrich wrote:
> >> One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
> >> Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
> >> appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
> >> pipes.
> >
> >I've read all the volumes (so far published) of the reprinting of James
> >H. Schmitz and the collection of Lord Darcy stories, all edited by
> >Eric Flint, and I can't line this comment up with those works at all.
>
> Eric Flint removed all references to smoking from the Schmitz stories.
This is
> probably the *least* offensive maiming-- err... editing performed by
Flint.
That's a lie. (As usual from Bacon, who seems congenitally incapable of
telling the truth.) You can find one instance of many of people smoking in
the Schmitz stories I edited on page 70 of the first volume, Telzey
Amberdon. What I did was remove a _few_ instances (not more than three, as
I recall, across six volumes) where the _location_ of the smoking clearly
dated the story.
> Flint admitted in this forum that he did not respect Schmitz' writing, and
he
> demonstrated his hubris in rewriting the work of a dead man.
The first clause of this sentence is another lie -- a brazen one, in fact --
and the second combines dishonesty with simple stupidity. I challenge the
liar Bacon or anyone else here or in any other forum to quote a single
sentence of mine which states that I did not respect Schmitz's writing. Go
ahead, loudmouth. QUOTE SOMETHING. Don't "paraphrase." QUOTE. (In case
you are verbally challenged, "to quote" means "to cite verbatim.")
I said that it's a "brazen" lie because I can easily point to any number of
statements of mine -- which are IN PRINT, in TENS OF THOUSANDS of copies
available to the public -- which state the exact opposite. Unlike the liar
Bacon, I do not have to make vague references to supposed "admissions" in
"this forum." (A forum which, frankly, is obscure or completely unknown to
the vast majority of SF readers. Unlike the books -- and my afterwords
contained within them -- which can be found on the shelves of most
bookstores in the country and have now sold about 100,000 copies.) Of
course, the liar Bacon can never be bothered to refer to actual material in
print. He lives in the shadow world of paraphrases, innuendoes and
distortions of his own creation. All anyone has to do is read the
afterwords I wrote to several Schmitz volumes to see for yourselves what a
complete liar he is.
The final clause is, first, dishonest, because the liar Bacon completely
distorts the reality and manages to conveniently transform the verb "to
edit" into the verb "to rewrite." Cutting something, to anyone other than a
fool or a liar, is not the same thing as rewriting it. Duh. In the course
of reissuing seven volumes of Schmitz's writings -- his entire work except
his one collaborative novella ("Operation Alpha" with Van Vogt) -- I cut a
total of 5000 words out of about one million. I.e., I edited 1/2 of 1% of
the text. And I "rewrote" -- that is to say, put into my own words in
continuous form, exactly 24 words in one story. (For those of you inclined
toward statistics, that constitutes somewhere around .002% of the text.)
That is the entirety of what the feverish semi-brain of Justin Bacon calls
"demonstrated his hubris in rewriting the work of a dead man."
The statement is also stupid in that it demonstrates a complete ingnorance
of the reality of commercial fiction. The notion that each and every word
written by a professional commercial writer is equivalent to Holy Writ is...
so laughable it defies description. I can show anyone interested in an
honest discussion -- this excludes Bacon by definition -- a multitude of
instances, in and out of SF, where the "holy words of dead men" have been
edited time after time. You can start with almost ANY performance of ANY
play by William Shakespeare. I can also show you multiple instances where
the same story was written in two or more versions by the same author -- and
it is well-nigh impossible for an editor, after his or her death, to be sure
which version would have been preferred by the author had he or she still
been alive. Forget Schmitz. Just to use examples off the top of my head
from Keith Laumer, the following stories: the novel A PLAGUE OF DEMONS, the
novel WORLDS OF THE IMPERIUM, the novella "Thunderhead." All have at least
two different versions. And there is _no_ clear evidence which version
Laumer would have preferred for an edition like the one Baen is doing today.
So, willy-nilly, the editor (that's me) has to make a judgement call. And
the one thing that is as sure as death and taxes is that a jackass like
Justin Bacon will be sure to scream about it. Yawn.
In point of fact, living authors routinely do minor revisions of stories
which are being reissued years later in a different format or type of
collection. To give just one example I've cited among many, Andre Norton's
revisions of her old novels now being reissued are far more extensive that
anything I ever did with Schmitz. And does anyone with half a brain
honestly have any doubt that if Randall Garrett were still alive he'd agree
that the repetitious background material contained in the eleven Darcy
stories originally written for separate publication should be edited for a
modern unitary edition? Or -- going back to Schmitz -- that Schmitz would
agree to change the term "newshen" to "newscaster"?
I will close by saying that I described this silly controversy to
Christopher Anvil, and he asked me what the hell was wrong with the critics?
OF COURSE, I would do some editing for an edition produced long after the
stories were written, in a format and type of collection for which they were
never intended in the first place. Anvil -- a serious commercial writer who
knows what he's doing -- took that for granted. And, be it noted, I did
_far_ more extensive editing in PANDORA'S LEGIONS than I ever did in any
volume of Schmitz. The reason is because, the liar Bacon notwithstanding, I
do in fact keep my editing of dead authors to what I consider the bare
minimum. Whereas with a still-living author like Anvil, I felt free to
suggest to him a much more extensive type of reworking of the stories.
Occasionally, people here take me to task for my rude and abrasive manner in
responding to my critics. Well, I'd say I was sorry about that, but frankly
it'd be a lie. I've taken so much lying shit from assholes like Bacon that
my respect for this forum on this subject -- with the exception of a few
honest types like Sea Wasp -- is exactly zero. I don't give a good God-damn
what the Bacons of the world think. Every Schmitz volume produced for which
I have hard figures (the first five) has sold somewhere between 18,000 and
23,000 copies and is maintaining a sell-through of 80% or better. Those
sales are better than average in today's market, even for new authors much
less reissues, and the sell-through is extraordinarily good. That is about
as clear an indication as you'll ever get that the attitudes of the SF
audience in general is not reflected by the miniscule number of vociferous
critics in this forum.
Eric Flint
Eric Flint
least for the moment. Most of these will be a presentation of facts,
something which (as usual in this forum) is sadly lacking.
1) I have now published, all through Baen books, a total of fourteen
separate novels and three novellas in anthologies. (Actually, it's
technically fifteen novels, since my story in Changer of Worlds is 53,000
words long, which is much longer than the "official" length for a novella.)
The editorial input from Baen -- either from Jim Baen or the chief editor
Toni Weisskopf -- has ranged from major rewrites asked for in the case of
three novels (Mother of Demons, Pyramid Scheme, An Oblique Approach), to
major input as the novel was in progress (1632), to what is generally
considered extensive line-editing in the case of several novels, all the way
down to a minimum of suggested line-editing changes in several others.
So much for the notion that "Baen doesn't edit." They can and they will.
The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances in
each case.
I will also make the observation -- for those of you who seem to think that
"the more editing the better" -- that the publishers who are positively
notorious for requiring endless rewrites and constant editorial fussing with
the text are... media tie-in publishers.
2) There was no pressure of any kind put on Andrew Norton by Baen Books to
revise her old novels for publication. The decision to do so was hers, no
one else's.
3) Anyone who thinks that any SF publisher is in a position to "muscle"
Andre Norton is... not living in the real world.
4) What I found most offensive -- though certainly not surprising, in this
forum -- was the none-too-veiled suggestion that Andre Norton is a feeble
old woman who has more-or-less lost her wits. I maintain a personal and
friendly correspondence with Andre Norton and I can assure you that the lady
is NOT "doddering." She is old, yes. Judging from the evidence, however,
I'd have to say she's a lot sharper than most of you.
Eric Flint
John Pelan
wrote:
>I will make a few observations on this discussion and let it go at that, at
>least for the moment. Most of these will be a presentation of facts,
>something which (as usual in this forum) is sadly lacking.
Possibly. All I've commented on is a direct quote from your boss and
my opinion that most books and/or stories can benefit from line
editing, a point that you seem to concur with.
>
>1) I have now published, all through Baen books, a total of fourteen
>separate novels and three novellas in anthologies. (Actually, it's
>technically fifteen novels, since my story in Changer of Worlds is 53,000
>words long, which is much longer than the "official" length for a novella.)
>The editorial input from Baen -- either from Jim Baen or the chief editor
>Toni Weisskopf -- has ranged from major rewrites asked for in the case of
>three novels (Mother of Demons, Pyramid Scheme, An Oblique Approach), to
>major input as the novel was in progress (1632), to what is generally
>considered extensive line-editing in the case of several novels, all the way
>down to a minimum of suggested line-editing changes in several others.
>
>So much for the notion that "Baen doesn't edit." They can and they will.
>The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances in
>each case.
An admirable practice, but contrary to the substance of Jim's quote.
>
>I will also make the observation -- for those of you who seem to think that
>"the more editing the better" -- that the publishers who are positively
>notorious for requiring endless rewrites and constant editorial fussing with
>the text are... media tie-in publishers.
I wouldn't have made the changes that you did with Schmitz, as I
thought they weren't needed. Garrett is a different story, I'd have
really had to do some soul-searching about that one... FWIW, my
primary publishers are Del Rey and ROC.
>
>2) There was no pressure of any kind put on Andrew Norton by Baen Books to
>revise her old novels for publication. The decision to do so was hers, no
>one else's.
Do you mean "Andrew North" heh-heh.
>
>3) Anyone who thinks that any SF publisher is in a position to "muscle"
>Andre Norton is... not living in the real world.
>
>4) What I found most offensive -- though certainly not surprising, in this
>forum -- was the none-too-veiled suggestion that Andre Norton is a feeble
>old woman who has more-or-less lost her wits. I maintain a personal and
>friendly correspondence with Andre Norton and I can assure you that the lady
>is NOT "doddering." She is old, yes. Judging from the evidence, however,
>I'd have to say she's a lot sharper than most of you.
You seem a bit hostile... Perhaps these are criticisms that have been
raised before? Facts as I understand them are:
1. Jim Baen claimed to not edit. (And was quite rightly criticized for
this stance.)
2. Eric Flint admitted to having edited the prose of two deceased
authors, vitiating the claim of his publisher that their house doesn't
edit and provoking criticisms of another sort entirely.
3. Andre Norton revised two of her early books for republication by
Baen either at their request or just because she felt like it.
That pretty much the substance of it? Now here's a thought on Garrett,
we realize (and agree) that there are expository passages in each
story. Forst, who is our audience for this book and how many copies do
we expect to sell, 20,000? 40,000? I'm guessing that Baen has pretty
strong demographic of people that buy most Baen titles and are pretty
familiar with the genre. In short, an audience that knows that Randall
Garrett is dead... Here are three possible solutions:
1. Print as written.
2. Remove expository passages.
3. Write an introduction that touches on these seeming redundancies.
I probably opt for #3, readers are forgiving and understanding,
particularly if you play the card of "we couldn't confer with the
author and didn't want to mess with his prose".
Cheers,
John Pelan
Sea Wasp
> >
> >So much for the notion that "Baen doesn't edit." They can and they will.
> >The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances in
> >each case.
> An admirable practice, but contrary to the substance of Jim's quote.
Not really. This is a case of taking a single quote of a general
sentiment and then insisting that it must then apply in all specific
cases.
Jim Baen's statement basically boils down to "I generally feel that
if a book's worth publishing it probably doesn't NEED major editing."
Note that this is "generally" and "probably". Here's the original
quote again:
> JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> to publish the book she wrote.
If you re-read it, you will see that Jim QUITE CLEARLY mentions (1)
it's a general position, (2) it's "fairly strong", not "inviolable",
(3) points out "occasionally" that they do, and that (4) he allows for
such editing to do good as well as harm, just believes that those
editors which DO do this to a great extent are likely to do as much
harm as good.
In other words, all this flamage comes from people looking at it and
jumping on the idea that Jim made a statement that he didn't, to with,
"Baen never edits authors' works."
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
joy beeson
> How about "That's not editing, that's just proofreading"?
There are days when I'd settle for proofreading.
I'm still rocking from when I settled down to read a stack
of old comic books -- printed when comics were disposable,
published in the cheapest possible way -- and was *twelve
inches* down in the stack before I found a grammatical
error! Never did see a mis-spelled word.
And I don't recall finding another grammo.
Nowadays you're lucky if an expensive hardcover gets the
title on the cover right.
Joy Beeson
--
http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ -- needlework
http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ -- Writers' Exchange
joy beeson at earthlink dot net
Matt Ruff
>
> So much for the notion that "Baen doesn't edit." They can and they will.
> The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances in
> each case.
>
> I will also make the observation -- for those of you who seem to think that
> "the more editing the better"
I don't think anyone has said or even suggested that. The argument is
that authors benefit from the services of a good editor -- that *some*
editing is better than none, *if* the editor knows what he or she is
doing. Of course it's possible to do too much editing, as well as too
little.
> -- that the publishers who are positively
> notorious for requiring endless rewrites and constant editorial fussing with
> the text are... media tie-in publishers.
...which makes sense. If you're doing work-for-hire, you should expect
to be treated more like an employee.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff
>
>>JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>>much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>>do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>>I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>>take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>>to publish the book she wrote.
>
> If you re-read it, you will see that Jim QUITE CLEARLY mentions (1)
> it's a general position, (2) it's "fairly strong", not "inviolable",
> (3) points out "occasionally" that they do, and that (4) he allows for
> such editing to do good as well as harm, just believes that those
> editors which DO do this to a great extent are likely to do as much
> harm as good.
I think it's the "thou shalt not edit" that's provoking the reaction.
Invoking the language of the Ten Commandments suggests that it's an
iron-clad rule.
> In other words, all this flamage comes from people looking at it and
> jumping on the idea that Jim made a statement that he didn't, to with,
> "Baen never edits authors' works."
If I say, "Thou shalt not steal," wouldn't the most obvious
interpretation be that I'm opposed to *all* stealing, not just grand
larceny?
-- M. Ruff
Lois Tilton
> Not really. This is a case of taking a single quote of a general
> sentiment and then insisting that it must then apply in all specific
> cases.
>
> Jim Baen's statement basically boils down to "I generally feel that
> if a book's worth publishing it probably doesn't NEED major editing."
>
> Note that this is "generally" and "probably". Here's the original
> quote again:
>
> > JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> > much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> > do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> > I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> > take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> > to publish the book she wrote.
I dunno, Wasp. Seems to me that you're taking a "generally" and raising it to a
"probably" and a "major". This is as much misstatement as that which you are defending.
I shall, however, add [thereby contributing to the general bogglement] that I agree with
Eric Flint when he says the most persnickity and detail-obsessive editing comes from the
media-tie-in editorial dept.
LT
Joel Rosenberg
> On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 13:23:42 GMT, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
>> Not really. This is a case of taking a single quote of a general
>> sentiment and then insisting that it must then apply in all specific
>> cases.
>>
>> Jim Baen's statement basically boils down to "I generally feel that
>> if a book's worth publishing it probably doesn't NEED major editing."
>>
>> Note that this is "generally" and "probably". Here's the original
>> quote again:
>>
>> > JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
>> > much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
>> > do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
>> > I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
>> > take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
>> > to publish the book she wrote.
>
>
> I dunno, Wasp. Seems to me that you're taking a "generally" and raising it to a
> "probably" and a "major". This is as much misstatement as that which you are defending.
>
It's also, generally, a mistake to take too much information from one
comment, even if it's an unambiguous general statement on the face of
it.
>
>
> I shall, however, add [thereby contributing to the general bogglement] that I agree with
> Eric Flint when he says the most persnickity and detail-obsessive editing comes from the
> media-tie-in editorial dept.
>
>
> LT
>
>
>
>
>
Well, I'm boggled.
--
------------------------------------------------------------
http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>He did both, of course; I highly recommend NESFA's complete collection of
>Boucher's SF. Actaully, Campbell and Gold both wrote as well, as does
>Dozois. Is there a first-class SF editor who doesn't also write?
Ed Ferman. I know he doesn't have the reputation the others do, but
I'd say he was an excellent editor.
And I say this despite the fact that I was never, in seventeen years
of trying, able to sell him a story.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 4/15/02
My latest novel is THE DRAGON SOCIETY, published by Tor.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>Hmmm. I'm not an author, but it sounds like you're advocating "sheer
>laziness" on the part of authors. :-)
>
>Baen apparently expects you to have actually submitted a publishable
>manuscript, not something that, with several rounds of editing, could
>be flogged into a publishable manuscript.
Competent authors generally submit publishable work. What a good
editor does is turn it from "publishable" to "good." Or even "great."
James Nicoll
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>On 19 Oct 2002 15:10:55 -0500, lat...@us.ibm.com (Richard D. Latham)
>wrote:
>
>>Hmmm. I'm not an author, but it sounds like you're advocating "sheer
>>laziness" on the part of authors. :-)
>>
>>Baen apparently expects you to have actually submitted a publishable
>>manuscript, not something that, with several rounds of editing, could
>>be flogged into a publishable manuscript.
>
>Competent authors generally submit publishable work. What a good
>editor does is turn it from "publishable" to "good." Or even "great."
One example of Good Editing, although not involving an editor as
such, was the Letter from Heinlein to Niven and Pournelle on the draft of
Mote that N&P sent to RAH, which resulted in what is arguably the best
book the pair ever wrote, at least together. Another example, also NIAEAS,
was the structural suggestion MacLeod made to Banks wrt _Use of Weapons_,
if I am remembering correctly.
For some reason concrete examples of 'That SOB editor ruined my
story' aren't coming to mind although I am sure they exist. Horace Gold
was notorious for blue pencilling stories for the hell of it and to no
great end so I'd look to him for examples. Whoops, one possible example
does come to mind: the nature of the Document That Will Free The Galaxy
From Tyranny in _The Stars, Like Dust_, which was edited in magazine
form by Gold, I -think-.
There's also the alleged mangling of a Pangborn novel by a hostile
editor, which is discussed on Old Earth Publishing's website if I recall
correctly. http://www.geocities.com/edgarpangborn/panglory.html I think.
--
"Frankly, Captain, I feel interstellar diplomacy is out of our
depth."
"Ah, hence the nuclear weapons."
J Greely
>What I did was remove a _few_ instances (not more than three, as
>I recall, across six volumes) where the _location_ of the smoking clearly
>dated the story.
I can see how smoking in a specific location might strongly indicate
that the story is not set in California, but otherwise I find this
statement baffling, even as a non-smoker. Specific example, please?
-j
James Nicoll
Maternity wards, grade schools, surgical theatres.
Maybe not the theatres but I'd bet dollars to donuts that
prior to, oh, 1970 you could find people smoking in the first two.
The doctors would hold off actually smoking over an open abdomen
but they would be using nicotine-yellowed fingers to fiddle about
with.
James Nicoll
Colin Whipple
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:ap1aiv$95q$1...@panix2.panix.com...
> In article <ynvy98s...@corp.webtv.net>,
> J Greely <jgr...@corp.webtv.net> wrote:
> >"Eric Flint" <efl...@home.com> writes:
> >>What I did was remove a _few_ instances (not more than three, as
> >>I recall, across six volumes) where the _location_ of the smoking
clearly
> >>dated the story.
> >
> >I can see how smoking in a specific location might strongly
indicate
> >that the story is not set in California, but otherwise I find this
> >statement baffling, even as a non-smoker. Specific example, please?
>
> Maternity wards, grade schools, surgical theatres.
>
> Maybe not the theatres but I'd bet dollars to donuts that
> prior to, oh, 1970 you could find people smoking in the first two.
> The doctors would hold off actually smoking over an open abdomen
> but they would be using nicotine-yellowed fingers to fiddle about
> with.
I remember 40 years ago being in a hospital room recovering from an
operation for the removal of my appendix. I was about 13 years old.
The father of the person sharing the hospital room with me spent most
of the night sitting in a chair next to his son's bed, smoking
cigarettes.
That (the cigarette smoking) would not be happening now.
Colin
James Nicoll
problems that very nearly killed me. Now, my parents did get
me out of London and back to Canada despite the inconvenience
this involved, not minor. At the same time they both were
heavy smokers, Export "A" no less (1) and not only did it not
occur to them to stop, I don't think it occured to our family
doctor in Canada (2) to suggest it either. It didn't occur to
-me- to ask them either. All adults smoke. It's part of being
grown up.
James Nicoll
1) Take road tar and smoke it. That's a smooth smoke compared to Green
Death.
2) Perhaps less because of different social mores and more because he was
a criminally incompetent boob, of the sort who would suggest to an anorexic
alcoholic that she try beer to gain weight. Heavy smoker, too.
Andrew Wheeler
>
> "Mark Atwood" <m...@pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:m3d6q6j...@khem.blackfedora.com...
> > "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com> writes:
> > >
> > > Exactly. And while Boucher was far more tactful and civilized than
> > > either Campbell or Gold he knew quite well what he wanted in a story
> > > and how to get it.
> >
> > So why was he editing instead of writing, then?
>
> He did both, of course; I highly recommend NESFA's complete collection
> of Boucher's SF. Actaully, Campbell and Gold both wrote as well, as
> does Dozois. Is there a first-class SF editor who doesn't also write?
Are we only counting magazine/short fiction editors? Because there are
plenty of good book editors who aren't also fiction writers. (Though the
first two that came to mind -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G.
Hartwell -- also do some short fiction projects.)
It seems much fewer of the editors on that side of the street are also
writers -- I can only think of Michael Kandel (translator of Stanislaw
Lem and author of several novels as well as the architect of Harcourt's
quirky SF program) and Lester del Rey, but I'm probably forgetting
people. (Wasn't Fred Pohl in charge of somebody's SF book line in the
'70s, for example?)
--
Andrew Wheeler
--
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
(J.Q. Vandz struck my big fox whelp.)
Andrew Wheeler
Eric mentioned an airplane the last time this came up. (As I recall, the
context was that the plane had hit cruising altitude, and the whole
cabin lit up like an array of chimneys.)
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>In article <ynvy98s...@corp.webtv.net>,
>J Greely <jgr...@corp.webtv.net> wrote:
>>"Eric Flint" <efl...@home.com> writes:
>>>What I did was remove a _few_ instances (not more than three, as
>>>I recall, across six volumes) where the _location_ of the smoking clearly
>>>dated the story.
>>
>>I can see how smoking in a specific location might strongly indicate
>>that the story is not set in California, but otherwise I find this
>>statement baffling, even as a non-smoker. Specific example, please?
>
> Maternity wards, grade schools, surgical theatres.
>
> Maybe not the theatres but I'd bet dollars to donuts that
>prior to, oh, 1970 you could find people smoking in the first two.
>The doctors would hold off actually smoking over an open abdomen
>but they would be using nicotine-yellowed fingers to fiddle about
>with.
>
Um, James, there's this newfangled invention called "gloves" that
maybe you folks should investigate. Until then, don't shake hands
with any proctologists.
aRJay
<efl...@home.com> writes
>2) There was no pressure of any kind put on Andrew Norton by Baen Books to
>revise her old novels for publication. The decision to do so was hers, no
>one else's.
>
>3) Anyone who thinks that any SF publisher is in a position to "muscle"
>Andre Norton is... not living in the real world.
>
>4) What I found most offensive -- though certainly not surprising, in this
>forum -- was the none-too-veiled suggestion that Andre Norton is a feeble
>old woman who has more-or-less lost her wits. I maintain a personal and
>friendly correspondence with Andre Norton and I can assure you that the lady
>is NOT "doddering." She is old, yes. Judging from the evidence, however,
>I'd have to say she's a lot sharper than most of you.
You might have got some of this from my post in which case I do
apologise as it wasn't my intention to imply that she had lost her wits,
I was merely trying to point out that as a rule even those who are
strong enough to reach her advanced years are not as strong as they were
in their prime and thus might make use of others to do laborious tasks.
I will try not to post on such subjects after I have been to my parents
as my mothers deterioration tends to depress me.
J Greely
>Maternity wards, grade schools, surgical theatres.
And while I'd agree that these would reflect a difference between
year 1940 and 2000, do they really apply to 3500+? In a society
where a teenage girl can casually have her legs lengthened (through
a process that's completely reversible), does it make sense to
apply Y2K attitudes towards smoking?
It's like removing the dope-sticks and vintage Pepsi from Retief.
They fit because they don't fit.
-j
James Nicoll
I am fairly certain both tnh and pnh have had short stories
published.
Fred Pohl has done everything, hasn't he? From agenting to
editing, writing to... has he ever -reviewed- books?
Terry Carr wrote SF. I have a collection of his stories.
Eric Flint
>
> For some reason concrete examples of 'That SOB editor ruined my
> story' aren't coming to mind although I am sure they exist.
The book version of the first three stories in Anvil's Interstellar Patrol
series. (STRANGERS IN PARADISE.) It's been thirty years, and Anvil is
still steamed about it. The publishers ignored his objections to the way
they'd edited the book, and published it anyway. (Needless to say, the
version of those stories which will appear in the upcoming INTERSTELLAR
PATROL are the original Analog versions.) There was also a Swedish edition
of a Laumer novel in which, in order to bring the book within their length
limits -- to which Laumer did not object, in and of itself -- the editors
simply cut the last third of the book.
There are plenty of others, but those two come to mind immediately.
Eric
J Greely
>Eric mentioned an airplane the last time this came up. (As I recall, the
>context was that the plane had hit cruising altitude, and the whole
>cabin lit up like an array of chimneys.)
I'd have left it in. Either today's reader gets a clue to the era the
book was written in, or it helps add to the feeling of "this story
takes place in a future that isn't exactly like today". Ditto for
things like the cost of a cup of coffee.
-j
wth...@godzilla1.acpub.duke.edu
>
> For some reason concrete examples of 'That SOB editor ruined my
> story' aren't coming to mind although I am sure they exist. Horace Gold
> was notorious for blue pencilling stories for the hell of it and to no
> great end so I'd look to him for examples.
It was said that "Editing by Gold will turn a mediocre
story into a good story, and editing by Gold will turn
a great story into a good story".
I get the impression that he was two editors, Good Gold/Bad Gold
with the good one a very good editor, but both more than a tad
neurotic.
Pohl mentions somewhere that when he and Kornbluth
got a chance to edit a story by Gold they gave it the
full Bad Gold treatment, wherever possible replacing
the apt word with something clunky, and killing the
point of all jokes. But they didn't publish it that
way.
Whoops, one possible example
> does come to mind: the nature of the Document That Will Free The Galaxy
> From Tyranny in _The Stars, Like Dust_, which was edited in magazine
> form by Gold, I -think-.
That was Gold but, terrible as it was, note that Doubleday
declined to remove it, despite Asimov's plea.
>
> There's also the alleged mangling of a Pangborn novel by a hostile
> editor, which is discussed on Old Earth Publishing's website if I recall
> correctly. http://www.geocities.com/edgarpangborn/panglory.html I think.
The website seems to say that the book was not in fact
mangled. As a side note, I reread "The company of glory"
last summer. I wasn't sure it would hold up, but it did.
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University
Eric Flint
"J Greely" <jgr...@corp.webtv.net> wrote in message
news:ynvy98s...@corp.webtv.net...
Two of the three instances involved someone lighting up a cigarette in an
aircraft. (Actually, the first instance involved that. I had to cut the
second instance -- one sentence -- to maintain continuity because someone
refers back to it a few pages later.)
I'm a chain-smoker myself, and when I read that sentence I burst out
laughing. Try lighting up a cigarette in an aircraft today...
"Don't panic, people. We're making an emergency landing and federal police
will escort the criminal off the plane." The point to these kind of minor
"dating" cuts is simply to eliminate sudden and unexpected reminders of how
old the stories are, which tend to break the reader's concentration on the
story. I make no attempt to "modernize" the stories in the sense of adding
anything. (Telzey still plays robochess online, for instance, I did not
rewrite that passage in order to have her playing a video game.)
Most instance of smoking I left in, which is why I stated bluntly that
Justin Bacon was a liar. The fact is that the man has obviously never read
any of my edited versions of the Schmitz stories. He just lies about it.
In addition to the reference I gave on page 70 of the first volume, there a
lots of others. Quillan lights up a cigarette at the start of "Lion Loose"
in the third volume, for instance. (See page 34 of TRIGGER & FRIENDS.) I
left that in because it happens in a restaurant/bar in a pleasure resort.
In the future, presumably, establishments of that type will have air
scrubbers at least as good as the ones in Las Vegas casinos -- where you can
smoke anywhere. At least, it's a situation where I didn't think the reader
would particularly notice anything dated.
People can agree or disagree with me on this issue. As I've stated many
times, the issue to me is simply to remove extraneous and unnecessary
"jarring" elements in a story. If the dated material in question is
important to the story itself, I leave it in. But the stuff I'm cutting is
all irrelevant to the story. The sentences cut have nothing to do with
either the plot or the characterizations. They are simply the kind of
concrete visual cues which authors routinely put into their stories to make
the situation seem more vivid. In the time Schmitz was writing, having
people light up a cigarette was a standard visual cue.
What pisses me off about Bacon is that he _lies_. If he wants to denounce
me for cutting three instances of people smoking in some seventy stories
across seven volumes, fine. But when he states that I cut _all_ references
to smoking -- as if I was on some kind of maniacal political correctness
campaign -- he's engaging in slander. Which he does constantly. The man is
constitutionally incapable of having an honest argument.
Likewise with his statement that I supposedly posted statements saying that
I had no respect for Schmitz's writings. That is a flat out LIE. I
challenged him to come up with a single quote to sunstantiate it. I predict
that he will not do so, nor will he retract the statement. I've exposed him
as a liar time after time, and he simply scurries to another rathole and
tells more lies.
It's not only a lie, it's an idiotic lie. If I had no respect for Schmitz,
why in the world would have have spent three years getting all his writings
back into print? Does anyone think I do it for the money? What a laugh.
The total money I've gotten for editing Schmitz comes to less than half of
what I get as an advance for writing one of my own books, which takes me an
average of four months to write.
What I _did_ say -- any number of times -- was that Schmitz, like all
writers, had some characteristic weaknesses. In his case, a tendency to
fumble expository material. That was not invariable, of course. In fact,
the way Schmitz used the interrogation scene at the beginning of THE DEMON
BREED to provide readers with the needed background to the story is
positively brilliant. Still, it was something he often handled clumsily.
All of my cuts except for small instances of dating problems -- which never
involve more than a single sentence, and usually just a single word --
involve removing that kind of unnecessary and long-winded exposition.
Only a liar like Bacon can try to turn a statement that Schmitz had
weaknesses into a statement that I had no respect for Schmitz's writings.
ALL writers have weaknesses, fer chrissake. Sometimes, these weaknesses can
be improved by editing. Other times, they can't -- in which case I leave it
alone. To use Laumer as an example, he had two characteristic weaknesses as
a writer:
1) Especially in novel length stories, his plot are ramshackle and usually
depend on wild coincidence. (In CATASTROPHE PLANET, for instance, the hero
makes his way during a tectonic catastrophe all the way across the Atlantic
and half the Mediterranean and then purely by accident stumbles across an
old friend of his in a tavern in Crete -- and his friend just happens to
have handy the boat and scuba gear which the hero needs for the next stage
of his quest.)
2) A female character is doing well if she achieves one-dimensionality.
Neither of those weaknesses can be solved by editing. They would require
rewriting the entire stories. Something which, the liar Bacon
notwithstanding, I don't ever do.
Murray Leinster also had a characteristic weakness, which you can find in
many of his stories especially his novels. He tended to be very repetitive,
often repeating _exactly_ the same material over and over again in the
course of a story. Literally word for word, often enough. Why? I dunno.
Personally, I suspect he did it to pad the stories because he got paid by
the word. And more power to him, since his editors were willing to let him
get away with it. But Leinster has now been dead for over a quarter of a
century, and his ghost doesn't have a cash flow problem. Nor is Baen Books
paying his estate by the word. So I have (in MED SHIP) and will continue to
cut excessively repetitive material from Leinster's stories. Why? Because,
while a small number of old time fans may be fond of Leinster's "inimitable
style," most readers will find it annoying and tedious -- and my edition is
aimed at winning _new_ fans for Leinster, not providing collector's editions
for existing fans.
Does that mean I "have no respect" for Laumer and Leinster? Only a nitwit
or a liar like Bacon could possibly make that interpretation. Writers have
strengths as well as weaknesses, and it's because of their -- very
considerable -- strengths that I'm editing reissues of both Laumer and
Leinster, as well as Schmitz and a number of other writers. But if I can
solve a problem by editing, I will do so -- and I make no apologies for it.
That's what editors are supposed to do.
Again, people can criticize me for doing it, and argue the matter. I simply
insist that they not tell lies about what I'm actually doing. Nor is it
difficult to find out, by the way. One of the reasons for my respect for
Sea Wasp is because he did a detailed analysis of my editing of Schmitz,
which he posted here in the newsgroups. He disagreed with what I did, in
many instances, but he was scrupulously accurate in stating what I did and
what I didn't. Justin Bacon simply doesn't care what the truth is. He's
got an ax to grind with me, and any handy lie suits him just fine. It's
_so_ much easier to invent stuff than to take the time to find out the
truth.
Eric
Eric Flint
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
> >Maternity wards, grade schools, surgical theatres.
>
> And while I'd agree that these would reflect a difference between
> year 1940 and 2000, do they really apply to 3500+? In a society
> where a teenage girl can casually have her legs lengthened (through
> a process that's completely reversible), does it make sense to
> apply Y2K attitudes towards smoking?
I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make. The issue isn't
whether or not it might be plausible that by the year 3500+ in Schmitz's Hub
universe, the carcinogenic ingredients in cigarettes might have been removed
and everybody has gone back to smoking. Sure, that's plausible. The
problem is that, if so, a modern writer would make some reference to that
change -- because he or she would know that otherwise readers would look
cross-eyed at instances of people smoking where they wouldn't today. But
the problem is that Schmitz did _not_ give any explanation, and the reason
he didn't -- immediately obvious to any reader -- is because he didn't even
think about it as an issue because he was writing the stories in the 50s and
60s when smoking was well-nigh ubiquitous. The effect is simply to date the
story.
It is also plausible that in the year 3500+ the word "newshen" will not be a
sexist pejorative which no-one has used in thirty years. But the "default"
assumption of any reader when they run across that word casually in a story
is not "oh, wow, look how the future has changed!" It will be: "Boy, this
story was written a long time ago, heh heh."
That's the reason I make the cuts. Long time fans are usually not bothered
much, if any, by stumbling across obviously dated ingredients in a story.
But for the SF market as a whole -- and my edition _are_ mass market
editions, whether anyone likes that or not -- the perception that a writer
is dated is at least one strike against them. Many times, of course,
there's nothing you can do about it, because the dated element is inherent
to the entire story. (Wet planet Venus novels like Heinlein's BETWEEN
PLANETS, for instance.) But if it's a minor element which plays no
important role in the story, I will cut it if possible.
Eric
Matt Ruff
>
> "Justin Bacon" wrote:
>
>> Eric Flint removed all references to smoking from the Schmitz
>> stories. This is probably the *least* offensive maiming-- err...
>> editing performed by Flint.
>
> That's a lie. (As usual from Bacon, who seems congenitally incapable
> of telling the truth.) You can find one instance of many of people
> smoking in the Schmitz stories I edited on page 70 of the first
> volume, Telzey Amberdon. What I did was remove a _few_ instances (not
> more than three, as I recall, across six volumes) where the _location_
> of the smoking clearly dated the story.
Which is still a few instances too many, for people who think the
original text should have been left completely intact.
> The final clause is, first, dishonest, because the liar Bacon
> completely distorts the reality and manages to conveniently transform
> the verb "to edit" into the verb "to rewrite." Cutting something, to
> anyone other than a fool or a liar, is not the same thing as rewriting
> it.
I don't think I'm a fool or a liar, but when I revise a text in any way
-- even if all I'm doing is deleting material -- I would say that I am
rewriting it.
I'd also say that what verb you use to describe your revision is really
a side-issue. To someone who believes the original text is sacrosanct,
it doesn't matter whether you call it "rewriting" or "editing" -- the
point is that you changed it.
> In the course of reissuing seven volumes of Schmitz's writings -- his
> entire work except his one collaborative novella ("Operation Alpha"
> with Van Vogt) -- I cut a total of 5000 words out of about one
> million. I.e., I edited 1/2 of 1% of the text. And I "rewrote" --
> that is to say, put into my own words in continuous form, exactly 24
> words in one story. (For those of you inclined toward statistics,
> that constitutes somewhere around .002% of the text.) That is the
> entirety of what the feverish semi-brain of Justin Bacon calls
> "demonstrated his hubris in rewriting the work of a dead man."
If an editor cut several thousand words out of one of my books without
asking me, and tried to defend his behavior on the grounds that it's
"only 1% of the text" and "it's not rewriting when all you're doing
is cutting stuff," I'd be pretty ticked off. That's not to say that
Justin isn't being a little rabid in his criticism of you, but I don't
he's totally out of line to object.
> The statement is also stupid in that it demonstrates a complete
> ingnorance of the reality of commercial fiction. The notion that each
> and every word written by a professional commercial writer is
> equivalent to Holy Writ is... so laughable it defies description.
The comparison to Holy Writ is misleading. I don't think even Justin is
arguing that the words of mortal writers should never be edited. But if
my name is going to appear on a finished work, I expect to be involved
in the editing process, and to be given a chance to sign off -- or not
sign off -- on the final version. I don't think that's laughable; I
think it's pretty basic.
Of course there are exceptions to this, and posthumous publication -- or
republication -- is one of them. A dead author can't approve even minor
cosmetic changes, and can't tell you which of three or four versions of
a story he or she prefers; inevitably, an editor in that situation has
to make some educated guesses. I also think there's room for honest
differences of opinion over how much revision is permissible in such
circumstances -- but if you do make alterations, I think you need to be
upfront about having done so, and not quibble about whether a change is
really a change. I think you also need to be a little more thick-skinned
about criticism of your choices; I suspect one of the reasons this issue
won't die is that you're so damn defensive about it.
> I can show anyone interested in an honest discussion -- this excludes
> Bacon by definition -- a multitude of instances, in and out of SF,
> where the "holy words of dead men" have been edited time after time.
> You can start with almost ANY performance of ANY play by William
> Shakespeare.
But if you look at *print editions* of Shakespeare's plays, I think you
will almost invariably find a preface in which the editor discusses the
decisions he or she had to make, given that there is no definitive
edition of the text to work with. Likewise it's a given that any reviews
of such a book will focus heavily on what the editor did or didn't do --
and even fairly minor alterations to the text, if not sufficiently
justified, will likely draw critical fire.
> I can also show you multiple instances where the same story was
> written in two or more versions by the same author -- and it is
> well-nigh impossible for an editor, after his or her death, to be sure
> which version would have been preferred by the author had he or she
> still been alive.
There are also those cases where an author dies leaving a partially
unfinished manuscript, and a decision is made to publish it. Mainstream
examples include James Agee's "Death in the Family," Ralph Ellison's
"Juneteenth," and Norman Maclean's "Young Men and Fire." Again, though,
it's standard practice to include a preface with such works in which the
editor explains what he or she did, and why -- the understanding being
that such editorial choices are open to criticism.
> ...does anyone with half a brain honestly have any doubt that if
> Randall Garrett were still alive he'd agree that the repetitious
> background material contained in the eleven Darcy stories originally
> written for separate publication should be edited for a modern unitary
> edition?
I don't know anything about Garrett, so I can't predict what he would or
wouldn't have agreed to. Anyway the issue isn't what he would have done,
but what you did do -- and I think this is a case where there's room for
legitimate disagreement. I'd credit John Pelan with having at least half
a brain, and he says if he'd been the editor, he would probably not have
made the cuts.
> Or -- going back to Schmitz -- that Schmitz would agree to change the
> term "newshen" to "newscaster"?
I don't know, Eric. Do you think anyone would object if you published a
version of the Gettysburg address that began, "87 years ago..."? Or
since you brought up Shakespeare, what about a version of Romeo and
Juliet with the line, "Romeo, Romeo, how come you're Romeo?..."
> Occasionally, people here take me to task for my rude and abrasive
> manner in responding to my critics. Well, I'd say I was sorry about
> that, but frankly it'd be a lie. I've taken so much lying shit from
> assholes like Bacon that my respect for this forum on this subject --
> with the exception of a few honest types like Sea Wasp -- is exactly
> zero. I don't give a good God-damn what the Bacons of the world think.
Well, that much is obvious from the brevity of your response...
-- M. Ruff
Eric Flint
"Andrew Wheeler" <acwh...@optonline.com> wrote in message
news:3DB43AA9...@optonline.com...
> J Greely wrote:
> >
> > "Eric Flint" <efl...@home.com> writes:
> > >What I did was remove a _few_ instances (not more than three, as
> > >I recall, across six volumes) where the _location_ of the smoking
> > >clearly dated the story.
> >
> > I can see how smoking in a specific location might strongly indicate
> > that the story is not set in California, but otherwise I find this
> > statement baffling, even as a non-smoker. Specific example, please?
>
> Eric mentioned an airplane the last time this came up. (As I recall, the
> context was that the plane had hit cruising altitude, and the whole
> cabin lit up like an array of chimneys.)
No, it's a private aircraft with only three passengers. The problem isn't
actually the fact that Quillan lights up, it's that he immediately offers a
cigarette to Trigger -- whom he has just kidnapped, but is trying to get
relaxed and reassure her he means no harm. The offer is intended as a
friendly peace gesture, but in today's world the _last_ thing a kidnapper is
going to do to try to mollify his kidnap victim is light up a cigarette in a
confined aircraft without asking her if she minds -- and then offer her one.
What the hell, we may as get concrete. If nothing else, that might help to
stifle Bacon's inveterate lying.
Here is the scene in the original version:
"Cigarette?" the Commissioner's overmuscled henchman inquired amiably.
Trigger glanced at him from the side. Not amiably. "No, thanks."
"No hard feelings, are there?" He looked surprised.
"Yes," she said evenly. "There are."
"Maybe," the driver suggested from the front... [text continues as is]
Okay. Here's my edited version:
"No hard feelings, are there?" the Commissioner's overmuscled henchman
inquired amiably.
Trigger glanced at him from the side. Not amiably. "Yes," she said evenly.
"There are."
He looked surprised. "Maybe," the driver suggested from the front... [text
continues as is]
I defy anyone who isn't trying to grind an ax for the sake of grinding an ax
to argue that my edited version changed anything substantial in that
passage. All it does is remove the extraneous element of the cigarette,
without changing the emotional interplay in the scene. Notice that I did
not rewrite anything, in the sense of adding anything of my own. Every
single word in that scene in my edited version is from Schmitz's original
text. Which, incidentally, demonstrates how completely irrelevant the
smoking element is to the scene. I did not _have_ to change a single word
to get rid of it, because it's nothing more than a visual cue irrelevant to
the story itself.
Eric
Michael S. Schiffer
news:3DB456C0...@worldnet.att.net:
> Eric Flint wrote:
>...
> > ...does anyone with half a brain honestly have any doubt that
> > if Randall Garrett were still alive he'd agree that the
> > repetitious background material contained in the eleven Darcy
> > stories originally written for separate publication should be
> > edited for a modern unitary edition?
> I don't know anything about Garrett, so I can't predict what he
> would or wouldn't have agreed to. Anyway the issue isn't what he
> would have done, but what you did do -- and I think this is a
> case where there's room for legitimate disagreement. I'd credit
> John Pelan with having at least half a brain, and he says if
> he'd been the editor, he would probably not have made the cuts.
>...
Does anyone know if the earlier Lord Darcy collections were done
before or after Garrett's illness? That might give a clue as to
his wishes, one way or the other.
Though it seems that, for whatever reason, short story collections
were more common 20-30 years ago, and concatenating them into fixup
"novels" is more common now. Whether that's because readers have
displayed a strong preference for the latter or just a fashion
trend, I don't know enough to say.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
David E. Siegel
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>
> > from page 195 of Science Fiction Culture
> >
> > JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> > much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> > do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> > I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> > take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> > to publish the book she wrote.
>
> from their editors, and one case where an author paid out of his own
> pocket to get somebody he thought was good to do the "editor" job on a
> book the publisher wasn't doing okay on. And *lots* of authors who go
> to considerable trouble (including multiple people traveling many
> hundreds of miles) to review novels with their writer's group.
>
> And a *whole lot* of books that look to me like they would have been
> *much* better if they'd been edited.
I know at least one person who makes a substatial part of her income
as a "freelance editor" -- i.e a person paid by the author to perform
the traditional editing function of reading over a story in close
detail, and making suggestions for improvement. Some authors
apparently find that the level of improvment gained fromn having
another (skilled) person do this is worth paying for. I am informed
be several people who should know that the "editors" employed by major
publishers do far less of this thajn they used to, largely as a
cost-cuttign measure: this work takes considerable time and some
skill, and editors are far buiser than they used to be with
acquisitions and marketing decisions, and other non-editing tasks.
-DES
David E. Siegel
<snip>
> Occasionally, people here take me to task for my rude and abrasive manner in
> responding to my critics. Well, I'd say I was sorry about that, but frankly
> it'd be a lie. I've taken so much lying shit from assholes like Bacon that
> my respect for this forum on this subject -- with the exception of a few
> honest types like Sea Wasp -- is exactly zero. I don't give a good God-damn
> what the Bacons of the world think. Every Schmitz volume produced for which
> I have hard figures (the first five) has sold somewhere between 18,000 and
> 23,000 copies and is maintaining a sell-through of 80% or better. Those
> sales are better than average in today's market, even for new authors much
> less reissues, and the sell-through is extraordinarily good. That is about
> as clear an indication as you'll ever get that the attitudes of the SF
> audience in general is not reflected by the miniscule number of vociferous
> critics in this forum.
>
> Eric Flint
In fact, it proves nothing of the sort, as you should know perfectly
well. What it proves is that the edited versions are good enough to
sell quite well. Since there is no indication in the prited copies of
how much, let alone what, editing has been done, there is no way for
the reader to know, and no way to know if a different set of edits
would have increased sales, decreased them, or had no measureable
effect. Persoanally my guess is that any effect would be fairly
minor, one way or another, but that is just a guess, with no evidence.
That something sells well does not prove that it is the best that it
could have been.
Personally I think that those edits which remove or reduce the
"period" nature of the work are a mistake, such as the "smoking" edits
in Schmitz or the "cold War" edits in the Andre Norton Time Traders
series, and this is true whether the original author or a later editor
does them. For me, this is a big enough factor that I won't buy the
re-issued Nortons, but will instead buy used copies for any I don't
already own. For the Schmitz books it is not, as this is an
incidental matter insead of affecting the core of the setting (IMO).
Some other kinds of edits, such as removing redundant repeated
backstory/intro stuff, seems reasonable to me, as does choosing amoung
published versions.
As for your tone, I can understand why you (Flint) take it, and I do
think that some of the criticism you have recieved on this issue was
overblown at best, and insulting and clearly unjustified at worst.
But I think you go at least equally over-the-top in response, and it
does make me just that bit more reluctant to buy books with you as the
editor, and to pay less attention to opnions above your signature.
I understand your point that commercial writing is not sacred writ,
and can be and should be edited or even re-written for best sales. I
generally agree. I do think it would cost nothing to include a
one-line notice on the copyright page (frex: "This materiel has been
revised slightly for this new Baen edition"), and perhaps more
extensive information on what editing was done in the electronic
edition and/or on the Baen website. New fans are not likely to care --
I find it hard to belive that soemone who never saw the work before
would be put off from buying it by such a notice -- and pureists will
at least feel honestly notified. Completeists might even purchase just
to have "all possible versions". Much of the anger over the editing
was not over the fact of it, but over the lack of any notice in the
printed books.
By the way, in describing the kind of changes you made above, you
ommitted the case in which you changed the main character's name to
make it part of the Telzy sequence. Note that I only know this
because you *did* disclose it in print, in the afterword IIRC. Thank
you for doing so.
-David E. Siegel
Thomas Yan
> There are days when I'd settle for proofreading.
>
> I'm still rocking from when I settled down to read a stack
> of old comic books -- printed when comics were disposable,
> published in the cheapest possible way -- and was *twelve
> inches* down in the stack before I found a grammatical
> error! Never did see a mis-spelled word.
>
> And I don't recall finding another grammo.
>
> Nowadays you're lucky if an expensive hardcover gets the
> title on the cover right.
I assume the hardcover edition of _Blood & Ivory: A Tapestry_ is the
same as the trade paperback, in which case, the copyright page has
"Taperstry". Grr.
James Nicoll
Newfangled? 1890s, right? Just how old -are- you?
David E. Siegel
> Christopher Henrich wrote:
> >> One visualizes _Little Fuzzy_ as edited by Eric Flint, in which Papee
> >> Zack and his new friend sit down after dinner, pull out their
> >> appropriately-sized bottles of soapy water, and load up their bubble
> >> pipes.
> >
> >I've read all the volumes (so far published) of the reprinting of James
> >H. Schmitz and the collection of Lord Darcy stories, all edited by
> >Eric Flint, and I can't line this comment up with those works at all.
> Eric Flint removed all references to smoking from the Schmitz stories. This is
> probably the *least* offensive maiming-- err... editing performed by Flint.
>
> demonstrated his hubris in rewriting the work of a dead man.
>
subjsct, but I don't reacall any sttement by EF which could reasonably
be construed as saying this.
> I rank Flint right up there with the Victorians who wrote happy endings for
> ROMEO & JULIET, the violent altering of Mark Twain's work in recent times, and
> the wrong-headed and pointless rewriting of Robert E. Howard's CONAN stories by
> L. Sprague de Camp.
>
I honestly do not think this is fair -- Flint did *NOT* change the
essential tone or meaning of the schmitz stories as the Bowderizers of
Shakespear did. (I am not sufficently informed about the details of
the other two cases to comment, but if they are as extreme as your
tone and comment imples, then Flint's editing of Schmitz is not
comperable to them either, IMO.) I think that soem of the edits reduce
the "period " tone, (the "newshen" change frex) which I regret but I
don't feel this constitutes a "mutilation".
> Justin Bacon
> trai...@aol.com\
-David E. Siegel (DES)
Eric Flint
"John Pelan" <jpe...@cnw.com> wrote in message
news:3db3f509...@usenet.cnw.com...
> On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 04:02:40 GMT, "Eric Flint" <efl...@home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >I will make a few observations on this discussion and let it go at that,
at
> >least for the moment. Most of these will be a presentation of facts,
> >something which (as usual in this forum) is sadly lacking.
>
> Possibly. All I've commented on is a direct quote from your boss and
> my opinion that most books and/or stories can benefit from line
> editing, a point that you seem to concur with.
Jim Baen is not my "boss." As a writer, he's my publisher. He pays me
advances and royalties for my books, he does not pay me a salary. I am not
on his payroll. As an editor, Jim does come closer to the term "boss."
But, even there, the term is not accurate for the kind of editing I do. I do
not get a salary as an editor, nor am I on the Baen payroll. I get paid a
small flat fee for each book, as well as a small percentage of the
royalties. Once Jim agrees to a given reissue project, he does not make any
attempt to control or direct me in what I do. What he will do -- as he
would with any writer -- is pull the plug on a project if it doesn't show
that it can turn a profit (or at least break even).
As a writer yourself, you certainly understand these distinctions -- so why
are you making the wisecrack? I can only assume it's done for hostile
reasons, so I will cheerfully respond with the same tone.
The problem is that you have fallen into one of the common practices in the
newsgroups, which is for someone to cite a short statement completely out of
context and then everyone starts a huge discussion about it. That's how the
flamewar over my editing of Schmitz got started. Somebody quoted _three
words_ I'd posted in the context of a long discussion in Baen's Bar about my
editing of Schmitz -- and the next thing you knew, hundreds of posts had
gone up here flaming me for supposedly advocating this or that. As it
happens -- which would have been obvious to anyone who'd looked at the three
words in context -- I was making a wisecrack.
Frankly, I've never run across such sloppy-minded people in my life as I do
here in the newsgroups. Be honest, John. Unless you've dealt with Jim Baen
directly, you really have NO idea what his overall approach to editing is.
So why shoot your mouth off about it? Based on a few sentences quoted out
of context by somebody else? Doesn't that strike you as... light-minded, at
best?
> An admirable practice, but contrary to the substance of Jim's quote.
And again. No, it's only contrary to what you _assume_ is the substance of
Jim's quote. And you really have no idea what that substance is, based on
an isolated remark taken out of context.
As it happens, Jim has made more-or-less that same statement to me
personally -- just as he's made a multitude of other editorial observations,
most of which I find insightful. All he meant by it is that the notion that
editing automatically improves a book is fallacious. It's more likely to do
harm than good. (In support of his theory, I will mention again that media
tie-in publishers are notorious for editing more extensively than any
others. If that produces better quality stories, it's news to me.)
That doesn't mean he won't edit. It simply means that unless he feels
strongly about something, he'll generally let it go rather than haul out the
red pen just so he can prove to the writer (and the world) that he's a
By-God Editor. Others can think what they will. As someone who publishes
through Baen, I find his attitude a blessing.
(snips)
> You seem a bit hostile...
Hey, no kidding. Somebody in this forum suggests that the reason Andre
Norton is doing what she's doing is because she's senile. Naturally, no one
else here challenged the statement. (Except me, but I'm the Designated
Screw-You in this joint. Which suits me just fine. I do not suffer
jackasses gladly.) Personally, as someone who knows her and has had a great
deal of respect for her since I was a teenager, the statement pissed me off.
As usual in the newsgroups, of course, the statement was not based on any
facts or personal knowledge. The slogans of this place might as well be:
Rumor Is Good Coin.
Quotes Out Of Context Are Always Best.
Innuendos 'R Us
>Facts as I understand them are:
>
> 1. Jim Baen claimed to not edit. (And was quite rightly criticized for
> this stance.)
You call that a "fact?" Based on _one_ quote taken out of context? Um.
All I can say is that you have a very generous definition of the term
"fact."
> 2. Eric Flint admitted to having edited the prose
Stop right there. I see that you have thoroughly imbibed the ethos of the
newsgroups. As I said, "Innuendos 'R Us." For the record, I did not ADMIT
anything. The term "admission" is a sleaze term on your part, designed to
load the dice. It's of a piece with your reference to Jim Baen as my
"boss," thereby implying that I am his flunky.
Get screwed. I did not "admit" to having edited, I _stated_ that I had
edited.
> of two deceased authors,
Well, not to my surprise your grasp of the "facts" leaves a lot to be
desired. I have not edited the prose of two deceased authors. I have, so
far in the course of this reissue project, edited the prose of six deceased
authors (Schmitz, Laumer, Garret, Leinster, Myers, Godwin) and one
still-living author (Anvil).
>vitiating the claim of his publisher that their house doesn't
> edit and provoking criticisms of another sort entirely.
Jesus. Boy, you really enjoy piling one flimsy logical structure atop
another, don't you? You begin by taking an out-of-context quotation as if
it encapsulated the entirety of a publishing house's editing practices --
something which, frankly, any practicing writer ought to know is just silly.
You then add rumors about my own editing, none of which (quite clearly) you
have bothered to check for yourself. You plaster the word "fact" over all
of this as if thereby to establish that any of it _is_ a fact -- which none
of it is. And we're off to the Newsgroup Races! What the hell, why not?
Rumor Is Good Coin, after all.
> 3. Andre Norton revised two of her early books for republication by
> Baen either at their request or just because she felt like it.
>
> That pretty much the substance of it? Now here's a thought on Garrett,
> we realize (and agree) that there are expository passages in each
> story. Forst, who is our audience for this book and how many copies do
> we expect to sell, 20,000? 40,000?
Of Garrett? Not that many, since the book came out in trade paperback. For
the mass market editions of my reissues, in today's really crappy market, I
shoot for about 20,000 copies -- although I'm more concerned with
maintaining a good sell-through. Today's mass market for SF is lousy, as
any writer knows, and has for been for several years. I doubt if the
average mass market paperback sells as many as 15,000 copies any more. The
figure is probably more like 12,000. So if I can get a volume into the
15-20K range with good sell-through, my publisher will let me keep reissuing
that author (or someone else, since I'm now piling up a good track record as
an editor, from a publisher's viewpoint).
So far, so good. The Schmitz volumes (mass market, that is) will all either
surpass 20K or come very close. Leinster and Anvil look to be coming in
closer to 15K, although it's still too early to be sure. But since both of
them are maintaining good sell-through, I'm okay. The Laumer volumes will
probably sell about the same. But it's really too early to tell yet, since
the Laumer reissue just got rolling this year and as more volumes start
showing up on the shelves the older volumes will keep picking up sales. In
any event, since Jim Baen owns the Laumer estate himself I'm not under the
same profit constraints, as long as the sell-through remains solid.
With trade paperbacks, of course, the sales figures drop a lot. If any of
the trade paperback volumes sell 5000 copies, I'll be very happy. I suspect
sales will be more in the 3-4K range. But, again, as long as the
sell-through is solid that's okay.
>I'm guessing that Baen has pretty
> strong demographic of people that buy most Baen titles and are pretty
> familiar with the genre. In short, an audience that knows that Randall
> Garrett is dead... Here are three possible solutions:
>
> 1. Print as written.
> 2. Remove expository passages.
> 3. Write an introduction that touches on these seeming redundancies.
>
> I probably opt for #3, readers are forgiving and understanding,
> particularly if you play the card of "we couldn't confer with the
> author and didn't want to mess with his prose".
Sorry, but I disagree. _Some_ readers are forgiving. This forum happens to
have a concentration of that type of reader, which is why people here have a
tendency to project their own attitudes onto the world at large. But the
general audience is not very forgiving. They are not going to "give a pass"
to an old author simply because they have fond memories of them. In many
instances, they don't know them at all. (Except, perhaps, by hearsay.)
They will read a collection of their stories the same way they'd read any
other book. And if they get too annoyed by endless repetition of the same
material, they will express their displeasure by negative word-of-mouth,
which will hurt sales.
As for an editorial preface explaining how the text was handled, I can think
of few things more likely to put off a potential reader. This is POPULAR
FICTION, fer chrissake, not a scholarly text. Since you seem to like
chewing on Jim Baen quotes, I'll give you another one. This is more-or-less
verbatim from a conversation I once had with him. As it happens, on the
subject of whether or not editorial textual prefaces are good in a popular
fiction volume.
"Eric, whenever I pull a book down from the shelves and see a lot of
editorial prefaces in it, I immediately realize that this is a weighty and
important book and reading it would undoubtedly be good for me. Immediately
and hastily, I put the damn thing back and go looking for something fun to
read."
Irreverent? Lowbrow, if you prefer?
No doubt. It also happens to be dead on the money. I am editing a mass
market edition. You can dislike that fact, if you choose, but it remains a
fact. And I have no intention of weighing down these volumes with anything
that might put off potential readers. Especially when the issue involved is
one which, frankly, the average reader could give two cents about. The fact
that I changed the term "newshen" to "newscaster" on two occasions in one
story out of seventy in my reissue of James Schmitz is A Matter Of Deep
Concern here in the newsgroups. To the SF audience as a whole -- which is
the audience I'm editing for -- it's a yawn.
The problem here is that people just don't want to accept Robert Heinlein's
wisdom. I've forgotten the exact words, but the gist of what he once said
is: "Face it. We're competing for our customers' money with beer." And
that does, in fact, capture the heart of the matter. Popular fiction _can_
be great, but what it _must_ be is entertaining. Most people do not plunk
down $18 to read Garrett's Lord Darcy stories in order to be subjected to
Editorial Angst in a preface. Any more than they want to have the story
interrupted eleven times to be told once again that Richard the Lion-Hearted
did not actually die at the siege of Chaluz, the Plantagenet dynasty was not
replaced by the Tudors, yadda yadda yadda... They spend the $18 to Have
Fun.
I realize that's very lowbrow of them, but there it is.
Eric
Ross TenEyck
>There was also a Swedish edition
>of a Laumer novel in which, in order to bring the book within their length
>limits -- to which Laumer did not object, in and of itself -- the editors
>simply cut the last third of the book.
I can think of some recent books that might have been improved by
simply cutting the *first* third...
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Ross TenEyck
>All of my cuts except for small instances of dating problems -- which never
>involve more than a single sentence, and usually just a single word --
>involve removing that kind of unnecessary and long-winded exposition.
"Removing unnecessary and long-winded exposition."
<With effort, lifts Weber's latest tree-killer off the desk,
then lets it drop with a monitor-shaking thud.>
I have a suggestion for your next target :)
David E. Siegel
> I will make a few observations on this discussion and let it go at that, at
> least for the moment. Most of these will be a presentation of facts,
> something which (as usual in this forum) is sadly lacking.
>
> separate novels and three novellas in anthologies. (Actually, it's
> technically fifteen novels, since my story in Changer of Worlds is 53,000
> words long, which is much longer than the "official" length for a novella.)
> The editorial input from Baen -- either from Jim Baen or the chief editor
> Toni Weisskopf -- has ranged from major rewrites asked for in the case of
> three novels (Mother of Demons, Pyramid Scheme, An Oblique Approach), to
> major input as the novel was in progress (1632), to what is generally
> considered extensive line-editing in the case of several novels, all the way
> down to a minimum of suggested line-editing changes in several others.
>
> So much for the notion that "Baen doesn't edit." They can and they will.
> The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances in
> each case.
>
This is what I would hope and expect. The cited quote from Jim Baen,
in a published interview, seemed to imply that this level of editing
was rare at his house, and that he in particualr felt that it was more
likely to do harm than good. I for one disagree with that position,
if that is in fact what he belives, and I hope that this is not, in
fact, a good description of the usual practice at Baen, and that your
experience as described above is more typical.
> I will also make the observation -- for those of you who seem to think that
> "the more editing the better" -- that the publishers who are positively
> notorious for requiring endless rewrites and constant editorial fussing with
> the text are... media tie-in publishers.
>
I didn't see anyone saying "the more editing the better". I saw a
number of people who said "little to no editing is usually bad" and
"Many publishjers now do less editing than they used to, and this is a
bad trend" and "If baen does as little editing as this quote implies,
it suggests that the quality of the work thy publish will be less than
it might be." I agree with all of these positions. I hope that the
hypothesis of the last conditional is false.
> 2) There was no pressure of any kind put on Andrew Norton by Baen Books to
> revise her old novels for publication. The decision to do so was hers, no
> one else's.
I'm glad to hear it. I had no information one way of the other. I
still think this was an artistically mistaken decision, even if she
made it. I described at some length my reasons for this when the
matter was first mentioned here. They had nothing to do with who made
or suggested the changes, and everthing to do with their effect on the
resulting work .
>
> 3) Anyone who thinks that any SF publisher is in a position to "muscle"
> Andre Norton is... not living in the real world.
>
This seems plausible -- she certianly has enough presteige that this
ought to be a non-issue -- but one never knows what happens behind the
scenes.
> 4) What I found most offensive -- though certainly not surprising, in this
> forum -- was the none-too-veiled suggestion that Andre Norton is a feeble
> old woman who has more-or-less lost her wits. I maintain a personal and
> friendly correspondence with Andre Norton and I can assure you that the lady
> is NOT "doddering." She is old, yes. Judging from the evidence, however,
> I'd have to say she's a lot sharper than most of you.
>
It is not unreasonable to speculate that a woman in her 90s might not
be as sharp as she used to be, and might be in a position to be
imposed on or simply to say "very well, if you think that's the best
thing..." without giving the matter the level of clear consideration
she once would have. Nor do I think that specualtion on reasons for
the public acts of a author, including the possibility of illness or
age, is offensive or out-of-line in a discussion of that author's
work. Issuing a significantly revised version of a major work is
certianly a very public act.
I am very glad to hear that this is not true in her case. Note that
one need not have "more-or-less lost her wits" to not have the energy
or desire to go into editing decisions in detail, or even in general.
I for one have long admired her work, and I am very pleased to read
your comment that she is still sharp and active in correspondance.
> Eric Flint
-David E. Siegel (DES)
Eric Flint
"Lois Tilton" <lti...@enteract.com> wrote in message
news:1103_10...@news.rcn.com...
> On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 13:23:42 GMT, Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
>
> I dunno, Wasp. Seems to me that you're taking a "generally" and raising
it to a
> "probably" and a "major". This is as much misstatement as that which you
are defending.
Heh heh. Actually, I agree with Lois here. Jim Baen has a habit of making
sweeping and catchy statements, and he could care less whether each and
every formulation is absolutely precise and perfect. Which they very often
are NOT. Including in this instance. The statement "Thou Shalt Not Edit"
is not intended seriously by Jim, it's just the kind of catchy
grab-their-attention bon mot he likes to toss out. The real issue is not
trying to parse his (handful) of words, it's just to use some common sense.
Whether anyone likes the type of books Baen generally publishes or not, it
is a simple fact that he has managed to keep a successful SF publishing
house going for something like twenty years. And is even increasing his
share of the market and maintaining profitability in a generally lousy
market, when lots of other publishers have fallen by the wayside. (SF sales
have been crappy for several years now, alas, especially in mass market
paperbacks.) Common sense ought to tell you that he must know SOMETHING
about how to publish and edit. Especially when you add to that the fact
that he has an impressive record as a magazine editor before he launched his
own publishing house. Which is why I find this whole discussion more silly
than anything else. People should go read tea leaves, or something...
> I shall, however, add [thereby contributing to the general bogglement]
that I agree with
> Eric Flint when he says the most persnickity and detail-obsessive editing
comes from the
> media-tie-in editorial dept.
I'm never experienced it myself, but I've heard lots of horror stories about
it from writers who have. The money is good, although it's usually all
upfront with no royalties. But writers have to make a living like anyone
else, and I'd certainly agree to write a media tie-in novel if someone waved
enough money at me. There are some writers (and a lot of fans) who hold
their nose at media tie-in writers, but I consider that elitism at best and
piss-poor moral standards at worst. I won't speak for any other writer, but
I have a sister desperately fighting cancer and constantly having to
scramble for money. You think I wouldn't take a wad of money for a Stars
Wars novel, and tell my sister I couldn't help her out because of my "high
artistic standards"? To hell with you and your so-called "morals."
Nor would I mind having to work within the narrow constraints of a typical
media tie-in universe. As a writer, actually, I'd find that an interesting
challenge. Now and then, at least, although it's not something I'd want to
have to do all the time if I could avoid it. What the hell, Joseph Haydn
composed 200 baryton trios simply because his patron Count Ezterhazy liked
to play the baryton. It's good enough for one of the world's all-time
musical geniuses to write narrowly-constrained music, but I'm supposed to
hold my nose at writing a media tie-in novel? (Not to mention that Mozart
wrote concertos for the flute, even though he disliked the instrument. Why?
Because somebody _paid_ him to do it, of course, and he needed the money.
What made him a genius is the fact that those "tie-in" concertos now
constitute the heart of the flute concerto repertoire.)
The real problem, from everything I've heard, is that the publishers --
actually, I gather it's not so much the publishers as the Hollywood crowd
standing behind them -- insist on endlessly screwing around with the
writer's work It's a laugh, really. The same people who produce the
typically vapid scripts for most movies insist on telling writers how to
write. The truth is that the reason most media tie-in novels are mediocre
is far more due to the endless editing than to the quality of the original
writing. YOU try writing something good when everybody is constantly
sticking their thumb in the soup. (Which, by the by, is really all Jim Baen
was getting at. Strip away the catchy phrasing, and all Jim is saying is
the editor's equivalent of the opening of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do
no harm.")
Eric
PS. Lois, it strikes me that we have not only found ourselves in agreement
recently on three separate occasions but have even managed to maintain a
cordial tone to our remarks. :) Granted, we're both obviously pugnacious
people -- well, okay, I am, I won't speak for you -- but I really don't see
any point to maintaining a feud just out of pure cussedness. So, anyway, as
far as I'm concerned let bygones be bygones and all that and I hereby
publicly bury the hatchet.
David E. Siegel
> John Pelan wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 04:02:40 GMT, "Eric Flint" <efl...@home.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > >
> > >The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances in
> > >each case.
>
>
> sentiment and then insisting that it must then apply in all specific
> cases.
>
> Jim Baen's statement basically boils down to "I generally feel that
> if a book's worth publishing it probably doesn't NEED major editing."
>
> Note that this is "generally" and "probably". Here's the original
> quote again:
>
> > JIM BAEN: It's been my experience that editors of that sort do as
> > much harm as good...It's also the most time-consuming thing we attempt to
> > do. So in general, if someone were not sending a book I want to publish,
> > I don't publish it. Occasionally [we will make suggestions but]... we
> > take a fairly strong position, that "thou shalt not edit. The author gets
> > to publish the book she wrote.
>
> it's a general position, (2) it's "fairly strong", not "inviolable",
> (3) points out "occasionally" that they do, and that (4) he allows for
> such editing to do good as well as harm, just believes that those
> editors which DO do this to a great extent are likely to do as much
> harm as good.
>
> In other words, all this flamage comes from people looking at it and
> jumping on the idea that Jim made a statement that he didn't, to with,
> "Baen never edits authors' works."
No, I don't think so. I understand that statement to mean "Baen rarely
does editing beyond the copyediting level, because it takes time (and
therefore money) and it does 'as much harm as good' to the book." If
*that* statement in fact reflects Bean's business practices (which it
doesn't seem to, in EF's description of their editing of his work),
than i strongly suspect that in many cases they aren't publishing
works as good as they could be. I strongly belive that in the majority
of cases, a skilled editor who is sympathetic to the materiel and can
work with the author, can improve a work of fiction, often
significantly. This means both line-editing and higher-level
structural editing, it does not mean copy-editing (although that is
needed too, and many publishers seem to do a far poorer job than they
might, althouh it can never be perfect).
Mind you, i generally like the books that Baen publishes -- several of
their authors are on my buy-on-sight list, and i will look at any book
they issue. I like the websubscriptions idea and the Free library, and
I have used both. And I liked several of the things that Jim Baen did
before Baen books, including Destinies and the books he edited as an
emnployee. Several authors I respect speak very highly of him. I am
not a person to "jump-on-baen" for the hell of it. Frankly I suspect
that he said more than he quite meant to in the interview, and would
qualify it a good deal if he thought it over.But maybe not. if that
really is his operating policy, "generally" and "probably" and
all,than i think that overallhe is not turnign out the best books he
could,because he is passing up a chance to significantly improve many
of them. Note the 'If' in that statement.
-DES
Eric Flint
"Matt Ruff" <storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3DB414FA...@worldnet.att.net...
> Eric Flint wrote:
> >
> > So much for the notion that "Baen doesn't edit." They can and they
will.
> > The extent to which they do is determined by the concrete circumstances
in
> > each case.
> >
> that authors benefit from the services of a good editor -- that *some*
> editing is better than none, *if* the editor knows what he or she is
> doing. Of course it's possible to do too much editing, as well as too
> little.
All that is true, but it begs the issue. Yes, certainly -- IF the editing
is good, then some editing will certainly improve a story. But that's not
what Jim Baen was talking about. He was addressing the general issue of
whether editing as such is or is not automatically A Good Thing. And his
observation -- argument, if you prefer -- is that, in and of itself, editing
is as likely to do harm as good. Which happens to be true.
> > -- that the publishers who are positively
> > notorious for requiring endless rewrites and constant editorial fussing
with
> > the text are... media tie-in publishers.
>
> ...which makes sense. If you're doing work-for-hire, you should expect
> to be treated more like an employee.
It only makes sense if your boss is an idiot. When I was a machinist, very
rarely did my supervisors come over and start telling me how to cut the
metal -- and, when they did, it was usually the sign of a lousy supervisor
who just wanted to throw his weight around. The company was paying me good
money to be a skilled machinist. Why do that if you're not going to let the
craftsman do his trade? If you're going to insist on telling him how to do
it, why not hire an apprentice for half the wages?
Alas, as so often happens, the common sense wisdom of such plebeian trades
as machining flies out the window in the Rarified Heights -- I'm trying to
keep a straight face, here -- of Ye Publishing World.
Eric
J Greely
>I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make.
Nope. I got the point, I'm just not buying it.
-j
J Greely
>I'm a chain-smoker myself, and when I read that sentence I burst out
>laughing. Try lighting up a cigarette in an aircraft today...
But the stories don't take place today. They take place many hundreds
of years into the future, in a society that has vastly more advanced
technology and medicine. Your assumption that today's attitudes will
triumph does not belong in someone else's story.
>The point to these kind of minor "dating" cuts is simply to eliminate
>sudden and unexpected reminders of how old the stories are, which
>tend to break the reader's concentration on the story.
And smoking on a plane is somehow more dated than the way the first
intimacy between Trigger and Quillan took place? And how they both
felt about it immediately after? Speaking as one of your readers, I
found that scene in "Legacy" far more dated than any amount of smoking
would have been.
What do I hear in your words? This:
This newly revised edition of _Beard_on_Birds_ bows to
healthier, less lavish eating habits by slightly reducing
the use of butter and cream in recipes throughout the
book.
-- Editor's Note, 1999 edition
Think about it: a customer who has gone out of his way to purchase
a book about food the way James-Goddamn-Beard cooked it ends up
getting something "adjusted to reflect modern habits". If I wanted
"modern" food, I'd have bought one of the other 10,000 cookbooks
in the store.
The result? I'm now haunting used book stores looking for an earlier
edition, because I don't want this editor's opinion of how to cook
poultry with less fat and less flavor. I want James Beard.
And I want James Schmitz.
>Most instance of smoking I left in, which is why I stated bluntly that
>Justin Bacon was a liar.
I couldn't care less about your disagrement with this person. I didn't
ask my question to give you another excuse to go off about it. It has
nothing to do with my question, and I have no intention of reading your
lengthy rant on the subject.
-j
J Greely
>I defy anyone who isn't trying to grind an ax for the sake of grinding an ax
>to argue that my edited version changed anything substantial in that
>passage.
>All it does is remove the extraneous element of the cigarette,
Nope. It changes "friendly offer, followed by question" into
"question". In the first version, the "friendly offer" is obviously
there to tell the reader (and the kidnapped girl) that the question is
sincere. Taking it away leaves his motives in question longer.
Making the offer a cigarette is indeed dated, but not replacing it
with another, "more acceptable" offer does indeed alter the feel
of the scene.
-j
Eric Flint
"aRJay" <aR...@escore.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:heBGW2Dx...@escore.demon.co.uk...
> In article <A%Ks9.36177$qM2.9122@sccrnsc02>, Eric Flint
> <efl...@home.com> writes
> >4) What I found most offensive -- though certainly not surprising, in
this
> >forum -- was the none-too-veiled suggestion that Andre Norton is a feeble
> >old woman who has more-or-less lost her wits. I maintain a personal and
> >friendly correspondence with Andre Norton and I can assure you that the
lady
> >is NOT "doddering." She is old, yes. Judging from the evidence,
however,
> >I'd have to say she's a lot sharper than most of you.
> apologise as it wasn't my intention to imply that she had lost her wits,
> I was merely trying to point out that as a rule even those who are
> strong enough to reach her advanced years are not as strong as they were
> in their prime and thus might make use of others to do laborious tasks.
If I misinterpreted your remarks, please accept my apologies. It is
certainly true that Andre Norton does not have the energy she used to have.
That's why she asked someone else to do the actual revisions, which she then
looks at and either approves or doesn't. (I know who it is, but I'm not
mentioning the name simply because I don't know that either the person doing
the revisions or Andre Norton herself has identified them publicly. And I
don't feel it's my prerogative to do so. But the person doing the actual
revisions is a long-standing and well-known professional in SF, not somebody
who wandered in off the street. And the person was chosen by Norton
herself, not foisted on her by anybody else.)
The key points, however, are that it is Norton's final decision what to
change and what not, and her decision to do the revisions is not being done
"under duress" nor is it being done by a woman too old to know what's what
when she sees it.
Christopher Anvil is also elderly, and very often I'm the one who actually
rewrites something in the course of editing his work. (Usually a
transitional paragraph to bridge a cut or re-arrangement of text.) But he
_always_ sees the material, and he either approves it or doesn't. Sometimes
he does, as is. More often, he likes the general idea but wants to polish
it up or tweak it a bit to fit his own writing preferences. He also does a
lot of the rewriting and touching up himself. Regardless of who does the
initial writing, however, he _always_ has the final say-so on whether it
will go into the printed version or not. I don't even typos without sending
them to Anvil for his approval. And I can assure you that, elderly as he
is, Christopher Anvil has all his wits about him. He just doesn't have as
much energy as he used to, that's all.
> I will try not to post on such subjects after I have been to my parents
> as my mothers deterioration tends to depress me.
I have or have had relatives in that position, including my father before he
died, and it is indeed extremely depressing. Part of what triggered off my
irritation was that I find casual assumptions that someone who is elderly is
automatically "questionable" very annoying. It _can_ be true, yes. But it
often isn't. My grandfather lived to the age of 96 and was lucid to the
very end.
Eric
Eric Flint
I can only shrug my shoulders. If you want to get into an argument over how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin, have at it, but I have better
things to do. I can guarantee you that 99.99% of the readership --
including you, if I hadn't pointed it out -- would never notice that cut,
and 99% of them would be squinting cross-eyed at your attempt to Make It Of
Deep Significance.
But at least half of them would have been jarred a bit by the original and
reminded how old these stories are. That's the simple crude arithmetic I'm
dealing with. Which word in the term "mass market" don't you understand?
I really don't know what else to say, frankly. More often than not, I feel
like Alice in Wonderland in this debate here. The way you "delved deeply"
into the Profound Inner Import of the change I made above reminds me, more
than anything else, of a Puritan scholar fiercely examining the original
Greek and Aramaic text of the Holy Book in the course of producing the King
James version of the Bible. Deeply concerned that Every Single Word Of The
Lord must be rendered perfectly in translation, lest he be fried in eternal
hellfire.
So be it. I'm not trying to save literary souls. I'm just a grubby
low-minded editor trying to sell as many copies as possible of an author I
loved in the hopes of getting him back in print permanently. And if making
a minor cut which not more than a handful of readers would even notice but
which would eliminate a possible minor problem for half the readership will
help do that, I'll do it in a heartbeat.
Eric