I have now worked with 7 editors and most have been rather cool. What I had not realized with my first editor was that I had a say -I was so excited to have someone publish me that I let them do whatever they wanted and I completely cringed when I read the final print. The reason for the cringe was that I was writing an edgy sex column and my editor tried to kitch it up! It did not sound like me at all. The rest of the editors have been for small literary presses and have been phenomenal about taking suggestions and not hijacking my piece. I agree with Zinsser that I would rather take my piece out of a magazine than to allow the editor to make it his/her own.
Okay, so to the average Joe would say, I should just be thrilled that someone wants my 1800-word short story and I should accept my fate. Here's the thing with that -I probably spend 15 hours creating that short story, let alone the five other stories that I started and didn't finish in between. Guess what, after having my short fiction published 6 times in ten months I think I should have a say. These are my words, my personality, my style that I have honed and worked on. Zinsser, once again, stresses that the commodity of writing is the writer's personal style, not the just the content. I wholeheartedly agree because every short has already been told, it is only different by the way each writer tells it, and if style were not important than people wouldn't care which newspaper they read, but they do!
Now for workshopping, I find it to be an invaluable resource for two reasons, 1) you are able to see errors in your own work that you wouldn't have seen before, and 2) you are able to learn to read critically which helps with your own writing. One of my favorite parts about workshopping in online course is that you don't have to hear everyone else's opinion before you give your own. IF five people have responded to an essay I read it twice, comment, and then read the other peer reviews.
As for editing: Yuck! I don't like revision and I don't personally like editing but I sure as hell need it! I do know that much. As I said before I love a good editor, a patient editor BUT I don't know if I would ever want to be an editor.
Hooray, for this forum to write about all my misgivings and personal issues with writing. I don't know if I will continue on this path of blogging but it has been an interesting ride, if one doesn't mind cliches -and I must say sometimes I don't. With that said, the ownership of my personal style is the most important aspect of my writing, my greatest joy, and the absolute hardest part of the writing process. I have written two novellas which began as really strong short stories and teetered off into the abyss of mediocre long fiction. I need to learn to carry my voice beyond 3000 words and then I will have truly accomplished something.
Amy, I think that the people who say you should be happy to just have the work published don't necessarily "own" their work, if you know what I mean. Once the work is published, we do have to release it--in a way it's no longer ours; it's the reader's--but getting it to that point is absolutely up to us, and it IS up to us to decide what is acceptable and what is not, whether a change or suggestion is in keeping with our ultimate goal. I think that figuring out that balance is a bit of a challenge--and a mark of maturity once we've achieved it.
ReplyDeleteI'd say you're already there. :-)
I don't think I'd be too concerned about struggling to cross the 3000-word limit. Some people thrive in shorts, others in longs. We should not necessarily expect that a fiction writer can write both forms equally well.
That said, I think that for you it may be more a matter of finding the *right* story. And those may be fewer and farther between; you simply may find yourself to be a sprinter rather than an endurance runner, and there is *nothing* wrong with that!