Indulgence (A Coda)

[ninebelow]

A sort of companion piece to the last post. Often hand in hand with the accusation of self-indulgence is the thought that the editor has not cracked the whip hard enough. It is a common complaint of reviews and general online chitchat that "X needs a better editor" and the fact that editors no longer have time to edit is regularly bemoaned. Blake

Comments

[communicator]

I think self-indulgence and (self) editing are the yin and yang of writing. The writer needs both, and yet too often one swamps the other. I think self-editing more often destroys self-indulgence: writing constipation.

[nwhyte]

Speaking as someone whose job involves a lot of editing, I think Green is completely wrong. You can tell a bad editor from a good. One particular small press publisher is now on my "never buy books from this editor again" list, after such excrescences as "A repulsion from the hard-headed scientist within me rose to a shouting crescendo of outraged disbelief" and "ignorant of the story that was beginning to unravel about us like the cold, entwined coils of a mysterious serpent" slipped through the editorial filter. (But my favourite was the character whose wounds "looked like huge purple welts", probably because they actually were huge purple welts!)

[rparvaaz]

*lol*

[numbat]

I don't exactly think to myself 'X needs a better editor' but I certainly do at times think that books I'm reading need more editing. To date I've only thought this about non-fiction where the material isn't organised to my liking. Ever now and then I read a book which gives me the impression that the contents have been published in the order written rather that being reorganised to enhance the material. Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential is a classic example of this.