Better Together
When and How to Respond to Editorial Feedback
Welcome to a very special Pi Day edition of Shelf Life. Today’s Shelf Life is not about pie or Pi. If you would like to read a Shelf Life about pie and Pi, you can do so as one was published about 50 million years ago in October 2021 when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Go read the primordial, pie- and Pi-related Shelf Life and then come back and read this one. Twice the Shelf Life for your money ($0.00).
Today I have for you a Shelf Life derived from my real life experience of receiving edits to some different publications lately and undergoing the process of addressing editorial feedback. I thought: What a good topic for Shelf Life. I can talk about this from both the author’s and the editor’s point of view.
You may have wondered: Does it hurt your editor’s feelings if you disagree with their feedback? Yes. It hurts our feelings so much. We put on a professional face to talk with you about it but then we go home and cry over our collection of vintage red pencils.
While it is true that I have a collection of red pencils and some of them are probably old enough to qualify as vintage, it doesn’t actually hurt your editor’s feelings when you disagree with their feedback. I mean, a caveat is, I suppose it’s possible that an editor’s feelings could be hurt? But that would be like a dentist taking it personally if you say “ouch” when they stab you in the gums.
Fact: Editors cause discomfort as part of our job.
An editor’s job—part of an editor’s job—is to find the weaker points in your work and strengthen them. To find the rough spots and polish. To emend so that your manuscript may become the best possible version of itself. This requires an acknowledgment between both parties that the manuscript was not already the best possible version of itself as written. I don’t know about any other author out there but even as an editor myself, when I hand over a manuscript there is a part of me that hopes the editor will come back and say “perfect, no notes, no changes, print it.”
But to improve the final version, both the editor and I have to acknowledge that the manuscript was not perfect as written. That they (the editor) will make changes and request revisions, and I (the author) will agree to those changes and make the requested revisions, and the resulting manuscript will be stronger for them.
Fact: Nothing great is created in a vacuum.
I say this a lot and people go “well, but what about—.” Books have always had editors. The great master painters of the Renaissance worked in large workshops with art assistants who helped paint their great paintings. The mental image of the author (or another type of artist) working away quietly and producing their masterpiece without any outside help or feedback is, frankly, fabricated. Artists have, and have always had, peer critique groups and editors and proofreaders and other collaborators.
(If you have an opportunity, read “Unaccompanied Sonata” by Orson Scott Card, which is about this principle. Buy a used copy, please, if you can, to avoid further enriching a not-so-great dude.)
Fact: (The final fact) Editorial feedback is often subjective.
Edits are not subjective 100 percent of the time. If I spelled it “100 precent of the time” and my editor suggests I change “precent” to “percent,” that’s not a subjective change. “Precent” is objectively wrong.
But many edits and revision requests are subjective. I’ve known specific editors who strongly prefer, for example,
“Based on” instead of “On the basis of.”
To never allow the splitting of an infinitive (do you see what I did there).
To replace all instances of “utilize” with “use.”
None of the above are necessarily correct in all cases; making those changes (or suggest them) is based on (or on the basis of, as you prefer) the editor’s subjective preference or editorial aesthetic. The editor’s job in fact requires a level of subjectivity. If you paid an editor to work on your manuscript and they returned edits that only corrected objectively wrong instances of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes—then you did not get your money’s worth. You could have just asked ChatGPT to do it for free.
(For the love of dog do not paste your intellectual property into ChatGPT.)
So, anyway, let’s say you’re an author and you’re working with your first editor. You might be wondering all kinds of things like:
What are the process and etiquette for declining to make a revision?
Likewise, for stetting* a change the editor has made?
Who has the final say in whether an edit is made?
*Stet is editorial jargon that means “let it stand as it is set,” that is, “do not make the change.”
When you receive your marked-up manuscript from the editor, it can be a discouraging feeling to see a lot of changes all over your hard work. That’s a normal feeling. You are not being absurdly defensive or anything like that.
When I receive edits to a piece of fiction I have written, my process for dealing with those edits looks like this:
Day 1: Edited document is in my email. Ignore email. Can’t deal with it yet. Begin desensitizing myself to the existence of the email.
Day 2: Open the email and read it to make sure the editor’s cover letter doesn’t say “Your writing is bad and you should feel bad.” Still not ready to look at the edits.
Day 3: Open the file and scroll through as fast as possible holding the “page down” key to see “about how much” markup there is. Retire to my bedchamber like a Victorian lady who has just learned her husband was lost at sea.
Day 4: Maybe ready to actually look at edits.
I admit this is probably not a normal reaction to receiving edits but my point is it’s normal to feel stressed or discouraged at seeing your manuscript all marked up like that.
Step one: Check your deadline (if you’re working with an editor who has the authority to set you a deadline, that is, not a freelancer you are paying). Make sure you have enough working time to feel your feelings about receiving edits and then go feel those feelings for a bit. The edits will wait till you are back.
Next: I recommend this step if you have time for it. Change your word processor’s review display to “Final” or “No Markup” or whatever will show you a clean document with no redlines. Make sure you have track changes still turned on for your own markup. Now, begin to read the clean document with the editor’s changes made invisibly. You don’t have to read your entire novel like this, but read a few pages or a chapter or two. You may notice places where the writing doesn’t feel quite right, or something isn’t said the way you think it should be, and you can make your notes on those spots using track changes.
I like to do this because if I see a redlined edit my brain sometimes goes into JADE (justify argue defend explain) mode: “Oh I said X instead of Y because I wanted to alliterate and I mean I know it’s not exactly—” this is not useful or helpful.
Instead, I read over the editor’s change and perhaps I don’t realize it is even there. When I turn the editor’s edits back to visible my brain is less likely to JADE my original wording because I’ve already seen the editor’s changed version in situ and it didn’t bother me.
Make use of the reviewing tool that lets you hide or display redlining at will. It’s super helpful. It helps me understand how the editor’s changes impact the flow of the text if I read the passage with markup and then read it again with markup hidden.
If I have time, I read through the entire marked-up manuscript at least once without making edits. If there’s something I just can’t let go, I insert a comment—but I don’t edit the text on this first round. This read is to get a feel for the types of changes the editor has made and to read and consider their comments.
Finally, go through the manuscript to stet any changes that you do not want the editor to make (you want the editor to revert those changes back to the original) and address any requests for revision. This is the most time-consuming step but I find it goes a lot faster for me if I’ve done the preparation above and read through once or twice before I really dig in.
Your editor probably provided instructions on how to respond to their edits. They may have given you the green light to reject any changes you don’t want to carry over to the final or they may ask you to insert a comment (inline or in the comment bubble) asking them to stet. Any edit you do not comment on will be made by the editor during the cleanup phase—so if you do not want a change to be made, address it!
Your editor will not be offended if you reject some of their changes. I know I personally have felt disappointed sometimes when an author has rejected an edit I made that I thought was a solid edit and improved the manuscript—but at the end of the day it’s the author’s name on the cover and the spine and they have the final say.
The following is a 100 percent true statement: I have never had my feelings about an author changed by their reactions to my edits. I’ve had authors who accept more or reject more but I’ve never encountered an author I didn’t want to work with again, for instance, based on their rejection of some of my editorial comments.
If an author rejected all of my editorial comments I probably would advise them not to hire me again because . . . why? Don’t waste your money.
But as an editor I do not expect the author to accept and implement 100 percent of the changes I suggest. I hope they will accept the objectively correct ones and I hope they will implement most of the subjective edits I recommend, but I don’t have my ego tied up in whether the author accepts the changes or not.
If you need clarification on an edit or revision request the editor has made, the editor will be happy to walk you through their edit, question, or comment to help you understand it. However, there is no need to explain to the editor why you rejected a certain edit or why you chose to write the original the way you did—they don’t need that information. A good editor won’t argue with your choice to reject their edit unless you’re rejecting an objective correction and the error is pretty egregious.
Can the editor make you make a change? If you’re working with a publishing company, check your contract. You probably have the right to reject changes to your manuscript but the publishing company probably also has the right to decline to publish if you don’t make requested changes to your manuscript. The editing process would have to get quite contentious for it to come to that but I have seen it happen (usually over the inclusion of material under copyright and not because someone went to war over the serial comma or whatever). If you’re working with a freelance editor, then no—your decision is final.
Fact: (I was just kidding before; there’s one more fact) Your editor wants you to be happy with and proud of the finished manuscript. At the end of the day we want to put forth the best and most polished manuscript possible while preserving authorial voice—and we want the author to agree that the edited version is better and stronger than the original.
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