Lynne Patrick
Something’s been niggling at the back of my mind this past week, for reasons which may or may not become apparent.
We hear a lot about agents and publishers needing to fall in love with a book before they’ll take it on. Conversely, most writers will have received that rejection letter – heck, I’ve written that rejection letter – which assures the author that the manuscript is perfectly sound, a good idea well developed, but ‘somehow it just didn’t get me excited and enthused’.
I understand that. If you’re about to invest time, effort and potentially a large sum of money in something, it should excite and enthuse you; in any walk of life you need a certain measure of belief in what you’re doing, and where books are concerned the emotions are, in general, more than usually engaged.
But what about further into the process? The people who pick up the ball when the decision-makers have sent it into play?
A small explanatory digression, in case I’m not making myself clear. In one of my many lives, I review theatre. I see a lot of it, some bad, some indifferent, some OK, some brilliant. Last week I saw a brilliant show, and I hated it. And that is not a paradox, an oxymoron, or any other part of speech that designates the simultaneous existence of opposites. It was a modern ballet: not my favourite theatrical form, but the paid critic goes where she’s sent, and I do usually enjoy this particular company’s work. They were every bit as brilliant as usual: the dancing was flawless, the storytelling clear as daylight, the visuals perfectly in keeping with the mood of the piece. And I still hated it. I had no problem appreciating the skill, emotional depth and all the other qualities they brought to it; they were doing it wonderfully. I just couldn’t enjoy what they were doing.
In publishing terms, my position that night equated to that of an editor who is given a book to work on which s/he hasn’t had any part in commissioning. What if that editor completely fails to see what other people find wonderful about it – doesn’t fall in love with it, in fact? Is it enough simply to appreciate the good qualities? What if, to push the analogy further, s/he (OK, she – it is a she, more often than not) actively dislikes the book? Can she still be fair to the author and make a decent fist of editing it?
In an ideal world, of course, the editor would turn the job down. But in the current climate – actually in any economic climate – not many editors are in a position to do that. A freelance editor can’t afford to make waves; acquire a reputation for being picky and ‘difficult’ and the work dries up faster than Death Valley in a drought. And a junior-ish editor employed by a publishing house doesn’t want to find her name on the next list of redundancies, so she does as she’s asked.
I suppose it all comes down to professionalism. In my case, the authors I edit for publication are all familiar; I used to publish them myself, which should tell everything you need to know; a one-person publishing house has more than the usual need to fall in love with the books it takes on. But wearing a different earning-a-living hat, I’m sometimes asked for editorial input on work I simply can’t connect with. That’s when it gets problematic.
Occasionally I can ask someone else to take it on. But mostly it’s down to me, and I can’t sack myself for being ‘difficult’. But if I don’t provide intelligent, dispassionate feedback, the word-of-mouth recommendations I rely on don’t happen, and the work dries up as surely as if some higher power was handing it out.
It’s a conundrum.
