Those Who Can, Write; Those Who Can't, Edit

An article that makes important points about the role of the fiction editor.
Author Blake Morrison makes the point that:

A culture that doesn't care about editing is a culture that doesn't care about writing. And that has to be bad.

He argues that editors are an endangered species in the UK publishing industry. The intense collaborative process between author and editor that used to be a feature of the publishing industry no longer exists in Britain and "everyone from JK Rowling to David Eggers suffers from the lack of scissors that might have been to their benefit".

I must say I have to agree because I find myself yelling at many of the authors I read for various annoyances, length coming near the top of the list. (Not that yelling does much good now that the printed book is in my hand and I have spent the equivalent of ten good bowls of my favourite fishball noodle soup on it!)

Morrison says that because of the pressures they're under, modern-day editors simply don't have the time to edit and in some instances authors are encouraged to pay for the services of a freelance editor!

It's a truism, he says:

All writers need editors. So why isn't the matter more discussed?

Partly, as he says, because the contribution of editors:

...goes largely unacknowledged - a nod in the preface or a thank-you from the author at the launch party and that's it. They're the ghosts in the machine, the secret sharers, the anonymous power behind the throne.

And partly also because writers have done little to clarify the role of editors in their work ... unless the whole process has gone badly wrong for them.

Those who can, write; those who can't, edit - that seems to be the line. I prefer TS Eliot. Asked if editors were no more than failed writers, he replied: "Perhaps - but so are most writers."

There is too, he says the romantic image of the writer "as a solitary creative genius" and the editor as a "meddling middlebrow".

Morrison goes on to give examples of writer-editor partnerships which ensured the quality of some of the most important C20th classics - Sons and Lovers, The Waste Land and The Great Gatsby.

This lack of editorial assistance, he concludes, is probably what is fuelling the growth of creative writing programmes in Britain in recent years. Where else are writers going to get the help they need to improve their manuscripts?

And where, I wonder, are our Malaysian writers going to find the editorial help they need, because it seems to me that this is one of the most pressing issues for the local writing scene.