The Red Pen of Love and More Advice From Post-Acceptance Edits
Writing is deeply personal. It’s hard to do, and it’s harder still to put those words out into the world. You want someone to read them! You’re terrified someone will read them! So it’s thrilling when an editor says they love those words enough to publish them. But wait, now they want to change them?
It’s no wonder authors bristle at the thought of post-acceptance edits. If it’s good enough to get published, why fix what ain’t broken? But editor Atlin Merrick of Improbable Press gave me some sage advice: an editor loves your work or they wouldn’t have accepted it. They don’t want to butcher it. They want to make it shine. So don’t lose heart when you see your story marked up by that dreaded red pen. In post-acceptance edits, that red ink stands for love.
The small stuff
We think of grammar as immutable, right and wrong, but the truth is many editors have personal preferences. As an example: We think of grammar as immutable—right and wrong! But the truth is, many editors have preferences. Same sentence, different punctuation, a deleted word. Which is better? Which is “right”? Nobody knows!
My advice with tiny edits like this is to let them lie. The meaning of the sentence has not changed, and I personally do not care where an editor wants a comma. And do remember these edits are almost always for style. Your editor does not think you don’t know where commas go. Promise.
The big stuff
Your editor reads a lot of work, and when they were reading yours, they were thinking, Oh, I love this. Oh, what a beautiful phrase. But they were also thinking, That paragraph really starts two sentences in, and This one line doesn’t really fit the tone.
(They were NOT thinking, This is the worst paragraph I’ve ever read, why does this person even think they can write?! That’s your anxiety talking.)
Your editor is just doing their job, and it’s the same job you’ve done with this piece, over countless revisions and drafts. Most of the time, they’ll be right. That paragraph is much more elegant without those first two sentences. That one line is jarring and should be reworded. Just remember, this isn’t a tear-down. It’s a tune-up. At the end, your piece will shine its brightest.
The hard stuff
A few years back, I sold a story to the anthology Clamour and Mischief from Clan Destine Press. The editor was fabulous and edits progressed easily, until we got to this sentence: “But now that Branwen had seen what the palace of the Sun was really like, she recalled the tales of the Moon with an uneasy nostalgia.”
Now, I was thinking uneasy nostalgia was the perfect way to express the character’s mixed feelings about visiting a place from a beloved childhood story but suspecting it was going to be terrifying. But the editor was thinking uneasy nostalgia didn’t really make sense. Objectively, she was probably right. But I had an emotional attachment to those two words. So I contested the edit.
If you’re going to contest, remember, you’re not defending your precious writing from the big mean red pen. You’re working with your editor. So I politely explained that yes, the phrase was weird, but I wanted it to be weird, and I’d really like to leave it in. The editor wrote back and basically said Eh, it’s two words, who cares, leave it. Success!
The unexpected stuff
I once wrote a story about a man holing up in a drafty cabin during a blizzard with a weak wood fire that burned down to coals. My editor kindly pointed out that wood fires do not have coals. That’s probably my favorite edit ever.
Then there’s the stuff that’s really out of left field. I’m always careful to hit the suggested word count for a submission call, so I was surprised when after an acceptance to an anthology, the editors offered me 2000 words to write an expanded ending, and could they please have it in 10 days? (Boy, did I feel like a professional writer getting that done in 10 days!) So it’s good to expect the unexpected in the editing phase.
The bottom line
It can dampen the thrill of acceptance when you find out your editor’s been at it with their red pen. But it’s never the case that the editor thinks badly of you, your writing, or your story. Your editor is the fan standing half a mile before the finish line of the race, handing you that cup of water that makes all the difference. They already think you’re a winner. Let them help you prove it.
This article originally appeared in Freelance Magazine from the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild.
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