Not Quite As Advertised...

On 8/16/2008 1:28 AM Twibil spake thus:

Right. But in turn, writers often lack coherence and understandability, something which an editor is presumably there to provide. (Plus stuff like spelling, grammar, fact checking, etc.)

The proper role of the editor is to polish the writer's writing until it gleams, like an old steam locomotive after its engineer was done cleaning and oiling.

Alas; in real life an editor frequently changes things around in ways that would cause the author to strangle him over a protracted period were he within reach. It's that old "The Soup *CAN'T POSSIBLY* Be Any Good Until I've Pissed In It" syndrome.

Example: The first thing I ever sold to a national publication (Pickin') was a combined banjo/guitar tab for Grieg's "In The Hall Of The Mountain King", and it included carefully crafted instructions for playing the piece as a duet. In that text I stressed the fact that while the tune is played out of an open Gm tuning on banjo it must be capoed up two frets to Am in order to make the chords reasonable for the guitarist.

When the article came out in the magazine, the text had been changed and now instructed the banjo player to play it Gm instead of Am. When I took the editor in question to task for this he said, "I changed it because some of our readers might not own a capo".

The fact that his "improvment" made the piece practically unplayable as a duet didn't bother him at all.

I've had other adventures with half-educated editors, including the one who broke a written contract and changed all the punchlines in a humor piece I'd written because he said he didn't understand the jokes... and then acted surprised when I told him I wouldn't be selling his publication any more material.

Editors!

-Pete