P.S. McFadden: Children’s Writer

I’ve been on both sides of an editor’s desk and have thereby gained some useful insight into the editing process, which I hope will be useful to you.

My editing experience was three years as assistant editor for a local monthly arts newspaper. All our writers were volunteers, so the articles we got had a broad range of expertise. It was tempting for me to try to “improve” some peoples’ writing (i.e. make it more like mine). But my editor was firm about leaving the writing in the voice of the authors.

As time went on, I saw how important this was and was less inclined to monkey with, and more inclined to enjoy, the variety of writing styles that came across my desk. Along the way I developed some notions about what constitutes good editing–and what doesn’t.

I’ve also worked with a variety of editors. Some have been okay to questionable, one or two have been downright bad and a couple have been superlative.

The best editor I’ve worked with is Thea Deley at Informify. (I’m assuming she won’t mind my using her name to sing her praises. The rest of the editors I comment about shall remain anonymous.) Thea is my idea of a dream editor for several reasons:

1. She put together a style manual specifically for people writing on the Informify site. This means I don’t have to wade through the entire AP Stylebook every time I have a question about something. If you read my rant about the AP and MLA manuals, you know what a blessing this is to me.
2. She gives me feedback on every article I write, in detail. This is a lot of extra work for her and an invaluable service to me. Because of it, I feel like I’m making much faster progress in this new and very different kind of writing than I would have on my own.
3. She gives me positive feedback. I often feel like I’m back in school, generally in the corner with a dunce cap on. It really helps to hear what I am doing right as well as where I’ve messed up.
4. She is patient. I have been known to make the same mistake more than once (arrrgh!). Thea simply points my error out to me–again–and goes on. She understands that some things take longer to sink in than others, which I really appreciate.
5. She is respectful of my writing style. Most of what she does when editing is correcting where I’ve strayed from the manual, occassionally rearranging the material a bit and, often, rewriting headlines– which I kind of stink at since I don’t tend to think in terms of search engines. Otherwise, she leaves my writing alone. When she gets done with it, it is vastly improved, and it is still recognizably mine.

May you all be blessed to work with a Thea sometime in your writing career.

Okay, that’s the good editor. Now for the bad. I have heard far worse horror stories from other people, but will stick to my own experience.

My “bad editor” story has to do with one of the perennial problems in the publishing industry–the game of “musical desks” that editors constantly play. Writers may, and often do, start a project with one editor and finish it with another, or for a different publishing company if the editor takes his or her “stable” of writers along to a new house. This is frustrating but an understood hazard of the profession. However, it’s not cool for editors to leave without telling their writers.

I was working on a project a few years back and heard from another writer at an SCBWI conference that the editor I was supposedly working with had left the company. When I called to confirm this newsflash, I was told, “Oh, yeah. She’s been gone for a couple of weeks. Didn’t she let you know?” That would be a “No.”

She also hadn’t told me that the project I was working on had been canceled. The good news is that, since I had completed most of the work before she left, I did eventually get a kill fee–but only after a certain amount of persistent pestering. I have, needless to say, never worked for that particular publisher, again. I have no idea where the editor went, though I have some thoughts on where I’d like to tell her to go.

As far as questionable goes, I’d have to say that the publisher for my forthcoming picture book fits into the “Q” category, mainly because the launch date has gone from May to June and now, apparently, July. I’m now in a bit of a sticky situation because of this since back in April–when I was told that the release date would be in June–the local library district asked me if I would read my book as part of their summer reading program and I said sure.

They scheduled me for the second week in July–the last week of the reading program–just to be on the safe side. Then the publishing date kept getting pushed farther and farther back. The last time I called, I was told that the book might be out the first week in July, and I’d be the first to get a copy. That was two weeks ago. Since then, I’ve heard zip.

So, I dug out my original dummy to read to the kiddies and am working on a set of insect puppets. I’ll give the audience a good show, book or not, but I wouldn’t have put myself into this position if I’d known that the date was going to keep getting set back. On the other hand, I haven’t heard for sure that the book won’t be out next week, so I’ll let you know if a miracle occurs.

Since I’m always treated pleasantly by the folks at my publisher, and publishing dates can be affected by a number of factors that they don’t have any more control of than I do, I’m certainly not putting them in the “bad” column, but–given that I’ve had to keep contacting them to find out what’s going on–they could certainly stand to be communicating better.

That’s what editing is all about, in my book. Communicating. Communicating well enough with writers so that writers can communicate effectively with their readers, both on and off the page.

So, my fellow editors and editees, let’s all focus on C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-I-N-G. Right? Right!